KISSING COUSINS This original fossil skull of an anatomically modern human from Cro-Magnon, France, is on display for the first time in the U.S.
Image: Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution
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The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., recently unveiled the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, the museum's new permanent exhibition on human evolution. There visitors can trace some six million years of human prehistory, from apelike creatures such as Sahelanthropus to anatomically modern Homo sapiens, from the first tool makers to the first artists. Paintings, sculptures, fossil replicas and even a few original fossils—including a Neandertal skeleton from Iraq—combine with interactive displays to bring humanity's extraordinary odyssey into full view.
View a slide show of images from the exhibition
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37 Comments
Add CommentJudging from the images, it's pretty apparent that they had filed away the T-rex teeth marks in typical "Area 51" cover up fashion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLOL. Just kidding.
Would like some day to take my kids to see the 20 some odd gaps to the human family tree that so glaringly exist between the 20 some add transitional fossils. There I go again.
"They just keep getting more and more gaps. They should just quite finding those hominid fossils, 'cuz it keeps on hurting their case" (insert your best Gomer Pyle anywhere you see fit).
Yea, the gappers crack me up. Between any two points, no matter how far apart, or close together, is a gap. Here's my skull, and here's my Dads. See? Gap! ergo, there must be a god, and he must fill it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all understand that the anti-evolution movement originates from a long line of men who use religion to manipulate and control those who are: easily manipulated and controlled. These are the individuals who created and are perpetuating the split between advocates and enemies of Science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm with those who support Science and who also assert that there is no conflict between Science and Religion. This is a false "war" and if we are to survive it must be stopped.
I am very fatigued by the continued "whitewash" of history. The final slide is of a cave painter, a homo sapian sapian. All well and good except you have been forced by your own science to acknowledge that homo sapian sapians originated in Africa. Please start putting two and two together and start depicting homo sapian sapians as Africans, with their dark complexions and beautiful broad features. Do you realize you are continuing academia formulated by white supremisists?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReligion is the biggest danger to humanity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Cymbaline: short, succinct, poignant. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose kinds of cave paintings were found in *France*, not Africa...by then, Homo sapiens sapiens was already diversifying in terms of skin tone. Yes, Homo sapiens sapiens originated in Africa but the European branch called Cro-Magnons were responsible for the Lascaux cave paintings in France (that this slide is referencing) and the Aurignacian culture that thrived 35,000-30,000 years ago, long after our exit from Africa.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLight skin is believed to have evolved quickly in both the European and North Asian "out-of-Africa" lines. Mitochondrial line L3 left Africa around 70,000 years ago...the next mutation in the line (mitochondrial line N) is predominant in Europe. The gene locus MC1R, partially responsible for dark skin, is not found in L3/N Europeans, although it did get carried through the Middle East, India, South-East Asia and Australia in a separate mitochondrial line "M" by the Great Coastal Migration. This slide is clearly referring to the very famous Lascaux cave art, made by Cro-Magnons in France that did not have the genes necessary for dark skin.
As usual, the immediate conclusion made is that somehow this depiction is racist. That's garbage. It's not racist to accurately depict a historical scene that we know occured in France (40,000 years after leaving Africa) by using a light skinned, Euro-featured figure.
Before you go spouting "racism, racism!", get your facts and science right. You're just perpetuating the idea that all white people are racists. There are racists of all ethnicities and skin colors. Racism, by anyone, in any form is disgusting. Rather than tainting this excellent slideshow with hollow claims of racism by "the Man", let's all enjoy the awesome journey of humankind and rise above our petty differences. Humans are humans...no matter what they look like.
