Cognitive abilities often regarded as unique to humans include humor, morality, symbolism, creativity, and preoccupation with the minds of others. In these compelling talks, emphasis is placed on the functional uniqueness of these attributes, as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness, and whether these attributes are indeed quantitatively or qualitatively unique to humans. Merlin Donald (Queen’s Univ) begins with Skilled Performance and Artistry, followed by Terry Deacon (UC Berkeley) on Symbolic ...
Apr 22, 2013•55 min
Cognitive abilities often regarded as unique to humans include humor, morality, symbolism, creativity, and preoccupation with the minds of others. In these compelling talks, emphasis is placed on the functional uniqueness of these attributes, as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness, and whether these attributes are indeed quantitatively or qualitatively unique to humans. Nicholas Humphrey (Darwin College, Cambridge) begins with Entering the “Soul Niche,” followed by Steven Mithen (Univ of Readin...
Apr 15, 2013•59 min
Cognitive abilities often regarded as unique to humans include humor, morality, symbolism, creativity, and preoccupation with the minds of others. In these compelling talks, emphasis is placed on the functional uniqueness of these attributes, as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness, and whether these attributes are indeed quantitatively or qualitatively unique to humans. Colin Renfrew (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research) begins with the Archaeological Evidence for Mind, followed by D...
Apr 08, 2013•56 min
Language is a hallmark of modern humans: only humans have language. Yet, while no human society lacks a language, individual languages exhibit wide variety. In this, language differs greatly from bipedalism, the other hallmark of humans. Mark Aronoff, Stony Brook University, and Carol Padden, UC San Diego, explore the question of whether there is a relation between the variety among languages and genetic variation, concentrating on the emergence of sign languages in societies with a high inciden...
Mar 29, 2013•19 min
Kristen Hawkes, University of Utah, discusses the grandmother hypothesis, which links the evolution of human longevity to ecological changes that left ancestral youngsters unable to get enough food on their own. Help from grandmothers allowed mothers to bear their next baby sooner while setting novel social problems for both mothers and offspring. These connections link grandmothering not only to the evolution of our long lifespans, but also to other features of human life history, physiology, a...
Mar 29, 2013•20 min
For many species, including humans, matings occur among a restricted pool of partners. In humans, restrictions on the choice of partners are culturally determined and frequently are the result of homophily, namely, contacts among individuals that are similar on some dimension. Marcus Feldman, Stanford University, discusses how the dimension may itself be culturally transmitted, and its transmission may affect the transmission of other characters, which may be genetically determined, but have not...
Mar 29, 2013•19 min
At least three major transitions can be seen from the archaeological record of meat-eating. Mary Stiner (Univ of Arizona) explains how each of these transitions came with new labor and social arrangements that extended well beyond the mechanics of hunting. The transitions also relate to major changes in environmental carrying capacity and human population densities. These changes are predicated on new ways of capturing energy and insulating the group (especially children) from variation in the s...
Mar 22, 2013•22 min
Alison S. Brooks (George Washington Univ) and Margaret J. Schoeninger (UC San Diego) provide an overview of Neanderthal diets based on the physical evidence, archaeological data, and bone composition data. They conclude that Neanderthal subsistence strategies varied with their local environments and included various combinations of plant and animal foods throughout their range. Like modern humans, Neanderthals selected foods that are relatively high in protein from both plant and animal sources....
Mar 22, 2013•24 min
Globalization is, in part, an economic force to bring about a closer integration of national economies. Food globalization brings about nutritional transitions. The most common transition today is the shift from a diet based on locally-grown, minimally refined vegetable foods supplemented with small amounts of animal food to the ‘modern diet’ of globally sourced highly processed foods, rich in saturated fat, animal products, and sugar, but poor in some nutrients and low in fiber. Barry Bogin (Lo...
Mar 22, 2013•20 min
Clark Spencer Larsen (Ohio State Univ) explores what anthropologists have learned about the alterations of the lives, lifestyles, and wellbeing from the study of bones and teeth of our recent ancestors during the one of the most dynamic periods of human evolution. Just as the process of domestication was complex and involved regional economic, social, and environmental circumstances, the impact of the foraging-to-farming transition on human biology and evolution was varied. In general, however, ...
Mar 22, 2013•19 min
Unlike all other free-living animals, human populations need to eat much of their food cooked. We now know that cooking causes starch and meat to provide much extra energy; that cooked food saves so much eating time that it makes dedicated hunting possible; and that honey-eating by African hunter-gatherers offers a remarkable clue that the control of fire is an ancient habit. From an evolutionary perspective, Richard Wrangham (Harvard Univ) contends that the special feature of the human diet is ...
Mar 22, 2013•21 min
Peter Ungar (Univ of Arkansas) looks at the fossil record to determine what it can teach us about the diets of our early hominin forebears. Evidence from tooth chemistry and microscopic wear suggests that some species had increasingly specialized diets, but others, including those of early Homo, ate a broader variety of foods. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Health and Medicine] [Science] [Show ID: 24838]
Mar 22, 2013•19 min
Alyssa Crittenden (Univ of Nevada, Las Vegas) reports on the diet composition and foraging profiles of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. The significance of meat, tubers, and honey is addresses and the role that these food items play in evolutionary models is explored. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Health and Medicine] [Science] [Show ID: 24837]
Mar 22, 2013•20 min
In this presentation, Leslie Aiello (Wenner Gren Foundation) provides some background for the discussion and defines the overall goal of the symposium, The Evolution of Human Nutrition, which is to highlight the evolution of human nutrition from our earliest ancestors to the modern day and to draw attention to the diversity in the human diet and its consequences. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Health and Medicine] [Science] [Show ID: 24835]
Mar 22, 2013•21 min
Tracing the evolution of the human diet from our earliest ancestors can lead to a better understanding of human adaptation in the past. It may also offer clues to the origin of many health problems we currently face, such as obesity and chronic disease. This fascinating series of talks focuses on the changing diets of our ancestors and what role these dietary transitions played in the evolution of humans. Here Clark Spencer Larsen (Ohio State Univ) discusses The Impact of Agriculture on Human Ev...
