Human evolution

They withered under study. There’s been a lively discussion between geneticists Dennis Venema and Richard Buggs and about whether the human race must have had more than one pair of ancestors (Venema yes, Buggs no). From Evolution News and Science Today: Earlier, we saw that evolutionary genomicist Richard Buggs has been engaged in a dialogue with Venema about the latter’s arguments against a short bottleneck of two individuals in human history. Buggs is skeptical that methods of measuring human genetic diversity cited by Venema can adequately test such an “Adam and Eve” hypothesis. Buggs’s initial email to Venema thus concluded, “I would encourage you to step back a bit from the strong claims you are making that a two person bottleneck Read More ›

Jonathan McLatchie writes to say: Today at 8pm British time (3pm Eastern / 2pm Central / 12noon Pacific), I will be hosting a live interactive webinar featuring Baylor University’s Dr. Robert Marks II His topic will be artificial intelligence and human exceptionalism. There will be plenty of opportunity for live Q&A and dialogue after the presentation. Join here. Note: Robert Marks is the senior author of Evolutionary Informatics. See also: Evolutionary informatics has come a long way since a Baylor dean tried to shut down the lab

From Nature: The first known multipurpose tools were crafted 170,000 years ago by Neanderthals, who exploited fire during the manufacturing process. More. From Kimberly Hickok at Science: Neandertals evolved in Europe perhaps as early as 400,000 years ago, but it’s unclear when they began to regularly use fire. Until now, the earliest evidence of Neandertals controlling fire dates to the late Middle Pleistocene, about 130,000 years ago. … Back in Grosseto, archaeologist Biancamaria Aranguren and her team from the Italian ministry of culture’s division of archaeology, fine arts, and landscape in Florence, got to work. Finding the wooden tools was a shock. “I thought, ‘It is impossible, what is this?’” Aranguren says. But the fact that the 58 sticks—made mostly Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: It has often been claimed that humans learn language using brain components that are specifically dedicated to this purpose. Now, new evidence strongly suggests that language is in fact learned in brain systems that are also used for many other purposes and even pre-existed humans, say researchers in PNAS (Early Edition online Jan. 29). The research combines results from multiple studies involving a total of 665 participants. It shows that children learn their native language and adults learn foreign languages in evolutionarily ancient brain circuits that also are used for tasks as diverse as remembering a shopping list and learning to drive. “Our conclusion that language is learned in such ancient general-purpose systems contrasts with the long-standing theory Read More ›

Not your high school teacher’s human evolution, it seems. From Bruce Bower at ScienceNews: Excavated stone artifacts document a gradual shift from larger, handheld cutting implements to smaller pieces of sharpened stone, known as Middle Paleolithic tools, by around 385,000 years ago, researchers say. That shift mirrors a similar change seen in tools from a variety of hominid populations in Africa, Asia and Europe between about 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, including African Homo sapiens and European Neanderthals. … The new finding suggests, however, that some humanlike populations reached South Asia shortly before H. sapiens even appeared in Africa, which possibly occurred around 300,000 years ago. … Still, “we cannot be sure who made the Attirampakkam tools, because we lack Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Archaeologists say they may have discovered one of the earliest examples of a ‘crayon’ — possibly used by our ancestors 10,000 years ago for applying colour to their animal skins or for artwork. The ochre crayon was discovered near an ancient lake, now blanketed in peat, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire. An ochre pebble was found at another site on the opposite side of the lake. The pebble had a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder. The crayon measures 22mm long and 7mm wide. … A pendant was discovered at Star Carr in 2015 and is the earliest known Mesolithic art in Britain. Here, more than 30 red deer Read More ›

Sahelanthropus is supposed to be the oldest bipedal hominin. From Gunter Bechly at Evolution News & Science Today: When John Hawks inquired with the original describer of Sahelanthropus, Professor Michel Brunet, he received the following remarkable reply: In Chad, we have uncovered thousands of bones, which are in the process of study. Perhaps among them are hominid bones, but I only comment on those that have been published in a scientific review. This is plainly false, because in fact only a few dozen fossils were uncovered together with the cranium of Sahelanthropus. This is clearly visible in the photos from the discovery site (Hawks 2009b). Hawks comments that the femur bone lay unrecognized for three years in the Toros-Menalla faunal Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A large international research team, led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University and including Rolf Quam from Binghamton University, State University of New York, has discovered the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa. The finding suggests that modern humans left the continent at least 50,000 years earlier than previously thought. “Misliya is an exciting discovery,” says Rolf Quam, Binghamton University anthropology professor and a coauthor of the study. “It provides the clearest evidence yet that our ancestors first migrated out of Africa much earlier than we previously believed. It also means that modern humans were potentially meeting and interacting during a longer period of time with other archaic human groups, providing more opportunity for Read More ›

