Ancestry & Evolution
The desire to understand our origins is primal. By examining our DNA over successive generations through the evolutionary process of inherited characteristics of human and animal populations–as well as from those species from which humans share a common ancestry–we can decipher our individual and collective past and develop medical innovations for the future.
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Why cooperation based on reciprocity is unique to humans
It has long been known that human cooperation is so successful in large part because of our reciprocity. We help ...
Is art an evolutionary adaptation?
In his book The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, [evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey] Miller expands ...
Birds of play? How social engagement plays a role in brain development in birds, and maybe humans
Have you ever seen magpies play-fighting with one another, or rolling around in high spirits? Or an apostlebird running at full speed with a ...
Newly identified chimp pathogen found to be 100% fatal. Could it jump to humans?
[A deadly disease killing chimpanzees in a Sierra Leone sanctuary is] caused by a newly discovered species of bacterium and ...
CRISPR ‘mini-brains’ made from Neanderthal DNA offer insight into the evolution of human cognition
Humans are more closely related to Neanderthals and Denisovans than to any living primate, and some 40% of the Neanderthal ...
Womb temperature determines the sex of the offspring in many reptiles. Why not in humans?
Temperature controls sex determination, in all crocodilians, most turtles, many fish, and some lizards, according to organismal biologist Karla Moeller ...
We were never alone: How many human species have existed?
When it comes to figuring out exactly how many distinct species of humans existed, it gets complicated pretty quickly, especially ...
‘New story unfolding’: Ancient finger bones found in Asia force a rethinking of human migration
Politics, geography, and tradition have long focused archaeological attention on the evolution of Homo sapiens in Europe and Africa. Now, ...
In a blink of an evolutionary eye, this African island developed resistance to malaria. Here’s how
[R]esearchers have uncovered recent traces of adaptation to malaria in the DNA of people from Cabo Verde, an island nation ...
Did magic mushrooms and other hallucinogens fuel human evolution?
Did psychedelics stimulate human consciousness? First proposed by 20th century ethnobotanist Terence McKenna (1946-2000) in his 1992 book "Food of ...
What sparked the exodus of early humans from Africa?
Why, exactly, did our ancestors leave their homeland? Short of catching a time machine back some 60,000 years and witnessing ...
Can we have an open debate about IQ, genes, and group differences? Reassessing the legacy of James Flynn
I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried ...
On the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s The Descent of Man, scientists break down his theories on race and sex
To mark the 150th anniversary of The Descent of Man, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva has gathered a team of experts, mostly ...
‘The Pattern Seekers’: How has autism driven human evolution?
Unfortunately, “The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention” by Cambridge University professor Simon Baron-Cohen never really lives up to ...
Human behavioral ecology: The tight ‘evolutionary embrace’ of culture and genes
[Research by Toman Barsbai and colleagues shows] that adaptation to local ecological conditions is an important determinant of variation in human ...
What was life like for Neanderthal women?
Neanderthal women very likely did hunt some or much of the smaller game we find in sites, such as tortoise, ...
Why the theory of human evolution needs a tweak, once again
Recent archaeological digs in Africa found evidence of Middle Stone Age tools dating to just 11,000 years ago, about 20,000 ...
Sex and love in the time of Neanderthals
[T]he evidence that sex between early modern humans and Neanderthals was not a rare event has been mounting up. Hidden ...
How this tiny lemur offers unique insight into the evolution of human vision
Recent research comparing the visual processing system of the gray mouse lemur with that of much larger and more recently ...
When the faster-spreading and more virulent COVID-19 mutant came to my home town, it shook up everyone. Here’s an explainer of what it foreshadows
When a new variant of the COVID-19 virus appeared in the UK as 2020 drew to a close, I didn’t ...
How dogs evolved into our best friends
Dogs diverged from wolves more than 27,000 years ago, choosing to live alongside and evolve with humans. Published in the ...
‘Selfish sperm’: Why men generate it and how it drives evolution
[L]ike all animals, we are biologically driven to try and pass our genetic material on to the next generation, and ...
How the fossils ‘Lucy’ and “Ardi’ changed our understanding of human history
The discovery of [Lucy,] Australopithecus afarensis, advanced science in numerous ways. First, it illuminated one of the greatest mysteries of ...
Nipples seem useless in men – so why do they have them?
Males and females do, in fact, start from the same genetic blueprint. Embryos, in their first weeks, develop structures with ...
A dangerous stage in the evolution of the novel coronavirus is upon us with the discovery of “escape mutations”. Artificial intelligence may be our best response
Real life with COVID-19 is now scarier than anything a sci-fi writer could envision. So-called “escape mutations” that can turn ...
Who were the first Caribbean populations? Ancient DNA rewrites history
An international team led by Harvard Medical School’s David Reich analyzed the genomes of 263 individuals in the largest study of ancient ...
‘Exercised’: New book by a biological anthropologist says humans are cut out to nap, not exercise – Here’s how we can overcome our evolutionary destiny
Want to feel bad about skipping a workout? Blame evolution. Daniel E. Lieberman argues this theory in his new book ...
