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A Brief History of Religion
2007-08-19 16:27:00
Your Sunday Skepticomic from David HorseyTo view last Sunday's comic click here.
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The Boneyard #3
2007-08-18 23:43:00
The Boneyard paleo-carnival is up at Laelaps. Get your osteology on!

Bonobos "Red in Tooth and Claw"
2007-08-18 19:58:00
Bonobos are not totally peaceful, but reports have been greatly exaggeratedJohn Hawks has a great review of the commentary following Ian Parker?s New Yorker article "Swingers" on bonobos as well as Frans de Waal?s response in eSkeptic. I?ve previously commented about this issue here and here. However, I disagree somewhat with my fellow anthro blogger that de Waal is accusing Parker of having a political agenda. De Waal points out that conservative pundits picked up on this article in order to, following Parker?s phrase, ?use the species as a stick to beat? their ideological drum. What de Waal points out is that Parker was merely ?sexing up? his article to raise a little controversy.Parker presented his trip as a fact-finding mission that had unearthed revolutionary new insights. His message was that bonobos are killer apes, just like their cousins, the chimpanzees. The animal kingdom remained ?red in tooth and claw,? as it ought to be.Yet, the most striking cases of bono...

The Evolution of Metapopulations and the Future of Humanity
2007-08-18 03:25:00
Or: Whose Your Neighbor?Earlier I put out a call for evolutionary questions, and several of you responded. I will answer them all in the next few days. First off, ETBNC asked:It's my understanding this species [Homo sapiens] lived in relatively small social groups (of a few dozen) for at least 95% of its existence as a species. For the last 5% of its history these homo sapiens have been trying to live in increasingly large social groups, as much as 6 or 7 orders of magnitude larger. Since homo sapiens is known to be able to modify its behavior patterns in, um, "interesting" ways, such discontinuity isn't that remarkable.My hypothesis is that small social groups are still the default behavior for the species homo sapiens.It is my view that this is absolutely correct and it has important ramifications for modern human existence, which I'll discuss. The earliest evidence for Homo sapiens in Africa is from about 200,000 years ago. The earliest large-scale societies are from about...
More About: Evolution , Future , The Future , Humanity , Pula

Good News Amidst Gorilla Tragedy
2007-08-18 03:17:00
Baby Ndeze appears to be doing well.Earlier I reported on the four gorillas (one of whom was pregnant) that were massacred in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It appears that a baby who wasn't expected to live without her mother is in stable condition.Ndeze was left in desperate need of water and food after the attack in July, and experts are still trying to work out why the gorillas were killed.Emergency measures have now been brought in to protect the rest of the gorillas in the Virunga National Park.Extra patrols have been set up in the part of the park where the other gorillas live to keep them safe.The bodies of one silverback and three female gorillas were discovered on 22 July in Virunga National Park.It's a mystery why the gorillas - all from one family - were killed.The four animals belonged to a group of 12 gorillas, known to researchers as the Rugendo family, which are often visited by tourists.There are only around 700 mountain gorillas alive in the world, and more t...
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Four Stone Hearth #21
2007-08-16 15:51:00
The latest Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival is up at Archaeolog. Brian Switek at Laelaps has an excellent discussion of how our views of human evolution have evolved. It's not to be missed. The Primate Diaries also has a few that were selected.
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What is your evolutionary question?
2007-08-16 05:15:00
The Future is YouThe Primate Diaries has explored some of the most fundamental issues in human evolution. From morality to menopause and from spite to sexual desire. From the search for primate rights to the search for intelligent life in the universe. Now the person of the hour is you.What questions do you have about our evolution? What direction would you like to see this blog go? If you are already satisfied then thank you for your readership and I'll continue in the best way I know how.As always, the Dude abides.
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The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe
2007-08-15 01:24:00
A plea for a new exploration, one that is within our reachExtraterrestrial intelligence would be the single most important discovery of human existence. In many ways it is the continuation of a search for answers in the sky that began with our distant ancestors. Unfortunately the UFO mythos is lacking any evidence and scientists are having a difficult time even locating bacteria.Recent news that Saturn's moon Enceladus is unlikely to support life is reducing the possibility even further that any living organisms will be found in our solar system. We may have to face the possibility that beyond our thin dusting of atmospheric gases lay a domain of shadows.This demonstrates how rare and precious life can be and should generate increased concern for our fragile biosphere. UFO visitations will not save this generation any more than gods or angels did for generations past. We have to overcome our myopic vision of culture and political ideology to become a true caretaker for the myr...
