May 20th, 2010
The Neanderthal - modern human connection?
May 20, 2010A sixty percent complete, “first draft” of the Neanderthal genome has been prepared by scientists with the Max Planck Institute in Germany and there is evidence there was interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans about 80,000 years ago in the Levant. This announcement appeared in the journal Science on May 8 and has had a mixed reception.
April 30th, 2010
Remarkable New Fossils Found
April 30, 2010Two nearly complete skeletal fossils, one a juvenile male and the other an adult female, were found a year ago in South Africa and announced last month in two articles in the journal Science. Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist with University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg was mapping cave site near that city when his son Matthew, a short distance away with his dog, called out h
April 28th, 2010
Transcript Available in Chinese
April 28, 2010Some visitors to this website have difficulty with spoken English, either because they are hearing impaired or English is not their first language. We have created transcripts so these visitors can more fully experience the Documentary narrated by Don Johanson.
February 12th, 2010
Timeline Enhanced
February 12, 2010The timeline on this website, The Human Lineage Through Time, added last September, is being expanded. Starting this week and continuing through mid March, we will have an essay for each of the hominin species shown on the timeline.
November 23rd, 2009
More on Heat Treatment and Stone Tool Making
November 23, 2009Two months ago scientists announced that heat treatment - controlled baking of stone in order to improve it as a raw material for shaping into tools - had far earlier origins than had been thought previously. See the article "Heat Treatment Makes Better Stone Tools", below. We now have video discussing heat treatment, or fire hardening.
November 7th, 2009
Signs of Early Homo sapiens in China?
November 07, 2009The announcement from China of the discovery of tantalisingly few fossils raise the possibility Homo sapiens arrived in eastern Asia far earlier than first supposed. These finds also revive the controversy surrounding two contending hypotheses of human evolution, the multi regional versus African origin.
October 2nd, 2009
Ardipithecus ramidus revealed
October 02, 2009The discovery in Ethiopia during the course of 1992 to 1994 of fossils more than four million years old was finally revealed to the scientific world on October 2 of this year in a special edition of the journal Science. Many thousands of pieces of fossilized bone were recovered,m reconstructed and shown to be the most complete, oldest specimen on the human lineage and named Ardipi
September 30th, 2009
The Evidence for Evolution
September 30, 2009Two new books examine the evidence for evolution, each author approaching this timely and controversial subject from a slightly different perspective but each finding the evidence solid and irrefutable. Reviewer Laurence D.
September 10th, 2009
Interactive Timeline Added to BecomingHuman
September 10, 2009A timeline has been added to this website. Titled "The Human Lineage Through Time" the timeline shows the temporal relationship among the eighteen hominin species preceding ourselves on the human evolutionary tree.
September 6th, 2009
A New Stone Technology Enters Europe
September 06, 2009The finding of the earliest Achulean lithics in Europe was reported in last week’s Nature by researchers Gary Scott and Luis Gilbert, with the Berkeley Geochronology Center.