Human Evolution

[Jo Bowyer]

Lake sediment fecal and biomass burning biomarkers provide direct evidence for prehistoric human-lit fires in New Zealand

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30606-3

[Jo Bowyer]

Once the wild is gone

https://aeon.co/essays/the-wildernes...460b0-69418129

Biodiversity is in decline everywhere, and the human impact on nature includes over-harvesting and overfishing, agricultural intensification and the growth of cities, toxic chemicals, ocean acidification, climate change, and many others. There is a real possibility of reaching ‘tipping points’, or changes that cause permanent shifts in the state of global ecological systems.

Protected areas are deeply unpopular in many countries — particularly those in the tropics — partly due to the draconian nature of their creation. Many of the places conservation planners see as natural have been transformed by human occupation, and many have people living in them, even if at low density. The creation of parks to protect nature often displaces those people. Some lose access to land for hunting or grazing. Some lose homes and farms. Some own their land, and are compensated according to the law. But in many parts of the developing world, there are no good land titles and, no matter how long that land has ‘belonged’ to a community, they have no right of redress when it is taken away.

The idea of a balance of nature, of ecosystems in equilibrium, has given way to an understanding of ecosystems as highly variable, subject to changes in state at a variety of interlocking scales. Climate change is part of this, affecting our understanding of what it means to describe a habitat or landscape as ‘natural’. Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, captures this when he speaks of the extent of human transformation in terms of the ‘domestication of nature’. It is not a matter of finding unchanged nature anymore, but responding to the impacts of that transformation.

Above all, conservation has to come back home: to link people with local nature, in the places where they live and work; to express the concerns they have for non-human life, and beauty, and the rhythm of the seasons; to express their need for the things nature provides, from carbon sequestration to joy. Conservation must learn to link these things to our consumption habits, to the coffee we buy or the iPhones we make, or the clean water we drink. And it needs to remember that one culture’s ‘wilderness’ is another’s ‘home’.

[Jo Bowyer]

Ancient Clovis people may have taken tool cues from earlier Americans

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-newsletter-v2

[Jo Bowyer]

The hunt for human nature

https://aeon.co/essays/we-still-live...782d1-69418129

[Jo Bowyer]

History of early settlement and survival in Andean highlands revealed by ancient genomes

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1108142407.htm

[Jo Bowyer]

Ancient DNA suggests people settled South America in at least 3 waves

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...rica-populated

[Jo Bowyer]

Human evolution is still happening – possibly faster than ever

https://theconversation.com/human-ev...%20than%20ever

[Jo Bowyer]

A Bronze Age tomb in Israel reveals the earliest known use of vanilla

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-newsletter-v2

“It’s really not surprising that vanillin reached Bronze Age Megiddo given all the trade that occurred between the [Middle East] and South Asia,” says archaeologist Eric Cline of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. But no evidence exists of trade at that time between Middle Eastern societies and East Africa, says Cline, who did not participate in the Megiddo research.

Vanilla orchids or their beans probably reached Megiddo via trade routes that first passed through Mesopotamian society in southwest Asia. However Bronze Age Middle Easterners ended up with those products, discoveries at Megiddo challenge the idea that vanilla use originated only in Mexico and then spread elsewhere, Cline says.

The vanillin-containing jugs at Megiddo came from a tomb of three “highly elite” individuals who were interred with six other people of lesser social rank, said archaeologist Melissa Cradic of the University of California, Berkeley, a member of the current Megiddo research team. Excavations uncovered the tomb in 2016, Cradic also reported at the ASOR meeting.

[Jo Bowyer]

We have weaker bones than our hunter-gatherer ancestors – this is what you can do about it

https://theconversation.com/we-have-...o%20about%20it

Yesssssss!

I have increasing problems with both urban and rural patients who have taken much of the movement and loading out of their lives. Going to the gym 2-3 times a week doesn't cut it.

[Jo Bowyer]

London is great for walking and stairs, I also carry 28.6k in my backpack and waistcoat, I use as much spinal range as poss when lifting and loading, I am 61yoa.

[Jo Bowyer]

Human ancestors may have spread to north Africa earlier than thought, stone tool discovery suggests

https://theconversation.com/human-an...ery%20suggests

East Africa is famously the birthplace of humankind and the location where our ancient hominin ancestors first invented sophisticated stone tools. This technology, dating back to 2.6m years ago, is then thought to have spread around Africa and the rest of the Old World later on.

But new research, published in Science, has uncovered an archaeological site in Algeria containing similar tools that may be as old as 2.44m years. The team, led by the archaeologist Mohamed Sahnouni, excavated stone tools at the site Ain Boucherit that they estimate are between 1.92m and 2.44m years old. This suggests that human ancestors spread to the region much earlier than previously thought or that the stone tool technology was simultaneously invented by earlier hominin species living outside east Africa.

[Jo Bowyer]

Stone Age people conquered the Tibetan Plateau’s thin air

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-newsletter-v2

[Jo Bowyer]

Study upends timeline for Iroquoian history

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1207144357.htm

[Jo Bowyer]

Losing the thread

https://aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-...4bcbd-69418129

[Jo Bowyer]

‘Little Foot’ skeleton analysis reignites debate over the hominid’s species

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-newsletter-v2

[Jo Bowyer]

Neandertal Introgression Sheds Light on Modern Human Endocranial Globularity

https://www.cell.com/current-biology...822(18)31470-2


From the perspective of ontogeny, braincase shape depends on a complex interplay between cranial bone growth, facial size, and the tempo and mode of neurodevelopment.