Attention to the Unseen

Stephanie Pappas writes: Over the course of the Pleistocene epoch, between 2.6 million years ago and 11,700 years ago, the brains of humans and their relatives grew. Now, scientists from Tel Aviv University have a new hypothesis as to why: As the largest animals on the landscape disappeared, the scientists propose, human brains had to grow to enable the hunting of smaller, swifter prey. This hypothesis argues that early humans specialized in taking down the largest animals, such as elephants,…

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The brains of humans are subtly different from those of Neanderthals. Petr Student/Shutterstock By Itzia Ferrer, Lund University and Per Brattås, Lund University How we humans became what we are today is a question that scientists have been trying to answer for a long time. How did we evolve such advanced cognitive abilities, giving rise to complex language, poetry and rocket science? In what way is the modern human brain different from those of our closest evolutionary relatives, such as…

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Science Alert reports: Homo sapiens today look very different from our evolutionary origins, the microbes wriggling about in the primordial mud. But our emergence as a distinct species cannot, based on the current evidence, be conclusively traced to a single location at any single point in time. In fact, according to a team of scientists, who have conducted a thorough review of our current understanding of human ancestry, there may never even have been such a time. Instead, the earliest…

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Manvir Singh writes: The Harvard Kalahari Project propelled the !Kung into anthropological stardom. By 1976, researchers on the team had published more than 100 academic articles, on topics as varied as infant care, trance healing, and blood pressure. The research sparked more interest, which drew in more anthropologists, which produced more research. In a video for the Annual Review of Anthropology in 2012, DeVore speculated that there was no culture ‘outside the West that has as much fine-grained data on…

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The New York Times reports: Twenty-three thousand years ago, in the cold of the last ice age, some humans found a place where the climate was marginally better: Siberia. While many people associate the region that is now in Russia with forbidding cold today, climate data as well as archaeological and DNA evidence show that this was where horses, mammoths and other prey animals found enough to eat, which attracted humans and other carnivores. Hemmed in by worse conditions, the…

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Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes: The first Neanderthal face to emerge from time’s sarcophagus was a woman’s. As the social and liberal revolutions of 1848 began convulsing Europe, quarry workers’ rough hands pulled her from the great Rock of Gibraltar. Calcite mantling her skull meant that, at first, she seemed more a hunk of stone than a once warm-blooded being, and obscured her decidedly odd anatomy – massive eyes, heavy brow ridges and a low, long cranium. While monarchies fell and…

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Annalee Newitz writes: Though it’s remarkable that the United States finally is about to have a female vice president, let’s stop calling it an unprecedented achievement. As some recent archaeological studies suggest, women have been leaders, warriors and hunters for thousands of years. This new scholarship is challenging long-held beliefs about so-called natural gender roles in ancient history, inviting us to reconsider how we think about women’s work today. In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a…

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Derek Thompson writes: Several months ago, I got into a long discussion with a colleague about the origins of the “Sunday scaries,” the flood of anxiety that many of us feel as the weekend is winding down and the workweek approaches. He said that the culprit was clear, and pointed to late-stage capitalism’s corrosive blend of performance stress and job insecurity. But capitalism also exists Monday through Saturday, so why should Sunday be so uniquely anxiety-inducing? The deeper cause, I…

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Kelly Slivka writes: Human beings tend to be fascinated with their beginnings. Origin stories are found across cultures, religions, ethnicities and nationalities — and they are all deeply important. These stories tell people where they come from, how they fit in and how everyone fits together. One of these stories, of course, is the story of human genes, and it’s a story anyone with human DNA shares. As scientists find more ancient human DNA, sample more modern DNA and develop…

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Bridget Alex writes: Archaeologist Annemieke Milks planned to test the ballistic properties of some of the world’s oldest spears. Crafted by Neanderthals 300,000 years ago, the wooden artifacts measure about 7 feet long and resemble oversized broomsticks with sharpened tips. When discovered in the 1990s at a site in Schöningen, Germany, they rested alongside the butchered remains of 35 horses. Apparently, Neanderthals, armed with the spears, had some very successful hunts. But just how fast and far could these ancient…

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