More About: Life , Universe , Search , Intelligent , The Universe

The Sacrifice of Admetus
2007-08-14 04:02:00
How the evolution of altruism reveals our noblest qualitiesHeracles battles Death for generosity's sake* This is a piece I wrote recently with the intent to send to magazines, but I've since been told that it's unpublishable. So it goes. Whereas great scientific theories stand the test of time when they accurately predict the natural world through repeated empirical trials, great literature transcends the ages when it speaks to universal qualities of human experience. Such inspirational works can also, without the authors realizing at the time, reveal the sublime beauty and tragedy of our evolutionary drama. Few classical authors have tapped into this zeitgeist of biological experience as the Greek tragedian Euripides. The conflict between male and female reproductive strategy and the horrific choice of maternal infanticide is powerfully presented in the story of Medea (which waited some 2,400 years before being elucidated as an adaptive strategy in primates by the incompara...
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The Bible as Metaphor
2007-08-12 16:30:00
Your Sunday Skepticomic from Russell's Teapot.To view last Sunday's comic click here.
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Armageddon is a Great Day in Idaho
2007-08-12 00:04:00
Idaho leads the way in religious intolerance. Will the Rapture begin in Boise?PZ Myers at Pharygula recently brought up the wingnut Bill Sali who serves as a Republican Congressman for Idaho's 1st district. I've spent a good amount of time in Idaho (more than I probably would have liked - but there are some great people there who need our help and support) so I've heard the local pastors and radio broadcasters compare legalized abortion to the Holocaust. I've seen the Adopt-a-Street signs sponsored by Yahweh's 666 Warning Assembly. But, I've got to tell you, this lunacy surprised even me.Recently this elected representative for our United States was miffed when the Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer:"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers." Sali thinks that the United States ha...
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On Deception: Cheney, Chomsky & Trivers
2007-08-11 18:58:00
How politicians deceive the country and themselvesFirst, consider what then Secretary of Defense Dick Chen ey thought about invading Baghdad in 1994:Um . . . huh?Robert Trivers is a renowned anthropologist and biologist most famous for his theories of parent-offspring conflict and reciprocal altruism. His most recent book is Genes in Conflict. Noam Chomsky is the MIT professor of linguistics who has a dual career as a political analyst and activist. His most recent book Failed States follows up on his bestseller Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.The following dialogue was just posted on YouTube courtesy of the SEED network (which also hosts the wonderful ScienceBlogs.com). The video has been edited to six minutes but the full dialogue can be viewed here and the transcript here.What is the psychology of deception and self-deception in our political leaders? How can citizens anticipate such abuse of power and work to counter it in these circumstances? Tw...
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Eye of the Beholder
2007-08-11 06:36:00
Psychologists determine that eyes are the window to a woman?s desire.As a species we are consumed by love. Ask yourself, how many cultural productions (films, stories, songs, dances, arts) do not have love, the loss of love or the absence of love as their central theme? Would you be satisfied with what is left over? Love?s power over us is just one reason why evolutionary research is so fascinating.A well-worn trope of human culture is men?s obsession with female infidelity. Othello. Madame Bovary. Desperate Housewives. These are just three Western examples of this concern that are paralleled in every society and throughout time. Such powerful and universal human emotions suggest a biological commonality that can be revealed through a scientific lens.Past research has demonstrated that women alter their sexual preferences based on where they are in their menstrual cycle. Women tend to be much more prone to initiate sexual encounters during their ovulatory period when sex co...
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Apparently Not Very Long
2007-08-10 05:06:00
Leakey confirms what Intelligent Design already knewOne (of many) adaptive radiation diagrams of hominid evolution.From Scientific American, January 2000, ?Once We Were Not Alone?, page 60Yesterday (at 3:19 pm) I posted commentary about the recent finds from Koobi Fora suggesting that Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived during the same period for at least part of their existence (however, see the terrific critique of the study at Anthropology.net). This put the final nail in the coffin for an idea that had been losing support for thirty years: that human evolution was a linear progression. I ended the post with the question:How long do think it will take before the Creationist/Intelligent Design crowd jumps on this story to claim they were right all along?Answer: 22 hours 51 minutes.The Discovery Institute has now announced that the Nature study only reveals "one of Jonathan Wells' points in chapter 11 in Icons of Evolution." See, they knew all along. Wait, did they say Jonatha...
