How interestiaaang
The Science NY Times covers the "vocal fry" trend in an article on how young women are the leading edge of linguistic change. But “language changes very fast,” said Dr. Eckert of Stanford, and most...
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Taking the mtDNA pulse of Neandertal populations
Synopsis: Neandertals in western Europe have a recent mtDNA ancestor, pointing to the dynamics within their population.Neandertals have strikingly limited genetic variation. They once lived across a...
View ArticleChris Henshilwood profile
Nature News has an article written by Jeff Tollefson, which profiles archaeologist Chris Henshilwood and his work at Blombos, South Africa: "Human evolution: Cultural roots". Most fascinating line,...
View ArticleBook sample: Mark Pagel's Wired for Culture
I've just bought a new book by Mark Pagel, titled Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind. I'll be doing a review when I get through it, but in the meantime, I noticed that I can now embed...
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The art of Neandertal teeth
I want to point everybody to this slideshow at Scientific American, which features the "The Science and Art of Neandertal Teeth". The accompanying article by David Frayer gives the background to the...
View ArticleA Solutrean publicity blitz
Synopsis: Hype over claims that American Indians came from Ice Age EuropeSo.... About all the "Solutrean Paleoindian" news this week... There is no new evidence, no revelation, no reason why other...
View ArticleAncestry perspective from 23andMe
Stanford geneticist Joanna Mountain recounts some of the experience she brings to 23andMe in her role as Senior Director of Research: "Solving mysteries via DNA". Much of her interests are the...
View ArticleThe open textbook niche
A sobering Sunday read about how elementary and secondary school textbooks are put together today: "Afraid of your child's math textbook? You should be." At the end of this project, the same project...
View ArticleAnthropology 105, lecture 8: Ears
Synopsis: The auditory system reveals some of the principles of Mendelian inheritance. This lecture uses the auditory system to illustrate Mendelian inheritance. First the earlobes -- a classic example...
View ArticleNo exams, learning-based outcomes
I no longer teach any courses with exams. The last one was my introductory course, Principles of Biological Anthropology, which has now gone to weekly quizzes and lab assignments. Sometimes when I tell...
View ArticleJob postings continue
I've been getting good response on my call for job listings, focusing on academic jobs directed toward biological and archaeological anthropologists. The job postings page has several new entries over...
View ArticleFinding the scary genes
John Lauerman reports in BusinessWeek on his experience participating in the Personal Genome Project: “This is probably the most serious variant that we’ve actually seen to date in the study,” Thakuria...
View ArticleGorilla genomics and hearing evolution
The Nature News story on the gorilla genome includes this section relevant to the evolution of hearing in gorillas and humans: Some of these rapid changes are puzzling: the gene LOXHD1 is involved in...
View ArticleSouth Atlantic slave trade cemetery unearthed
The Guardian reports on archaeological recovery work on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where construction of a new airport has uncovered a cemetery for African people freed from slave ships...
View ArticleAnthropology 105, lecture 9: Premolars
Synopsis: The premolars carry information about relationships and diet in fossil hominins. The premolars are the two permanent teeth just behind the canines and in front of the molars. These have an...
View ArticleThe advisor female students don't want
Kate Clancy has thankfully continued her series of posts about sexual harassment and fieldwork, and I want to direct the current post to the attention of everyone in academic anthropology: "Retrograde...
View ArticleDavid Lordkipanidze talk from TEDxTbilisi
The TED conference has a number of independent affiliated events called TEDx. From the recent TEDxTbilisi, I'm happy to be able to share a 15-minute talk by David Lordkipanidze, titled "The first...
View ArticleThinking about the dark days
When it comes to the long term future of humanity, I'm fundamentally an optimist. But The Atlantic has an interview with Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, who...
View ArticleNeandertals and eagle talons
Eugène Morin and Véronique Laroulandie have published a new paper in PLoS ONE demonstrating evidence that some Neandertals had a fetish for eagle talons [1]. From the conclusion of the (open access)...
View ArticleTaxonomy on tap
Annalee Newitz, in io9: "The last time we redefined what it means to be human": While the term hominin caught on among scientists, it still hasn't made much headway with the general public. From this...
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