Chimpanzees Can’t Tell Us Much About Being Human
Do we gain insight by comparing President Trump to a chimpanzee? Can we learn something useful about gender-based violence among humans by studying other primates? Can observing chimpanzees…
Tag: Biology
Populations, Race, and The Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (also called the paradox of the heap) refers to a particular logical contradiction that arises from the analysis of vague terms (Sainsbury, 2009). Terms like…
Fall Semester, 2018 Courses
I am very excited to have three new preps for Fall, 2018. Course overviews are below. LBST 2213: Now this is not a new prep as I have…
Book Review: Not in Our Genes
I’ve been slacking on writing book reviews and so I need to get back to it so the next several posts will be just that (unless something happens…
How ICE’s Bogus Science Is Violating Human Rights
Teeth and bones can tell us something about age—but not someone’s birthday. Journal of Forensic Dental Sciences This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been repu…
Science as a Structure of Violence
The study of human diversity and subsequent racialisation of people has been examined and critiqued but has escaped interrogation as an institution by which structural violence is enacted.…
A Brief History of Race in the Western Thought
Race, as a concept, has important ontology in American society. In order to understand the relationship between race, genetic research, and the American class structure, it is necessary…
Hepatitis B Viruses Discovered in Ancient Human Remains
[no-caption] BSIP/Getty Images Around the world, more than 200 million people live with an infection from the hepatitis B virus, a pathogen that can reside in the human…
The Evolutionary Enigma of the Human Eyebrow
[no-caption] Pexels This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Eyebrows. We all have them, but what are they actually for? …
The Personhood and Rights of Apes
I spent the earliest part of my career as an anthropologist studying captive chimpanzees at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, NC. While there, I always made a…
Humanity’s Story Has No End of Surprising Twists
Indigenous Australians created elaborate rock art, as shown here in Arnhem Land. P. Taçon This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative…
Rejecting the Solutrean hypothesis: the first peoples in the Americas were not from Europe
A recent Canadian documentary promoted a fringe idea in American archaeology that’s both scientifically wrong and racist Last month’s release of The Ice Bridge, an episode in the…
Rejecting the Solutrean hypothesis: the first peoples in the Americas were not from Europe
A recent Canadian documentary promoted a fringe idea in American archaeology that’s both scientifically wrong and racist Last month’s release of The Ice Bridge, an episode in the…
Baby Fat Is About More Than Cuteness
Pudginess in babies offers an evolutionary advantage. Alamy Photos “Aw, you still have your baby fat!” This refrain plagued me throughout my childhood. No matter what I did,…
Is the Clock Ticking Toward Doomsday?
Each January, the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveils an estimate of the likelihood that humanity will self-destruct. They do so by…
What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry
A new genome from a Pleistocene burial in Alaska confirms a longstanding model for the initial peopling of the Americas Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native…
What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry
A new genome from a Pleistocene burial in Alaska confirms a longstanding model for the initial peopling of the Americas Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native…
Anthropology’s Top Findings of 2017
“Fossil scout” Pedro Boshoff inside the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, where Homo naledi fossils were found. Wits University This year’s anthropological findings brought us fasc…
Can Rat Bones Solve an Island Mystery?
When I ask her “So how big are the rats?,” E. Grace Veatch, a graduate student in zooarchaeology at Emory University, smiles and immediately holds her hands apart…
No ‘lost tribes’ or aliens: what ancient DNA reveals about American prehistory
New genetics research settles questions about the peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador – and helps highlight what genetics can’t tell us Genetics research has transformed our understanding of…
No ‘lost tribes’ or aliens: what ancient DNA reveals about American prehistory
New genetics research settles questions about the peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador – and helps highlight what genetics can’t tell us Genetics research has transformed our understanding of…
Watching Ancient Hominins Giving Birth
The movies that Natalie Laudicina makes use the same software that helped create some of the biggest blockbuster hits of the last decade, but her movies won’t be…
The secret about human evolution found in spit
Genetic detectives discover surprising findings about our evolution by studying saliva What does a protein in our spit called MUC7 that all of us have – but most…
How Molecular Clocks Are Refining Human Evolution’s Timeline
Our cells have a built-in genetic clock, tracking time—but how accurately? Mauro Hiroshi Cannas/Flickr This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished u…