When Did Horses Transform Mongolians’ Way of Life?
Genghis Khan is one of history’s most successful, and most vilified, military commanders. Under his leadership, the once divided nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppe together conquered an…
Tag: Evolution
When Evolution Is Not a Slow Dance but a Fast Race to Survive
This young Afghan refugee named Maimuna, photographed in Kabul in 2016, has features that are similar to ancient European hunter-gatherers. Hedayatullah Amid/Epa/REX This article was orig…
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,…
Gifts are a traditional part of Christmas – but why do we give presents at all?
The Gift, written by Marcel Mauss in 1925, explores why we exchange things and the social rules we follow – and might help explain why gift-giving can be…
Gifts are a traditional part of Christmas – but why do we give presents at all?
The Gift, written by Marcel Mauss in 1925, explores why we exchange things and the social rules we follow – and might help explain why gift-giving can be…
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…
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…
Why Humans Are So Smart—And So Stressed Out
Our brains deal with vast amounts of information, but all that processing power comes at a cost. Ars Electronica/Flickr This article was originally published at The Conversation and has b…
How Did Humans Get So Good at Politics?
Then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, hugs his son Donald Trump Jr. during a rally at Ohio University Eastern Campus in St. Clairsville, Ohio, in June 2016.…
Dirty Bees Are Good for Flowering Plants
Bees may not be as orderly as their image suggests, and that’s a good thing for flowering plants — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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…
The Hunt for the First Flower
All modern flowers are descendants of a single ancestor. We might finally have a sense of what that ancestor looked like — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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…
Did human women contribute to Neanderthal genomes over 200,000 years ago?
A new Neanderthal mitochondrial genome supports a remarkable hypothesis – that there was interbreeding with an extremely early migration of African hominins Keeping pace with new developments in…
Is Violence Embedded in Our DNA?
Whether we take the perspective that evolutionary selection made humans prone to violence matters to our sense of ourselves. Are we born to be aggressive or peaceful? David…
Uncovering Ancient Clues to Humanity’s First Fires
Although researchers don’t agree on when humans first gained control over the use of fire, they do not dispute the fact that fire played an important role in…
Oldest Known Homo Sapiens Fossils Found
At the site of an old Moroccan mine, paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin points to one of the oldest Homo sapiens skulls yet found. Philipp Gunz/MPI EVA Leipzig The oldest…
Homo naledi genome: Will we ever find this elusive key to human evolution? | Jennifer Raff
Despite the recent announcement of a new haul of Homo naledi fossils, recovering ancient DNA is still proving as difficult as ever Despite what many people believe, paradigm-shifting…
What Role Did Autism Play in Human Evolution?
The story of human origins is much more varied and complex than we often recognize. Biswarup Ganguly/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Conversation and has be…
Dating your Ancestors is Complicated: The Strange Case of Homo Naledi
Photo: John Hawks. Homo naledi has much in common with early forms of the genus Homo On this episode, Adam and Ryan dive into the complexities of our…
Dating your Ancestors is Complicated: The Strange Case of Homo Naledi
Photo: John Hawks. Homo naledi has much in common with early forms of the genus Homo On this episode, Adam and Ryan dive into the complexities of our…
Nature’s Most Creative Copulators
For humans, sex is risky, socially complicated, and culturally loaded—but it’s almost always fun. David Williams Googling “sex” in 2016 yields approximately 3.34 billion results in 0.29 s…
New Study: 60 Percent of Primate Species Threatened With Extinction
The Philippine tarsier, a small primate that is increasingly threatened by habitat destruction and the pet trade, is just one example of the many primates throughout the world…