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Bonobos and the Politics of Human Nature
2007-08-09 16:43:00
Frans de Waal responds in the ongoing debate over human destinyAs I wrote earlier in Bonobo (Re)Visions, Ian Parker?s ?exposé? in the New Yorker was beautifully written but wrong on many levels. Now the straw man who Parker claims to have torn down, primatologist Frans de Waal, answers his polemical critic with a new piece in eSkeptic.What was particularly interesting in the fallout from the original article was how widely the New Yorker piece was referenced by conservative pundits (who often view the magazine as synonymous with the Communist party). Parker turned his romp through the jungle into an attack piece that conservatives could rally behind - if bonobos aren?t as peace loving as we thought then we must be destined to be violent and patriarchal.Dinesh D?Souza, the Hoover Institution Fellow who joined the Jerry Fallwell loony bin when he blamed 9/11 on liberals, wrote on his blog thatSupposedly bonobos are bisexual apes who engage in incessant and indiscriminate sexual acti...
More About: Politics , Nature , Human Nature , Human , Poli

A Family Reunited
2007-08-08 21:19:00
Homo habilis and Homo erectus shared the family dinner table, but probably ordered different meals.Two new fossil discoveries from Kenya described in the current issue of Nature show that Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived contemporaneously. According to today?s New York Times:Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens ? a 1.44 million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55 million-year-old Homo erectus ? said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.The conventional view has been that Homo habilis was the ancestor of H. erectus and that there was a linear progression along that particular evolutionary branch.This interpretation has always been suspect to me for, as a good student of evolution knows, linear and evolution rarely go hand in hand (and progression never). Evolutionary history is a complex branching tree without direction ...
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Homage to Catalonia
2007-08-08 17:48:00
Spanish Apes May Have Been the First SwingersAncestors to modern orang-utans?A new study in Proceedings B has found that an ancient ape from Catalonia , Spain was both a tree-walker and tree-swinger suggesting that this species could show the transitional period when apes were adapting to a life brachiating through the forest canopy.The latest issue of New Scientist explains that the9.5-million-year-old fossil of the ape Hispanopithecus laietanus reveals that it had fingers that were longer than those of a modern gorilla or human, but not as long as those of an orang-utan: an arrangement of bones unique among all known apes, alive or extinct. That would have allowed it to hang from tree branches as orang-utans do, but also walk on all fours along the larger branches with its palms flat on the surface.The authors state that their study's resultsreveal many similarities with extant orang-utans (Pongo). These similarities are interpreted as adaptations to below-branch suspensory behavi...
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Update: Van Roosmalen Freed
2007-08-08 16:23:00
Dr. Marc van Roosmalen, a renowned primatologist and one of Time magazines "Heroes for the Planet" for his conservation work has been released from Brazilian prison while he appeals his sentence.According to the Associated Press:Marc Van Roosmalen was convicted on June 15 of trying to illegally auction off the names of monkey species, keeping rare monkeys at his house without authorization and selling a scaffolding donated to the National Institute for Amazon Research where he worked.He was sentenced to 15 years and nine months in a prison in the Amazon city of Manaus, where he lives.Roosmalen, a Dutch expatriate and naturalized Brazilian citizen, has told the press that he was framed by Amazonian ranchers and logging interests who are attempting to sabotage his conservation work.In 2002 Roosmalen was accused of violating Brazilian wildlife laws when he rescued rare monkeys from backwoodsmen who, Roosmalen said, were planning to eat them. The local government claimed he was involve...
