New fossils shed light on the origin of the unusual human relative known as ‘the hobbit’.This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on June 8, 2016. It is a Nature Video production.
In a cave in France archaeologists have found some of the oldest human constructions ever discovered —but no one knows what they are. Nature Video takes a look.This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on May 25, 2016. It is a Nature Video production.
In 1908, amateur geologist and solicitor Charles Dawson claimed the discovery of a new and exciting fossil that, so it was thought, shed substantial light on the ancestry of humans. Dubbed Piltdown man, and technically named Eoanthropus dawsoni, it was (... spoiler...) eventually shown to be a hoax – one of the most nefarious, infamous and successful scientific hoaxes of all time.You know all of this already. In the previous article we looked at the fact that Piltdown man never was accepted with open arms by the scientific community as a whole. On the contrary, experts in the U.K, U.S. and continental Europe all expressed considerable doubt about the homogeneity of the material. But there are a great many stories attached to the Piltdown man arc, and this time I’m going to cover another one
One of the most fascinating episodes in the history of palaeontology is that of Piltdown man, an alleged human ancestor discovered in 1908 at Piltdown in Sussex, England. Formally named Eoanthropus dawsoni in 1912, Piltdown man matched early 20th century expectations of what a human ancestor might be like. It combined a large brain with an ape-like jaw (therefore confirming ideas that the evolution of big brains led the way in hominin evolution), and it lived in Europe (confirming ideas that hominin evolution was a Eurasian event, the hominins of Africa and tropical Asia being divergent irrelevancies or side-branches). The African australopithecines had yet to be discovered, nor had scarcely any of the wealth of fossil African hominins we know of today.
As more cultural commodities enter the market, cultural distinctions will become muted to suit the appetites of a wider clientele
The signfiicance of selling a personal substance in the public market.
For many decades, scientists have tried to understand the past by doing as our forebears did. One important endeavor in what is called experimental archaeology involves moderns crafting Stone Age tools by chipping away at rocks.
Last September, I participated in the relaunch of Ignite NYC. These mini-presentations test your game by only allowing you five minutes and 20 slides to share your idea with audience.
For those of you with Christmas trees, they probably look a little barren following the unwrapping of presents. What did you get for Christmas?
Science and common sense are alike grounded in human experience. Yet these ways of thinking about things are often in conflict. Sometimes the simplicity of most commonsense explanations can make it hard to win people over to the complexity and uncertainties of most scientific arguments.
Since September, I’ve posted three columns, including two written by others, on whether lethal chimpanzee raids–and by implication, human warfare—are adaptive and hence innate.
The approach of Thanksgiving, that quintessential American holiday, has me brooding once again over slanderous scientific portrayals of Native Americans as bellicose brutes.* When I was in grade school, my classmates and I wore paper Indian headdresses and Pilgrim hats and reenacted the "first Thanksgiving," in which supposedly friendly Native Americans joined Pilgrims for a [...]
New microscope analysis of artifacts from the ancient city also can find fakes in museums
It is not in the least bit controversial to picture humans* within the context of the placental mammal group that we belong to, the primates.
Our distant past is just that: the distant past. It’s this murky place that science is slowly filling in but the landscape still largely exists just on the periphery of our imagination, and it’s dominated by raw, somewhat violent natures.
There is something to be said for having a space that you call home. It grounds you in social and cultural ways. As much as your home is a reflection of who you are, it also becomes a mirror for larger social observances.
Long cloaked in mystery, the ancient Teotihuacán culture is at last giving up its secrets
When you woke up this morning, did you reach for your cell phone? Was it right next to the bed? Or under your pillow? Did you use it as an alarm clock?
Last week I was interviewed by Renee Masur of Sokanu as part of the “True Calling” series, which looks at people who have found careers (allegedly) doing things they love.
The refrigerator gives us a claimable space that serves as a center in our home. In fact, if you were spend 10 minutes anywhere in someone's home, I'd argue that the refrigerator would probably tell you the most about that person.