Not too sure I buy into the logic that results in that beautiful bronze of a female proto human carrying home an antelope. Surely anatomical necessity would require those tasks (in general) to be performed by a male? Have we stopped assuming that it was the males (nothing like a good generalisation, eh !) that were the hunters and the females the gatherers? Also I thought there was a body of opinion which suggested that increased brain size came from dwelling on the fringes of the sea where the additional nutirients, especially iodine, were available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't it now the case that the general thrust of evolution as described in Desmond Morris's "The Ascent of Man", failing hopelessly as it does to consider or explain 'The Ascent of Woman' (and the differences one or two of us have noticed!) is now superceded?
drg
In other words, these bronzes are lovely, but aren't they desribing a rather out of date theory?
Sorry to be picky, but if you'd actually seen those paintings you'd be pretty sure the chap shown blowing a silhouette of his hand wasn't half naked (it's too chilly down there) and he or she had a fair range of tools to paint with, not least bearing in mind that to get to that stage with a powdered colour fine enough to blow, and then stick to the wall for a day or two, took some technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLol - I assume your self contradictory name calling was an attempt at humor not just more insane idiocy. In either case I think most of us reading scientific american would agree with SciTeachers point: "Before you go spouting......get your facts and science right" and I'll add please keep the discussion to science, there are plenty of other sites to troll for political bashing
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLol - I assume your self contradictory name calling was an attempt at humor not just more insane idiocy. In either case I think most of us reading scientific american would agree with SciTeachers point: "Before you go spouting......get your facts and science right" and I'll add please keep the discussion to science, there are plenty of other sites to troll for political bashing
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdrg 40 said:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"a body of opinion which suggested that increased brain size came from dwelling on the fringes of the sea"
I recall reading that. The reason, I gathered, is that a high in animal fat diet is required for such a large organ to have evolved. I like to volunteer that information when ever someone insists that a vegan diet is superior. I had also read somewhere that though a diet of this nature may not have been readily available to African plains hominid - it comes down to just how skilled were the hunters - like the large ears on elephants, our brain had first evolved not for the problem solving potential, but for the body cooling potential.
As any prairie boy or girl knows from the excessive harping by our mothers, the body looses copious amounts of heat through the head. Out in the near vertical unforgiving sun of the African plains, the ability to cool your core temperature would have been paramount to ones survival.
A phenotype that would be strongly selected for.
Food for thought anyway.
Religion of ANY form is a load of RUBBISH!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a scientific pantheist and a bit of a singularian. They don't seem like rubbish to me, but rather the religion based on science and reason that Carl Sagan once stated must arise sooner or later.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't recall Sagan saying anything of the sort. A "religion" based on science and reason? He most certainly DID NOT propose another religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe did, if I recall, corroborate a letter along with certain religious figures on the importance of scientific inquiry to truth, and that in the end there need not be a mutual incompatibility - what ever that means?
If I find the time while I'm at home - I'm sneaking around on the Internet at work right now - I'll find that exact letter. Any body can find it in Sagan's "Billions and Billions".
On the religion/science issue, consider that not all religions are in opposition to science:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics. In these fields there are insights to share, and to a certain extent we can work together."
also
"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."
-The Dahlai Lama
How many have died between warring religions as compared to the "war" between religion and science? I will put my "faith" in science thank you very much. And if I get my science "wrong" I am called ignorant, not condemned to eternal damnation by a "kind and loving" father figure. Even with the three in one trinity the female or maternal is missing. Good comments here supporting the scientists and artists' attempts at recreation of these hominids and humans, I do not detect any "racism". The lips of white folks are more apelike than those of the African peoples, so much for "superiority"; same for hair types, no primates have "peppercorns" that I know of. And the reference to a female and or woman carrying a dead animal? They carried everything on their backs, hunting and gathering, loads of wood, water, babies and children, probably sick and injured men as well. It is current sexism that separates men and women. The early populations weren't big enough for that much specialization... with the exception that all through history women have been "specialized" for carrying babies inside their bellies while pregnant (and still carrying heavy loads on their backs), AND suckling a baby at her breast, while doing everything within her power to assure the survival of the group.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think your own bias is showing through your comment. Research has shown that skin colr changes take approx 10K years to adapt to the local sunlight conditions. So since the final slide of the cave painter is clearly from European cave art. The skin tone is likely appropriate. Many of the other slides indicate that the facial reconstrutions are based on the actual fossils from the time and area being depicted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't disagree that a lot of bias exists; but your comment reflects that it cuts both ways.
