tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-107491132009-02-21T07:17:39.621-05:00In the halls of academia researchers are often more concerned about protecting their intellectual property than publishing the truth. Blogging offers a way to respect previous research, mine the information glut, and quickly publish the results. This blog is an experiment in gathering, documenting, associating, and presenting important information about human evolution using only a browser, the internet, and copy/paste techniques. These are not "my" words. I am only the editor.The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1112446108601593342005-04-02T07:48:00.000-05:002005-04-02T07:48:28.600-05:00

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1109173775981146802005-02-23T10:49:00.000-05:002005-02-23T11:31:58.720-05:00

I just want to say that I truly support the idea of the free dissemination of intellectual information, and that I truly lament the various forms of copyrights and patents that are being put on so-called intellectual property. I also lament the collusion of universities in licensing the results of scientific research, and thus violating the project of the free dissemination of knowledge that is

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108744098526162212005-02-18T11:28:00.000-05:002005-02-18T11:59:09.263-05:00

Bipedality, the ability to walk upright using only the lower limbs, is the most ancient of all characteristics that distinguish humans from apes. Bipedality deprives us of speed and agility and all but eliminates our ability to easily climb trees. We must propel our body with two limbs instead of four, and we are generally unable to use the hip and back as parts of our propulsive muscle

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108659507243741012005-02-17T11:58:00.000-05:002005-02-18T10:54:08.083-05:00

Charles Darwin made three proposals that he thought, together, could explain the process of species transformation or evolution. They are the theories of natural selection (1859), sexual selection (1868) and pangenesis (more commonly called Lamarckian selection, 1871).Natural selection is the first and most powerful of the selective processes. Sexual selection, Lamarckian selection (or the

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108413190538269472005-02-14T15:33:00.000-05:002005-02-14T15:58:21.696-05:00

Some female primates use social bonds to escape male aggression. Can women?Researchers have observed various male animals-including insects, birds, and mammals-chasing, threatening, and attacking females. The males of many of these species are most aggressive toward potential mates, which suggests that they sometimes use violence to gain sexual access.Jane Goodall provides us with a compelling

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108266488515181422005-02-12T22:48:00.000-05:002005-02-16T12:42:47.116-05:00

"The recent discovery of sahelanthropus tchadensis has brought into focus once more questions about the factors which may have led some ape clades to begin to evolve those most distinguished human traits: large brain size and bipedality. This find, the oldest putative hominid yet, as well as recent nutritional studies have both strengthened the idea that human evolution occurred in water-side

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108263584782163362005-02-12T21:59:00.000-05:002005-02-13T18:50:19.696-05:00

"A University of Utah study showing how lice evolved with the people they infested reveals that a now-extinct species of early human came into direct contact with our species about 25,000 years ago and spread the parasites to our ancestors.""The study found modern humans have two genetically distinct types of head lice. One type is found worldwide and evolved on the ancestors of our species, Homo

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108258946057705562005-02-12T20:42:00.000-05:002005-02-14T11:49:15.893-05:00

"In all the great apes - and that includes fossil and modern - the large, tusk-like, projecting, shearing canine teeth are used as weapons, and in most of them the main use is in males fighting with other males for access to estrus females," White said. "The earliest hominids lack that adaptation, showing much smaller canines that are not at all chimpanzee-like.""The implication of this dental

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108256056164759622005-02-12T19:54:00.001-05:002005-02-16T03:05:15.670-05:00

Your E-mail:

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108249851143054292005-02-12T18:10:00.000-05:002005-02-16T11:03:35.180-05:00

"One hallmark trait of human feeding behaviour, complex control of food availability, emerged with Homo erectus (1.9 x 10(6)-200000 years ago), who carried out this process by either increased meat eating or by cooking, or both. Another key trait of human eating behaviour is the symbolic use of food, which emerged with modern Homo sapiens (100000 years ago to the present) between 25000 and 12000

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108241228279802692005-02-12T15:47:00.000-05:002005-02-14T13:01:48.163-05:00

"Our results indicate that A. afarensis possessed overall manual proportions, including an increased thumb/hand relationship that, contrary to previous reports, is fully human and would have permitted pad-to-pad human-like precision grip capability. We show that these human-like proportions in A. afarensis mainly result from hand shortening, as in modern humans.""Since A. afarensis predates the

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108085119620569272005-02-10T20:25:00.000-05:002005-02-14T13:41:11.270-05:00

At a juncture in history during which women are seeking equality with men, science arrives with a belated gift to the feminist movement. Male-biased evolutionary scenarios-- Man the Hunter, Man the Toolmaker and so on--are being challenged by the discovery that females play a central, perhaps even dominant, role in the social life of one of our nearest relatives. In the past few years many

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10749113.post-1108073742743185462005-02-10T17:15:00.000-05:002005-02-13T15:11:22.776-05:00

Woman's Evolution, which deals with the hidden history of women, is a feminist book. But it is more than that; it marks a new theoretical turn in anthropology, which in recent years has witnessed a progressive deterioration in its methodology. Let us examine the reasons for this decline and what is required to put anthropology back on the right track.Anthropology was founded by Morgan, Tylor, and

The Utopianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055787682780242314noreply@blogger.com3