Category Archives: anthropology

Are human facial expressions universal in which emotions they express?

August 24, 2020 – 1:00 pm

The latest issue of Science Advances has a provocative and clever piece of research aimed at answering a long-standing question—one considered by Charles Darwin himself: are the facial expressions associated with human emotions universal across all cultures? And, if so, is that the result of evolution? The paper suggests that, at least for a limited […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in evolutionary psychology | Comments (24)

A very old tool

October 16, 2018 – 2:00 pm

Here’s my hand holding a 130,000 year old flint spearhead created by a Neanderthal living near what is now Krapina, Croatia. It’s a beautiful point, and amazing to think that this was chipped by a hominin so long ago. I learned a ton today at the Croatia Natural History Museum, as we had a special […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in human evolution, travel | Comments (26)

Did modern Homo sapiens evolve in different parts of Africa?

July 15, 2018 – 9:30 am

The general view of human evolution among both scientists and laypeople is that “modern” Homo sapiens emerged from one single area in East Africa: perhaps from just a single population. That population supposedly evolved from an earlier ancestor of unknown identity—perhaps Homo erectus—underwent the transformation into the group of characters that identify our species, and […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in Uncategorized | Comments (53)

Finally: a sensible discussion of “race”

March 23, 2018 – 11:15 am

And by “sensible,” of course, I mean a discussion that aligns with my own views. I’ve often written that while there are no finite and strongly genetically demarcated human “races”, there are meaningful and statistically diagnostic differences between populations, ethnic groups, or whatever you want to call them. This is in opposition to the common […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in human biology, human evolution | Comments (56)

Readers’ fieldwork pictures

January 15, 2018 – 8:45 am

I’ve put up posts before from Dorsa Amir, a graduate student in biological anthropology at Yale. Here’s her latest contribution: a set of photos from her fieldwork (more photos here). Dorsa’s notes are indented: As an anthropologist, one of my goals is to explore human behavioral variation across diverse contexts. In conjunction with the larger […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in photography | Comments (15)

Nature paper suggests humans inhabited North America 130,000 years ago

April 27, 2017 – 5:43 pm

by Greg Mayer As Jerry noted yesterday, in a new paper in Nature, Steven R. Holen and colleagues report finding the remains of a butchered 130,000 year old mastodon in San Diego. (If you haven’t already done so, do go take a look at Jerry’s post, which includes a video press release, and illustrations from […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in archaeology, human evolution | Comments (26)

The evolution of sexual dimorphism in humans: Part 2

December 21, 2016 – 11:00 am

In a post one week ago, “The ideological opposition to biological truth,” I argued that sexual dimorphism for body size (difference between men and women) in humans is most likely explained by sexual selection, and that it also reflects behavioral differences between males and females: males compete for females, and greater size and strength give males an advantage. […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in human biology, human evolution, sexual selection | Comments (143)

A MOOC on Homo floresiensis, the “hobbit” hominin

November 15, 2016 – 10:00 am

I just want to let you know about a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Homo floresiensis that reader Dermot C. called to my attention. As you may recall, new dating methods have shown that this 3.5-foot diminutive hominin died out about 50,000 years ago rather than the 12,000 originally posited, and arrived in Flores (Indonesia) […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in evolution, human evolution | Comments (34)

New study suggests a single miscreant, Charles Dawson, created the “Piltdown Man” hoax

August 11, 2016 – 8:30 am

The story of the fraudulent skull known as “Piltdown Man” is well known. In 1912, lawyer and amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson turned up at the London Natural History Museum with a specimen he claimed to have found at a site in Sussex. He and Arthur Smith Woodward, the head geologist at the Museum, further excavated the site and […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in evolution | Comments (27)

SCIENCE tells us what Jesus looked like!

December 15, 2015 – 8:45 am

Here’s a headline and subheadline from yesterday’s AOL News.  You can immediately spot two things wrong with it: Seriously? That’s a news headline? First of all, it presupposes that a historical Jesus really existed, with the implication that it’s the Jesus who did the stuff described in the Bible. Well, based on the lack of […]

By whyevolutionistrue | Also posted in LOLz | Comments (202)