From Sarah Sloat at Inverse: To fully grasp how we evolved to become modern humans, scientists argue that we need to better understand our ancient ancestors’ brains. Adult human brains today are large and globular, but whether ancient human brains looked like that when our species first emerged has been subject to much speculation. In a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology announced that the earliest Homo sapiens did not have globular brains like we have today. Instead, their brains had a shape intermediate between that of Homo erectus and that of the Neanderthals, both of which were somewhat more elongated horizontally. The brain, the authors write, gradually became globular over Read More ›

From Bret Stetka at Scientific American: A study that compares us with other primates finds a brain region linked to social behavior that may offer a biological explanation for why humans, not chimps, produced Shakespeare, Gandhi and Einstein Something is going wrong already if we think that the difference between human beings and gorillas is measured by extreme outliers. Raghanti and Lovejoy believe the human brain’s neurochemical profile was shaped by natural selection due to the various reproductive and survival benefits it conferred. Our evolving chemical signature, they suggest, allowed us to outcompete other apes and early hominins, referring to the numerous humanlike species that arose after our split with chimpanzees over six million years ago. The team speculates humans’ Read More ›

From Sarah Gibbens at National Geographic: The appearance of the 18-year-old woman, whom researchers named named Avgi, or ‘Dawn,’ is based on a female skull excavated from a cave occupied in 7,000 B.C. … Facial features have “smoothed out” over millennia, and humans look less masculine today, says reconstructor Oscar Nilsson. More. Now if we could just get a group reconstruction we would know whether she looked typical for her era. Or whether the facial expression is usual. See also: Could Stone Age clubs really kill? and Code written in Stone Age art?

From ScienceDaily: In this study the authors were able to identify how a protein called p62 is activated to induce autophagy. They found that p62 can be activated by reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS are by-products of our metabolism that can cause damage in the cell. This ability of p62 to sense ROS allows the cell to remove the damage and to survive this stress. In lower organisms, such as fruit flies, p62 is not able to do this. The team identified the part of the human p62 protein which allows it to sense ROS and created genetically modified fruit flies with ‘humanised’ p62. These ‘humanised’ flies survived longer in conditions of stress. Dr Korolchuk adds: “This tells us that Read More ›

At Evolution News & Science Today, various reflections are offered on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Adam and the Genome: Genomic science indicates that humans descend not from an individual pair but from a large population. What does this mean for the basic claim of many Christians: that humans descend from Adam and Eve? Leading evangelical geneticist Dennis Venema and popular New Testament scholar Scot McKnight combine their expertise to offer informed guidance and answers to questions pertaining to evolution, genomic science, and the historical Adam. (jacket copy) From ENST: Much of Dennis Venema’s Adam and the Genome Isn’t About Adam and the Genome: While Discovery Institute takes no view on Adam and Eve, the book does offer an opportunity Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Considered for two decades to be the oldest human fossil found in France, the mandible has formed part of different comparative studies, and the description published by G. Billy and Henri V. Vallois in 1977 stands out. That work was undertaken more than 40 years ago, in the context of what was then known and of the theories then current on the colonization of the European continent. However, human evolution in Europe was undoubtedly more complex than was thought only a couple of decades ago, as is explained in this paper entitled A reassessment of the Montmaurin-La Niche mandible (Haute Garonne, France) in the context of European Pleistocene human evolution, in which Mario Modesto, María Martinón-Torres and Marina Read More ›

From human evolution specialists Bernard Wood and Michael Westaway at The Conversation: The question of where we humans come from is one many people ask, and the answer is getting more complicated as new evidence is emerging all the time. … We now realise that modern humans are just one of the African great apes. Bl21So when and how did this radically changed perception come about? More. That’s nonsense and it will doom great apes. But we can be pretty sure post-moderns won’t care as long as they can blame someone else for whatever happens and their therapists give them something to make them feel better. Non-post-modern reality: Great apes are not “entering the Stone Age;” they risk extinction. IQ Read More ›