Early Man Archive
Second Place
Is a successful evolutionary adaptation to become subsumed by a more successful species? A famous anthropologist will suggest as much in his new book due out this fall. University of Wisconsin professors John Hawks and Zach Throckmorton will soon publish the definitive conclusions of the hectic paleontological research on Neanderthals that has consumed the last [...]
Obama/Neanderthal/Romney Debate
Animus in our culture is pervasive and not just in politics. Recent awe-inspiring discoveries about Neanderthals have enraged the Right, once again. The various emotions I feel following the Obama/Romney debate are complex, but all so similar to the same emotions provoked by the angry outbursts of creationists over new and exciting Neanderthal discoveries. Harvard [...]
Back Home after 2 Million Years
The remarkable new science of early man evolution is shifting from the hallowed halls of Harvard, Berkeley, Wisconsin and Rutgers to Wit, where it all began! It all began about 2 million years ago. Southern Africa was experiencing the end of a long period of climate change during which the Great Rift Valley had formed, [...]
Top Ten 2010 Stories
Posted by jimheck in Arts and Culture, Corruption, Culture, Early Man, Ecology, Economy, Foreign Aid, Great Migration, History, Planning Travel, Poaching, Politics, Poverty, Serengeti, Sudan, Terrorism, Tourism Trends, Uganda, Uncategorized, War on December 31, 2010
East Africa is booming, so many of the stories of 2010 were terrifically good news. But there were the tragedies as well like the Kampala bombings. Below I try to put the year in perspective with my top ten stories for East Africa for 2010. 1. Populace democracy grows. 2. Terrorism grows, as does the [...]
AFRICA, Show us The Way!
Posted by jimheck in Culture, Early Man, Prehistoric, Uncategorized on December 9, 2010
In this age of belt tightening and budget angst the impoverished State of Kentucky is going to give $37½ million dollars to a wacko anti-science group to build a creationism theme park. Sub-Saharan Africa is the cradle of mankind. The earliest known hominid, our direct evolutionary ancestor, is at least 6 million years old. Olduvai [...]
Grandpa Neandertal!
Neandertal weren’t wiped out by us barbaic humans. They’re are one of our great-great-great, great-great-great? or something grandparents! Between a hundredth and a twenty-fifth of those of us non-Africans is Neandertal! (Modern Africans as a race have little or no Neandertal DNA.) The report issued today in Science radically changes our view of ourselves. It [...]
Becoming Human Becoming Silly
Yesterday evening PBS’s NOVA series aired its second of three parts on “Becoming Human.” Entertaining, yes. Enlightening? … no. Those of us passionate about early man would stop all other work to review the newest Far Side cartoon, and not because we didn’t have good, steady work demanding our attention. It’s just … well, he [...]
Dummying ARDI
Last night Discovery Channel ratings skyrocketed with a two-hr documentary on Ardi. Ardi is a big, very big paleontology story. But when newer (older) finds are discovered in the future, Ardi’s lasting story will be something quite different from paleontology. To me the unchangeable story about Ardi is the remarkable way it was told. Enough [...]
Ardi’s Story Begins
Fifteen years ago one of the most important early man fossils was found in Ethiopia. Is this really the discovery of the century? Yesterday what is arguably the most important discovery of an early hominid since Lucy in 1974 was officially reported in the journal, Science, by a team of 7 researchers that have jealously [...]
Zinj’s Golden! Birthday?
Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact date that Australopithecus boisei was found by Mary Leakey, but it was in July, 1959 and reported in August. Time to celebrate! The discovery of Nutcracker Man in 1959 was the single most important paleontological discovery that jump started the science, quashed forever (except in weird and extreme circles) [...]
Nairobi Museum
Posted by jimheck in Early Man, Nairobi, Planning Travel on June 27, 2009
For all the stress of Nairobi, the city, its stellar museum makes it all worthwhile. My second safari of the season, the Howard and Godfrey families, arrived unusually altogether on Saturday night. Like most travelers to East Africa, what they wanted to do was see animals, so I’d been unsuccessful suggesting a two-night stay in [...]
Hominid Uno?
New research nails man’s birthplace near the Kalahari Desert. Science continues to trump the dwindling support for creationism or anything anti-evolutionist. Today’s announcement by Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania that continuing analysis of worldwide human DNA nails the birthplace of modern man near the Kalahari is a much sexier story in the U.S. [...]
Darwin & Shelby
Darwinism Slams The 3rd World London As I make my way more slowly than usual to Kenya, I’ve stopped in London to visit the Darwin exhibit at the British Museum. While flying over, the World Bank issued a report that for the first time since WWII the world economy is expected to post a decline, [...]