Becoming Human

By examining patterns of DNA variation in the genome for different human populations, we can determine how much of our evolutionary history was influenced by simple demographic change or, alternatively, by spurts of natural selection.

Teaser: Human offspring take more than twice the time to reach adulthood than do our closest living relatives, chimps and gorillas. This period of delayed maturation results in what we call the teenage years and is a characteristic of modern humans. Paleoanthropologists wonder how far back in the record of bipedal existence this delayed maturation commenced.