Language and spandrels
I'm preparing a lecture on the evolution of language. This post started out as a short note about the quote below, referring to a new book by V. S. Ramachandran. But I realized it takes some setting up...
View ArticleHandedness in the brain
A nice article about the etiology and effects of left-handedness in the NY Times last week ("Left-Handedness Loses Its Stigma but Retains Its Mystery"). In general, said Dr. Geschwind, left-handers...
View ArticleDid humans colonize the northern latitudes without fire?
Wil Roebroeks and Paola Villa [1] review the evidence for human control and use of fire in the archaeology of Europe during the Middle Pleistocene (130,000-780,000 years ago) and earlier. They observe...
View ArticleADMIXTURE step-by-step howto
Razib Khan runs through an analysis of genetic data using ADMIXTURE, step by step. It's a really worthwhile read, essential DIY genomics.
View ArticlePopulation structure within Africa: has "modern human origins" become a non...
When I wrote about the Denisova genome late last year, I claimed that "A large-scale reorganization of the science of human origins is upon us." I'm glad I had the sense to write that. A lot of people...
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Cats and dogs, living together
I admit the sheer amount of wailing had me concerned. And I couldn't at that instant remember how the producers had talked me into this abandoned hotel in the middle of the night. What no one really...
View ArticleWeidenreich and the Hittite Goddess
By chance I ran across an 2009 post by Rachel Martin of NYU Museum Studies, which investigates a mystery related to one of my scientific heroes, Franz Weidenreich ("A Hittite Goddess and Theories of...
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Assimilation
Ah, at last the merge is complete. Now, down to business. Hey, hey wait a minute! How do I get in that other window? THERE'S A MARTINI IN THERE!
View ArticleGenetics without the disclaimers
The NY Times covers a new genome-wide association study of SNP variants and response to exercise ("Is Fitness All in the Genes?"). The phenotype is improvement in maximum oxygen consumption volume....
View ArticleQuote: Hrdlicka's blackboard
Here's a quote from Ales Hrdlicka's report on "Lansing Man" -- a skeleton found near Lansing, Kansas in 1902, which was proposed as extremely early evidence of humans in the New World. Hrdlicka made it...
View ArticleHunter-gatherer kinship and band composition
Kim Hill and colleagues described in last week's Science a study of kinship within bands of hunter-gatherers known from ethnographic research [1]. They couched their study to dispute the idea that most...
View ArticleCombe Capelle redated
I missed this earlier this month, but Julien Riel-Salvatore did not: "Burial Site at Combe Capelle in France is Not as Old as Previously Assumed, by Several Thousands Years" After an initial sample of...
View ArticleHawks to lecture at UNC Greensboro March 23, 7pm
I'll be appearing this Wednesday night at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, to talk about Neandertal genetics. The lecture is in the Mead Auditorium, 101 Sullivan, at 7:00 pm. UNCG has a...
View ArticleDeveloping the sharing sense
Following on after yesterday's post about hunter-gatherer population structure, I ended with the proposal that cooperation may be a "cognitive technology" in the same way suggested for numbers ("Number...
View ArticleBacterial evolution
Carl Zimmer reports on an experiment from Richard Lenski's lab, reconstructing the events that led one lineage of bacteria to win out over another. Lenski has kept a population of evolving E. coli...
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Europe and China have different Neandertal genes
When last we saw the Vi 33.16 X chromosome, I was wresting out its secrets by looking for SNP haplotypes shared by this Neandertal with the European and African samples from the HapMap ("Neandertal...
View ArticleNeandertal taste
I didn't comment on this study when it came out in 2009, but as I'm reviewing some materials I thought it worth taking down a note. Carles Lalueza-Fox and colleagues [1] intensively sequenced the...
View ArticleKin selection strikes back
Last year I noted the publication of a paper in Nature by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and Edward O. Wilson, which claimed that kin selection is not a sufficient explanation for anything in biology. My...
View ArticleQuote: Adovasio on Clovis
In John Noble Wilford's article about the new pre-Clovis archaeological site, Buttermilk Creek, Texas, James Adovasio gets the last word about advocates of the Clovis-first hypothesis: “The last spear...
View ArticleQuote:Neil Stephenson on America
I like this quote from Neil Stephenson, in his work, "In the beginning was the command line." The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals...
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