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Scientists demand Brazil release renowned primatologist
2007-08-08 04:32:00
Biologist's incarceration is an attack on science, say scientistsPrim atologist Marc van RoosmalenA prominent group of scientists have issued a petition to free world-renowned primatologist Marc van Roosmalen from Brazil ian prison after he was charged with illegally keeping monkeys without a permit and other crimes. The scientists have called his imprisonment an "attack on the practice and profession of biological science in Brazil."Van Roosmalen, 60, was sentenced in June to 15 years and 9 months by a federal court for allegedly keeping wild animals without a permit and embezzlement. The scientist, who has worked in the Amazon for nearly 20 years and is credited with the discovery of several previously unknown species of monkeys, was named a "hero for the planet" by Time magazine in 2002 for his work to save the increasingly threatened Amazon rainforest.Full story at Mongabay
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Monkey World gets approval for a home for 70 capuchins
2007-08-08 00:56:00
Alison Cronin (and friend) of Monkey World A new home for 70 capuchin monkeys facing a death sentence in South America can be built near Wool, England planners say.Monkey World applied to Purbeck District Council to replace a monkey house which dated back to the early days of the centre in the mid-1980s with a new 82sqm timber building.The centre plans to rescue monkeys bred in captivity and currently caged in cramped conditions at a research laboratory in Chile.Full Story at Dorset Daily Echo
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Family of Faith
2007-08-07 21:12:00
As Saudi Abuses Continue So Does U.S. SupportBush hosts Saudi King Abdullah at his ranch in 2005A recent report from Human Rights Watch criticized the Saudi Religious Police for fatally beating a man in Riyadh. His alleged crime: possessing alcohol.On May 23, 2007, more than a dozen religious police stormed the Riyadh home of the al-Huraisi family, apparently without a warrant, in search of alcohol, which is banned in the kingdom. Two family members who were present at the time told Human Rights Watch how four religious police then proceeded to punch and kick Salman, the prime suspect, leaving him barely conscious. After taking Salman and 11 other family members to the religious police offices, the religious police beat him again. When he started coughing blood, an ambulance arrived and took Salman away. The autopsy confirmed that Salman died shortly thereafter from the beatings.Saudi Arabia is the Bush administration's closest ally in the Middle East. Because King Abdullah and th...
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Trapped Between People and Property
2007-08-07 00:27:00
The Case for Great Ape PersonhoodIn 1886 the Supreme Court of the United States granted personhood status to the first non-human. In this case it was a corporation and Southern Pacific Railroad (part of robber baron Leland Stanford?s empire) snuck in through a legal loophole to gain full personhood rights under the 14th Amendment.Prior to 1886, dating back to the 1600s, corporations were viewed as ?artificial persons,? a legal turn of phrase that offered certain rights to the companies but without the full rights of citizens. In several recent campaigns, primate rights activists have been advocating for something similar to benefit great apes caught up in the legal purgatory that bridges the gulf between people and property.In the Aug. 13 edition of Newsweek (Monkey See, Monkey Sue) one such case involves a custody battle over Primarily Primates, Inc. based in Texas and Oregon?s Chimps, Inc. PPI was found guilty of animal cruelty after several of the chimps sent there died at th...
More About: People , Property , Ween , Prop , Pert

Why do people walk on two legs? Just ask a chimp
2007-08-06 20:45:00
By Merek SiuBefore stone tools and bigger brains, the first step toward making humans human was a step on two legs.What prompted our ancestors to start striding upright is hotly debated."When you answer that question, you're really answering the question of how did we become human," said Michael Sockol, lead author on a recent study addressing the origins of bipedalism, or walking on two legs.But by studying chimps, researchers found that energy used to walk upright or on all fours varied, enough to suggest it played a role in making us bipedal.Variation in energy spent provided a lever for natural selection, and energy efficiency played a role in getting our ancestors to walk on two legs. The research initiated by Sockol, an anthropology graduate student at the University of California, Davis, was published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."Up to now, we had no evidence that energy was even involved. Now we do," said Sockol.The paper and its hypothesis...
More About: People , Legs , Walk

Women of Influence - Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
2007-08-06 17:59:00
From today's Des Moines Business Record:Dr. Sue Sava ge -Rumbaugh is one of the first scientists on earth to study how bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, use language among themselves and other species, including humans. She conducts her seminal research for the Great Ape Trust of Iowa on a 230-acre Des Moines compound."They don't have the same kind of voice box humans have, so we had to develop another way for them to communicate," Savage-Rumbaugh said.The solution she crafted is called a lexigram - a board covered with 384 symbols, each representing a word. The bonobo can speak by pointing to symbols that substitute for words he or she wants to convey. Some symbols represent actions or what can be touched or seen, like burritos, other bonobos, water, or Savage-Rumbaugh herself. But other symbols stand for moods or concepts such as "yesterday," "secret" and "pretend.""They can now use over 400 symbols and are capable of understanding far more auditory words than that," Savage-Rumbau...
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The "War on Christianity"
2007-08-05 18:18:00
Your Sunday Skepticomic from Atheist Eve:To view last Sunday's comic click here.