I have no conflict with science or religion. Practitioners of both disciplines reach a point where they can go no further. For me, the line in the Bible says it all: "(Today) we see as through a glass darkly, but then (at some future point in time) face to face."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly the blind would consider the complexity of the human genome or the vast intricacy of the universe and say it all happened randomly (i.e., there is no God or superior intelligence behind it).
Science reveals more and more but it always reaches a point beyond which it cannot go. I have an idea that somewhere beyond that point, beyond even where our minds will be a million years from now if humanity exists that long, there will be that great face-to-face with the Creator.
Slide 8: "An increased reliance on meat, which is rich in calories and nutrients, seems to have been a key factor in the evolution of our large, metabolically demanding brains." If so cats would have an even bigger brain since their diet is all meat except when self medicating eating a few leaves of grass. Unless, eating meat forced us to be more cunning, thinking, planning "to bring home the bacon" increased our brain size.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this""An increased reliance on meat, which is rich in calories and nutrients, seems to have been a key factor in the evolution of our large, metabolically demanding brains." If so cats would have an even bigger brain "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this---------
And "why are there still monkeys" and "why are there still bacteria", these are all the same tired arguments.
A cat's success is not achieved through intelligence. At least not in a cognitive sense. As such, there is predictably no selective pressure placed on the preservation of a large brained cat. And in any case, a large brain in and of itself has little to do initially with intellect.
An increase in this regard would have to at least drift in the population first only to be commandeered for some other purpose that would give the possessor an advantage over its neighbors. So...the question that you pose would suggest that the cats overall fitness is threatened enough that it's doomed unless it's ability to scrutinize its environment were to increase. And that this trait will simply show up in the nick of time to save the day on cue.
Your wrong.
If indeed the cat were struggling - outside of the typical competition that it enjoys - then it would most likely just go extinct. Big brains don't grow on trees.
Why are people bringing up the race card. there are no races- just slightly different humans. Whta one's views on the current president are does not seem relevant ot this blog let alone tag him as black. If you think he is incompetent fine but his skin clour is irrelevant
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJack 123 what are you on about. Doesn't this exhibition show us all the diversity of life and the long progression to what we have now. If the planet survives anothr million years what would humans be like- surely not the same as today.
I couldn't agree more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone who uses science to argue against religion is missing the point just as surely as those that use religion to argue against science.
Science asks the question ... How?
Religion asks the question ... Why?
Each answer spawns more questions.
I think you missed the point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs forests gave way to grasslands, human ancesters began to walk upright in order to forage for food over a greater range and swiftness to avoid predation.
Grasslands meant grazing animals. Grazing animals became prey for cats, whose advantage was strength and speed. They also became prey for human ancesters, whose advtange was opposable thumbs (to make tools) and large brains, to hunt in groups.
Today, the big cats are endangered because our large brains are a greater advantage than their speed and strength.
I keep my bible where is belongs; on the shelf beside Greek Mythology. I don't usualy refer to it when indulging in scientific research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that the sea edge dwellers consume food that helps them use better their existing brain capacity. Living by the sea and eating seafood is not a cause of increased brain size. That would simply be due to natural selection - a mutation occurs with bigger brain sizes and that particular alteration give the larger brain size people an advantage. They have a greater probability at survival and procreate more of the like gene.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is as simple as that. If having a smaller brain would give a survival advantange then that's what we would have. There is no ultimate goal and smaller or larger brains are not more or less advanced. The advantage is sorted out by Darwin.
