Becoming Human

A small event can have large consequences. So it is with a single gene controlling the production of an enzyme called lactase. Lactase enables infant mammals to digest lactose, the principal sugar in mother's milk ensuring the newborn has a reliable source of nutrition until able to digest solid food.

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Two papers published in recent weeks demonstrate again the rigor of the scientific method. The first  concerned a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth from Belgium, while the other pertained to the controversial Australopithecus sediba fossils from South Africa.

At a conference  held earlier this month in Cold Spring Harbor NY the leader of the team exploring the ancient cave in Central Asia called Denisova (photo below) announced startling results from the team’s genetic analyses.

Masters of the Planet

by Ian Tattersall

Palgrave MacMillan 2012

266 pp., illistrations, $17.64 from Amazon

Reviewed by Jay Greene

A puzzling set of fossils, discovered near Johannesburg in 2008 and surrounded by controversy from the first, are back in the news and both the puzzle and the controversy are no nearer resolution.  Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and his son uncovered the first of these fossils.

The world famous 3 million year old fossil nicknamed Lucy has been touring the United States for the past five years and is now headed home to her place of origin, Ethiopia. Discovered by Donald Johansson, founder of the Institute of Human Origins, in 1974 is making her last stop in the US and is on exhibit at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California through April 28.

Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science
Author: Christoph Irmscher
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2013. 448 pp. $35

Reviewed by Kevin Padian in Nature

A large scale, transdisciplinary research effort seeking to match ocean core samples by drilling into ancient lake sediments will commence in East Africa this summer, it has been announced by Arizona State University and the Institute of human origins.

The changing way we view evidence is a lot like knapping stone to make a tool. We chip away at one idea and shape it into something different. John Shea is a noted archaeologist and iconoclast, arguing“advances” in stone tool technology were responses to particular needs and not necessarily evidence of increased cognition.