Becoming Human

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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.

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.

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.

One hundred years ago today an amateur scientist named Charles Dawson announced his discovery in 1908 of an ancient skull,  immediately dubbed “ Piltdown man”, in a gravel pit near the town of Piltdown, England . Thus began an infamous but ultimately instructive series of events in the annals of science.

We humans have the largest brain relative to body weight, compared to all other animals.  On average the human brain is three times the size that of our nearest primate relative, the chimpanzee.  Why is this so? In a think piece in last week’s edition of the journal Science, Michael Balter summarizes some of the hypotheses.

The importance of genetic research in helping us understand diversity among our ancestors is playing an ever more important part. Last week a paper in the journal Science Express cast new light on a previously dimly glimpsed people referred to as the Denisovans.