I am not too sure about our original assumption that the males were the hunters and the females were the gatherers and stay at home (cave) type. Male apes are typically rogues who survive by taking advantage of whatever situations that they can and the females are the responsible ones because they bear the young and need to take care of them. There are some males though that have a psychological difference (mental illness?) who attempt to control groups of females to keep them to themselves and exert control over these groups through violent behaviour but this does not change the behaviour of the female ape and her abilities to hunt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that the concept of monogamy came much later and that the female being the weaker one is only a result (not an adaptation) of our current social structure. This social structure has been imposed by males as a way to assert their dominance over something as many males tend to do.
Even though I somewhat agree with your analysis, I find that religion tries to go much deeper than that. It has always tried to control the masses and act as more than a moral or ethical compass. Perhaps that is not the original intention of the founders of religion (if there is ‘one’) but that what it has ended up as.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReligion has attempted to answer the question ‘How’ in many ways and if you ask for proof then they say it is an act of blasphemy. Science does often ask ‘Why’ but the ‘Why’ is not of the sort of question leading to a higher reason but a cause.
As far as I understand there is no higher reason. Things just are. The Universe did not start because someone or something wanted it too it just happened. Human evolution does not have a desired direction, a goal it is a random walk that could be analysed better using chaos theory than some kind of purpose.
As the good captain said ‘I y’am what I y’am’.
Interesting that Emmanuel Kant hand a similarly described scull size (grapefruit).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere IS a conflict between science and religion if the religious insist on believing in miracles--a suspension of natural laws.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am among those who believe there is conflict beween science and religion, as I cannot imagine a religious homo sapiens sapiens who visits this exhibition and does not try to find ways to deny its message. It is precisely the history of man, more than any other matter, what shows that religions are man-made constructions which fit perfectly well with the god-created-man and man-center-of-the-universe myths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love the evolution slide show. Do you have a book, and/or magazine which compiles informatation on this topic which I can purchase.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiskenknutson@shaw.ca
I would question your use of the term 'mutation' in the mitochondial line, implying that evolutionary changes are due to mutation pressure. From Mayr, "the frequency of a gene in a population is in the long run determined by natural selection and stochastic processes, not by the frequency of mutation."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't understand the evidence. We are not getting better. Our genomes are degrading and faster than ever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suggest you stop the religious arguments. DNA is absolutely, irrefutable, physical evidence that all creatures have de-evolved from a condition of better fitness to much weaker, less intelligent and less able to survive.
They have mapped over 4,000 genetic defects and we are just getting started, that are propagating in the human species.
People live longer because of artificial means.
If you take a modern human and put them in the wild with no medical care they will die young. The human genome cannot survive in harsh environments. It has been weakened as is shown in the absolute evidence, atavisms, gene losses (pseudo genes), poor cell replication from screwed up protean instructions, dead genes that are completely stopped from producing cells, and just plain diseased genetics.
Evolution is a fraud, and is full of mystical human "magical thinking" emotion mental garbage faith and belief. There is no magic "evolution fairy" that fixes our genomes.
If you want to believe in evolution you are just delusional.
This is THE definition of evolution:
Evolution: "that theory which sees in the history of all things organic and inorganic a development from simplicity to complexity, a gradual advance from a simple or rudimentary condition to one that is more complex and of a higher character." Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language.
There is no advances towards more intelligent, more complex nor more fit to survive. Humans are heading for extinction by not taking care of their existing genomes from self destructive habits.
Wake up from you delusions and look at the facts.
The common religion of Evodelusionism is now taught in most schools. It is just a mythological ideology, basically another Human Emotional Mental Garbage religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean you people really believe that fish got out of the water, grew lungs, legs, and decided to become human? WTF is the matter with your brain? Could it be politically driven HEMG, by a bunch of retarded humans?
This is absolute evidence of human stupidity.
The absolutely irrefutable physical evidence is in the DNA. It negates any form of this religious BS.
