Early Man – Page 44

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Human Common Ancestor Lived 3500 Years Ago

September 29, 2004

Nature Science Update reported on a surprising find by Joseph Change (Yale) and Douglas Rohde (MIT). They claim, based on computer modeling of human breeding and migration, that we are all related to the same common ancestor, not millions, but just thousands of years ago, possibly just 1500 BC in Asia, and that perhaps a […]

Dumb Ideas

Name-Calling at the Human Evolution Meeting

September 23, 2004

As predicted earlier this month (see 09/03/2004 commentary), Lucy’s lovers were not going to take her demotion lying down. Proponents of Orrorin claim their 6 million year old rival walked upright millions of years before the 2-4 million year old australopithecines, and even had a gait more human-like than Lucy. To Ann Gibbons, reporting in […]

Dumb Ideas

Scientists Try to Read Neandertal Minds

September 21, 2004

If dead men tell no tales, living ones certainly do. Most of us have trouble reading one another’s minds when staring face to face, but some paleoanthropologists, with nothing but skeletons and a few stone tools and burial sites to look at, have no hesitation in reading the Neandertal mind. Bruce Bower writes in Science […]

Early Man

Step Aside, Lucy; Your Distant Ancestor Walked Upright, Researchers Claim

September 3, 2004

Penn State researchers are trying to scoop the coveted title of “discoverers of the first upright-walking hominid” with a CT scan of their champion, Orrorin (see 02/23/2001 headline). They have the ball and socket joint of the specimen (thought to be like a chimpanzee) and a bit of the bony neck that connects the ball […]

Early Man

British Cave Art Wins Admiration

August 18, 2004

The British are overtaking the French in the ancient cave art competition; National Geographic News reports that “English caves may hold the most elaborate Ice Age cave-art ceiling ever discovered.” Thought to be 12,000 to 13,000 years old based on radiocarbon results and “stylistic comparison.” There was some surprise that the art could have survived […]

Dumb Ideas

Zoo Monkey Walks Upright

July 22, 2004

For what it’s worth, there’s a story going around about a macaque in an Israeli zoo started walking on its hind legs after a near-death experience (see MSNBC News and picture). One news source is calling it a missing link, another claiming the strange behavior is due to brain damage. This calls for a monkey […]

Early Man

Maybe Neanderthals Were Artists After All

July 8, 2004

Revised dating of human bones near figurines has cast an assumption about early humans into doubt, reports Nature Science Update. Aurignacian artefacts, like horse figurines and other carved images, have long been thought to be telltale indicators of modern man. Vogelherd cave near Ulm, Germany was considered the best example, because sandwiched between modern human […]

Early Man

Another Hominid Find Rocks the Charts

July 3, 2004

Another hominid skull dubbed OL 45500 has been reported in Science,1 a juvenile said to belong to Homo erectus. Its classification is problematic because it exhibits a mosaic of features rather than fitting neatly into an evolutionary sequence. The scientists state, “Although the cranium represents possibly the smallest adult or near-adult known between 1.7 and […]

Dumb Ideas

Key to Evolution of Culture Suggested

June 28, 2004

Visualize chimpanzees exercising their antics in the jungle: grooming, screeching at one another, chasing off rivals. Now shift the scene to human activities in a large city: fans cheering their team at a stadium, an audience applauding a concert, kids screaming on an amusement park roller coaster, a congregation singing hymns at church, students taking […]

Early Man

Modern Cavemen Found

June 1, 2004

National Geographic News has a remarkable true story about some families that lived underground in the darkness and dampness of a cave for nearly two years in recent times. And now, the rest of the story: they were Jews hiding out from the Nazis. This incredible story of survival in the midst of danger points […]

Bible and Theology

Humans and Chimps Compared

May 25, 2004

In case you had an identity crisis last time at the zoo, Current Biology can provide psychoanalysis. The May 25 issue posted two articles side by side: one, simply entitled “Humans,”1 and the other, “Chimps.”2 Various comparisons are contrasts are drawn, including a few surprising facts, such as this statement: “Based on relative amounts of […]

Early Man

Early Humans Refused to Be Classified

May 24, 2004

We humans like to classify things, and when we classify ourselves, we sometimes get into trouble. We create groups of “us” and “them” that breed conflicts. A fight of sorts is going on between paleoanthropologists, reports Science News1 May 22, over what to make of some skulls found in a cave in Romania. The skulls […]

Dumb Ideas

Neanderthals Matured Faster

April 29, 2004

The news media are all echoing a story out of Nature April 291 that Neanderthals matured by age 15, as indicated by their teeth. A News and Views article in the same issue by Jay Kelley2 begins, It is nearly 150 years since the existence of Neanderthals was first recognized, but debate about their relationship […]

Early Man

Another Human Distinctive: Lying

April 26, 2004

Here’s another evolutionary conundrum: animals usually don’t tell lies. Why is lying such a well-documented human trait, but rare in the animal kingdom? Animals signal their own and their enemies in many complex ways. It would seem that lying would have evolved as a useful strategy many times in the animal kingdom, yet apparently it […]

Politics and Ethics

Eugenics Documentary Opens at Holocaust Museum

April 22, 2004

Michael Ollove at the Baltimore Sun reports on a new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The exhibit shows a 1937 Nazi propaganda film that invokes the law of natural selection as support for weeding out the unfit. Ollove writes, The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned […]

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