Sep 24 2009
Take a look at the second installment of 23andMe’s Human Prehistory 101 series. 23andMe’s creative team (led by chief illustrator Ariana Killoran) recently released “Out of (Eastern) Africa.” With this new installment, we pick up where the previous video left off, when humans were starting to take their first tentative steps beyond the shores of [...]
Jul 22 2009
The Neanderthals have always held a special place in the field of anthropology. The skeletal remains of our short, stocky evolutionary relatives have been found everywhere from Spain to Iraq.
Their physical likeness to our own species, and the possibility that humans and Neanderthals may have interacted, has long fascinated experts and enthusiastic novices alike. But [...]
May 29 2009
It is estimated that there are up to 8,000 distinct languages spoken around the world today. At birth, the human mind is capable of learning and understanding any of these languages; an impressive feat given how uniquely complex they are. The fact that humans are able to understand and communicate with one another in such [...]
Feb 12 2009
First came the Human Genome Project when, in the year 2000, an international team of scientists began mapping all 23 pairs of our chromosomes. Then in 2005, the Chimpanzee Genome Project took off, attempting to do the same for the 24 chromosomes of our species’ closest living relative. With intimate knowledge of the genetic make-up [...]
Oct 27 2008
The Spittoon has pointed out several times in the last few months (here, here and here) that when researchers look for evidence of interbreeding between early humans and Neanderthals, they often fail to find any.
But there are still a number of geneticists who would like us to pay heed to the words of former defense [...]
Aug 07 2008
Despite mounting genetic evidence that modern humans are not descended from Neanderthals, there are still some who argue that our two species interbred when both roamed Europe about 35,000 years ago.
A report appearing tomorrow in the journal Cell puts another nail in that theory’s coffin. Svante Paabo’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Anthropology [...]
Jul 15 2008
The place of Neanderthals in the story of human evolution has been hotly debated for decades. A distant cousin to our species, Neanderthals had already been in Europe over 250,000 years when Homo sapiens first arrived there 35,000 years ago.
Often called Cro-Magnoids, these first Europeans are believed by many scientists to have out-competed the Neanderthals, [...]