70% of the mutations are deleterious..BAD, harmful, weaken the cell structures or completely screw up the original DESIGN.
1% "may be". positive. This is from peer reviewed evidence.
Goto any site that lists genetic diseases.
If Evolution were true, there would be no diseases! PERIOD. There is no magical BS that fixes screwed up genetics. That is like crashing your car and by some magical scientific process it fixes itself. Are you really THAT gullible and stupid?
That is 70 to 1 against any form of positive advancement.
There is only retardation, loss of gene expression, atavisms, genetic dysfunction, and genetic diseases. The rest is what is left of our genetic engineering.
How gullible are you to believe in fairy tales of "Evolution". It is called "Evodelusionism" the religion of the weak minded.
goto The "Neutral Evolution Forum" and learn. Google it.
Morons are everywhere. I was tested with an IQ over 180.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, I see stupid people everywhere.
Evolution is a fairy tale of people who are too stupid to realize the obvious.
Anybody who believes in Evolution is an Evotard. Weak minded and given to allowing compulsions, especially sexual compulsions to run them. These morons are led around by low human emotions.
People have longed for anything that will allow them to screw up and do anything they what to the human genome. This includes all sorts of sexual transmitted cancer causing mutations that cause diseases.
Goto the "Neutral Evolution Forum" and get free of this cultural religious indoctrination bull crap.
It is impossible for anything to be the cause of itself.
Only stupid Evotards believe in crap like that.
People who believe in Evolution (Evotards)are absolute proof of the degradation of the human mind. Loss of gene function of ration and reason.
From peer reviewed evidence: 70% of all mutations are bad, deleterious. This cannot be refuted.
1% is possibly positive or "may be" helpful.
That is 70 to 1 against any form of evolution.
There is only a constant degradation of the human genome. All creatures have ONLY lost genetic fitness and are "retarded from a more fit condition.
There is no magical "fairy" of evolution that fixes screwed up genetics. That is like believing that when you crash your car, all you have to do is crash it again and it will be fixed. MORONS!
Once you allow your genome to be degraded by your life style, then you pass on your genetic degradation to your offspring.
There is no magical mutations that fix genetic defects.
Only a moron would believe such garbage.
Do you religious Evotards ever look at any of the recent findings that refute all of what you believe? HMM?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no evolution. All of the hominids are degenerated humans. There is evidence of humans living in Israel at 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.
The Herto is far superior super human compared to the retarded homo erectus which is retarded by radiation that destroyed much of its genome until it went extinct.
Just like the Chimpanzee is now nearly extinct and so is the Gorilla, and Orangutan. These creatures are from the same genetic lineage as humans. They are retarded, and de-evolved to the point of extinction. This is exactly where humans are heading.
There is no magical "mutations" that fix the genome once it is damaged. It is a religious ideology that does not fit with reality.
DNA evidence is (listen read carefully) absolutely, irrefutable, physical evidence of de-evolution.
There is only genetic loss, atavisms, genes that are not performing correctly, and just plain dead atrophied genetic functions. That is not evolution. That is the Truth!
Unless you can find the magical mystical mutations that are saving us from extinction, then shut up!
Evotards are religious nut cases, who disguise their religious beliefs in science. You degrade science and make a mockery of science.
How stupid does a person have to be to think the humans evolved from fish??? It is outrageous human moronic religious crap.
While you are promoting this human garbage belief, humans are now having severe genetic diseases, and it continues to degrade from our lifestyles that is basically ruining our planet and our genome faster than ever. There are over 4000 genetic defects mapped so far, and we are just starting.
Any Evotards need to be mocked and put in jail for fraud, for teaching this crap to our children. It is a form of religious mental abuse to inflict this crap on young children and victimizing them as you have been victimized by this disgusting Evodelusionism religion.
Unless you have absolutely irrefutable physical evidence to back your stupid beliefs, then shut the F up! You are degrading science.