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Why Chimpanzees Make Bad Suicide Bombers
2007-08-04 17:04:00
The Evolution of Spite is the Evil Twin of AltruismSomeone walks into a crowded restaurant, looks about the diners calmly, and blows themselves up as well as everyone nearby. Why? This is a scenario that forces us to explain the dark side of human nature. Why do humans have a capacity for such hate that they?ll take their own lives in order to destroy others?A study in the current issue of PNAS on chimpanzee behavior suggests that humans may be alone in this way: a dubious distinction to say the least. In a review published yesterday in the Chicago Tribune the researchers suggest:"Spitefulness may be a peculiarly human trait," said Keith Jensen, a Canadian evolutionary biologist who has been looking to see whether human concepts like fairness and punishment are present in the social organization of another highly socialized species.In biological terms spite is the flip side to altruism and both have posed a thorny issue for evolutionary biologists. While an altruistic act is on...
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Behe admits ?Intelligent Designer? is God on The Colbert Report
2007-08-03 06:34:00
Stephen Colbert , more than any other late night talk show host, has used his alter ego?s ditto-head spin-zone to bring evolutionary scientists to millions of viewers. His interview with Richard Dawkins is one of the best episodes I?ve seen (and I haven?t missed a single one). So I was acutely eager to watch Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe on Thursday night?s show.In classic form Colbert opens up the interview by judging the book by its cover (he doesn't read books, he feels them). Reading from the subtitle The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, Colbert asked ?Should all science begin by looking for where to limit a theory??Behe was naturally stunned. Because as a biochemist he knows (or at least he should) that science only operates when it pushes boundaries and asks tough questions that can be tested experimentally. Behe, instead, waffled by suggesting that because no one in Darwin?s era understood the workings of the cell that, therefore, Darwin is incomplete.That ...
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Brooding Angelmakers
2007-08-02 15:18:00
Offspring Abandonment in the Ancient and Natural World Oedipus Abandoned__ ______ Remiz pendulinus nest In the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex the great kingdom of Thebes is condemned following a case of mistaken identity (and a little patricide). The sordid tale begins when the infant prince is abandoned by his parents after learning of a prophecy that his son will one day murder his father, marry his mother and assume the throne. His ankles pierced with a spike, young Oedipus is sent to be abandoned atop mount Cithaeron.While this tale sets up a beautiful tragedy it also hints at a common reality in both the ancient and natural world. Before the scientific breakthroughs of contraception and abortion such abandonment was commonplace throughout human history. As John Boswell discusses in The American Historical Review:?Abandonment of children provided, in fact, the primary means that ancient and medieval families had for regulati...
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Life Lessons - Dr. Lummaa's Response
2007-08-01 13:59:00
A few weeks ago I called out Bruce Chapman, President of the Discovery Institute, for insulting the work of biologist Virpi Lummaa. Dr. Lummaa found support for the grandmother hypothesis to explain why humans go through menopause. See my earlier post "Life Lessons " here.Dr. Lummaa contacted me with the following response:Dear EricI must say that when I read the title of your email, my heart turned around and I was scared to read what an earth is going on. We recently published a paper in PNAS about the effects of male co-twin testosterone in utero on their sisters, and I have had lots of positive letters from the twins themselves since the publication of the paper... but now I thought someone must have got offended.But it was far more amusing, thanks so much for forwarding this to me. And many thanks for your reply too. I doubt nothing is going to convince these guys though, and if their arguments are that pathetic then I can only laugh.best wishes,VirpiDr. Lummaa is still waitin...
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Dentists Against Darwin
2007-07-31 17:53:00
The Discovery Institute was proudly touting an anti-evolution group calling themselves Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity. According to DI:they have 264 members from 15 different countries and are planning a number of major events in the next 18 months, including a series of public events in Spain this January, titled "What Darwin Didn't Know."Funny thing is though, when I looked at the list of members the largest percentage (after family practitioners) are dentists! While I'm sure that dentistry school is rigorous, last I checked they don't do any research in evolutionary biology. They should though, if this dentist's ignorance is any indication:I honestly don't think that wisdom teeth are good examples of evolution. I'm a dentist and deal with them all the time, and my feeling is that it's more a mix of genes that causes wisdom teeth problems. You inherit large teeth from dad and small jaws from mom... now you're getting surgery to have them removed becaus...
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