Becoming Human

The finding of the oldest human genetic material is reported this week. A femoral shaft (thigh bone without ends to fit with hip and knee)was found in Siberia and dated to 45,000 years ago.

On the tenth anniversary of the announcement of a close human relative, Homo floresiensis, nicknamed The Hobbit, noted paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer revisits the find in an article in Nature this week.

Donald Johanson, discoverer of the famous fossil "Lucy" and narrator of the Documentary Becoming Human on this website,can now be followed on Twitter.

Neanderthals were capable of abstract expression, according  to a paper published this week by European archeologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

Recent recalculation of dates associated with bone and artifacts found at 40 Neanderthal sites has determined the last Neanderthals became extinct between 39,000 and 41,000 years ago.

The authors of a paper in Nature this week  conclude a modification of a haplotype found in the Denisovan genome apparently has given modern Tibetans (and their ancestors) an adaptation to high altitude, thus avoiding the hypoxia thinner air causes in individuals lacking this genetic combination.

In Science Magazine for July 18 there appears a review of a provocative new book. In Darwin Deleted author Peter Bowler argues our understanding of evolutionary processes would be greatly altered had Charles Darwin not introduced his thinking to the world in 1859 with the publication of On the Origin of Species.

The Nature Podcast this week reports (from another journal; an interesting finding from Germany: an indication Neanderthals may have consumed more vegetables than previously thought.

The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution.

Henry Ge

University of Chicago Press, 2013

Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia is the well known site of the first evidence of Homo erectus outside of Africa and once more has yielded a rich find according to a paper in the journal Science this week. Known informally as Skull 5 and assigned the number D4500, this complete skull required no reconstruction.