Feb 25, 2013•56 min
Tracing the evolution of the human diet from our earliest ancestors can lead to a better understanding of human adaptation in the past. It may also offer clues to the origin of many health problems we currently face, such as obesity and chronic disease. This fascinating series of talks focuses on the changing diets of our ancestors and what role these dietary transitions played in the evolution of humans. Leslie C. Aiello (Wenner-Gren Foundation) begins with An Overview of Diet and Evolution, fo...
Feb 20, 2013•57 min
Indo-European languages are native to populations from Ireland to Afghanistan and India and, in historical times, to the Tarim Basin in China. This spread occurred within a few thousand years carried by people who were mostly horse pastoralists and who carried a mutant regulator of the lactase gene so that they could as adults digest milk sugar. Henry Harpending, University of Utah, discusses how individuals with such lactase persistence are able to extract 40% more calories from milk, while oth...
Feb 15, 2013•19 min
In most individuals, the ability to digest lactose, the sugar present in milk, declines rapidly after weaning because of decreasing levels of the enzyme lactase in the small intestine. However, there are individuals who maintain the ability to digest milk into adulthood due to a genetic adaptation in populations that have a history of pastoralism. Sarah Tishkoff, University of Pennsylvania, presents her latest studies of the genetic basis of lactose tolerance in African pastoralist populations. ...
Feb 15, 2013•20 min
As our australopithecine ancestors moved out of receding rain forests and into drier habitats, they abandoned a primarily fruit-based diet and began consuming more meat and tubers. This increase in consumption of protein, fat, and starch coincided in time with important evolutionary changes in cognition and brain size. Gregory Wray, Duke University, discusses how genetic and genomic methods are providing insights into the relationship between these two parallel sets of adaptations. Several genes...
Feb 15, 2013•19 min
The history of human evolution and dispersal was associated with remarkable environmental challenges to those processes that maintain stable physiological conditions. Indeed, environmental change over time and over space has been a major feature of human evolution. Though many adaptations undoubtedly occurred at the cultural and behavioral levels, the striking variation of human phenotypes suggests that adaptations also involved genetic changes. Cultural changes, e.g. different modes of subsiste...
Feb 15, 2013•19 min
In the classic nature-nurture dichotomy, nature has a stronger or weaker influence on nurture, but certainly nurture was supposed to have no impact on nature. Human culture is often taken to be a form of nurture. However, culture itself has evolutionary properties. In particular, culture generates novel environments that in turn select for novel genes. A few dramatic cases of this effect are well known and many more are suspected. Peter Richerson, UC Davis, explains why the nature-nurture dichot...
Feb 15, 2013•19 min
What constitutes the essential behavior of our species is contentious. Evolutionary scenarios leading to both the capacity for and practice of these essential behaviors are even more debated. Genetics, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, morphology, reconstructions of climate variation, and the archaeology of human behavior all provide pathways to explore these questions. This presentation by Alison Brooks, George Washington University, will review the evidence for the accumulation of distinc...
Feb 15, 2013•21 min
Leslie Aiello (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) reviews the historical development of ideas in relation to the evolution of bipediality. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23670]
Feb 15, 2013•23 min
The fastest humans sprint slowly and for very limited durations compared to most quadrupedal mammals, but even average humans have superlative long distance running capabilities in terms of speed and distance compared to other mammals, especially in the heat. Dan Lieberman (Harvard University) posits that these abilities raise the question of how to evaluate when and how adaptations for running evolved in hominins, and what effect such selection had on the evolution of the human body. Series: "C...
Feb 15, 2013•21 min
Christopher Ruff (Johns Hopkins University) interprets the analyses of forelimb and hindlimb bone strength in a number of early hominin taxa. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23668]
Feb 15, 2013•17 min
Carol Ward (University of Missouri) reviews the growing, although still imperfect, evidence for torso form in apes and early hominins, and relates that to hypotheses about the origins and early evolution of hominin bipedality. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23667]
Feb 15, 2013•21 min
Efforts to reconstruct gait and other aspects of behavior in extinct hominins continue to be hampered by disagreements over how to interpret anatomical evidence from the fossil record. Brian Richmond (George Washington University) offers unique evidence about early Pleistocene hominin gait and foot shape based on his recent discovery of hominin footprints in the Koobi Fora Formation, Kenya (1.52 Ma). Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: ...
Feb 15, 2013•21 min
Jeremy DeSilva (Boston University) shares his insights into the foot and ankle diversity of australopiths and refutes the hypothesis that there is only one kinematic way to be a striding biped. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23664]
Feb 15, 2013•19 min
Steven Churchill (Duke University) talks about the evolution of the human pelvis and the major architectural changes which reflect an improvement in the ability of this structure to engage in bipedal locomotion. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23663]
Feb 15, 2013•20 min
Tracing the evolution of the human diet from our earliest ancestors can lead to a better understanding of human adaptation in the past. It may also offer clues to the origin of many health problems we currently face, such as obesity and chronic disease. This fascinating series of talks focuses on the changing diets of our ancestors and what role these dietary transitions played in the evolution of humans. Here Mary C. Stiner (Univ of Arizona) discusses Archaic Human Diets followed by Alyssa Crit...
Feb 13, 2013•57 min
