Neanderthal
Category archives for Neanderthal
How Dogs Won The World
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2015 
Years ago I proposed a theory (not anywhere in print, just in seminars and talks) that went roughly like this. Humans hunt. Dogs hunt. Prey animals get hunted. Each species (or set of species) has a number of characteristics such as the ability to stalk, track, kill, run away, form herds, etc. Now imagine a…
When Humans met Neandertals
Posted by Greg Laden on September 19, 2011 Check out this video my friend Lynn made:
Neanderthal Genome Will Be Released
Posted by Greg Laden on February 4, 2009 The complete genome of a Neanderthal dating to about 38,000 years ago has been sequenced by the team lead by Svante Paabo. The genome will be announced on Darwin’s Birthay, Feb 12. “We are working like crazy at the moment,” says Pääbo, adding that his Max Planck colleague, computational biologist Richard Green, is coordinating the…
Neanderthals at the end of their days
Posted by Greg Laden on December 13, 2008 What was Neanderthal-Modern Human interaction really like? Fifty four teeth (some of which are fragments) and nine other bones dating to about 40-43,000 years ago represent the “most recent, and largest, sample of southern Iberian late Neanderthals currently known.” These and some closely related remains may indicate that these Middle Paleolithic holdouts were kissing cousins…
Allen’s Rule, Phenotypic Plasticity, and The Nature of Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on December 5, 2008 Allen’s Rule. One of those things you learn in graduate school along with Bergmann’s Rule and Cope’s Rule. It is all about body size. Cope’s Rule … which is a rule of thumb and not an absolute … says that over time the species in a given lineage tend to be larger and larger. Bergmann’s…
Life history trade-offs and human pygmies
Posted by Greg Laden on October 21, 2008 Every few years a paper comes out “explaining” short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano et al. From the abstract:
Evidence for an ancient lineage of modern humans
Posted by Greg Laden on March 9, 2008 It almost seems like there are two separate research project under way regarding the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. One focuses on recent humans, tends to use DNA as a major source of information, and from this base projects back into the past. This approach tends to confirm the idea that humans share an African…
Evolution: The Mind’s Big Bang
Posted by Greg Laden on February 15, 2008 Evolution: The Mind’s Big Bang I’ve known Shea for years … since before grad school. Going out drinking with this guy was a little dangerous. Almost as dangerous as going out drinking with me.
Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival 33
Posted by Greg Laden on January 30, 2008 Welcome to the Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival #33, ‘specializing’ in the four fields of anthropology. The previous edition of 4SH can be found at Testimony of the Spade, and the next edition will be hosted by Our Cultural World. The main page for Four Stone Hearth has additional information on the carnival, and you…
Did Humans or Climate Change Cause the Extinctions of Pleistocene Eurasian Megafauna?
Posted by Greg Laden on January 25, 2008 Did humans wipe out the Pleistocene megafauna? This is a question that can be asked separately for each area of the world colonized by Homo sapiens. It is also a question that engenders sometimes heated debate. A new paper coming out in the Journal of Human Evolution concludes that many Pleistocene megafauna managed to…