Human evolution ≈ Human evolution
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Southern African ancient genomes estimate modern human divergence to 350,000 to 260,000 years ago Open
Ancient DNA pushes human emergence back Anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa, but pinpointing when has been difficult. Schlebusch et al. sequenced three ancient African genomes from the Stone Age, about 2000 years old, and four fro…
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On the origin of modern humans: Asian perspectives Open
The peopling of Asia In recent years, there has been increasing focus on the paleoanthropology of Asia, particularly the migration patterns of early modern humans as they spread out of Africa. Bae et al. review the current state of the Lat…
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The origin and evolution of<i>Homo sapiens</i> Open
If we restrict the use of Homo sapiens in the fossil record to specimens which share a significant number of derived features in the skeleton with extant H. sapiens , the origin of our species would be placed in the African late middle Ple…
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What is cumulative cultural evolution? Open
In recent years, the phenomenon of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has become the focus of major research interest in biology, psychology and anthropology. Some researchers argue that CCE is unique to humans and underlies our extraordi…
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The evolution of modern human brain shape Open
The evolutionary process leading to human brain globularity was gradual and paralleled the emergence of behavioral modernity.
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Quantitative assessment of prefrontal cortex in humans relative to nonhuman primates Open
Significance A longstanding controversy in neuroscience pertains to differences in human prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared with other primate species; specifically, is human PFC disproportionately large? Distinctively human behavioral capac…
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Genomic landscape of human diversity across Madagascar Open
Significance The origins of the Malagasy raise questions about ancient connections between continents; moreover, because ancestors are fundamental to Malagasy society, Malagasy origins is also a heated topic around the country, with numero…
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Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France Open
Determining the extent of overlap between modern humans and other hominins in Eurasia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, is fundamental to understanding the nature of their interactions and what led to the disappearance of archaic homin…
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Great apes distinguish true from false beliefs in an interactive helping task Open
Understanding the behavior of others in a wide variety of circumstances requires an understanding of their psychological states. Humans' nearest primate relatives, the great apes, understand many psychological states of others, for example…
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Rapid evolution of the human mutation spectrum Open
DNA is a remarkably precise medium for copying and storing biological information. This high fidelity results from the action of hundreds of genes involved in replication, proofreading, and damage repair. Evolutionary theory suggests that …
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Devolution and corruption in Kenya: Everyone's turn to eat? Open
How does decentralization affect patronage and rent seeking? While centralization is seen as enabling these practices, many expect decentralization to reduce them. With few examples of meaningful reform it is difficult to establish if this…
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The evolution and changing ecology of the African hominid oral microbiome Open
Significance The microbiome plays key roles in human health, but little is known about its evolution. We investigate the evolutionary history of the African hominid oral microbiome by analyzing dental biofilms of humans and Neanderthals sp…
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Human generation times across the past 250,000 years Open
The generation times of our recent ancestors can tell us about both the biology and social organization of prehistoric humans, placing human evolution on an absolute time scale. We present a method for predicting historical male and female…
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Fine-Scale Human Population Structure in Southern Africa Reflects Ecogeographic Boundaries Open
Recent genetic studies have established that the KhoeSan populations of southern Africa are distinct from all other African populations and have remained largely isolated during human prehistory until ∼2000 years ago. Dozens of different K…
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The Archaeology of Teaching and the Evolution of<i>Homo docens</i> Open
CITATION: Gärdenfors, P. & Högberg, A. 2017. The Archaeology of Teaching and the Evolution of Homo docens. Current Anthropology, 58(2):188-208. doi:10.1086/691178.
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Evolutionary expansion of connectivity between multimodal association areas in the human brain compared with chimpanzees Open
The development of complex cognitive functions during human evolution coincides with pronounced encephalization and expansion of white matter, the brain’s infrastructure for region-to-region communication. We investigated adaptations of th…
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Tales of Human Migration, Admixture, and Selection in Africa Open
In the last three decades, genetic studies have played an increasingly important role in exploring human history. They have helped to conclusively establish that anatomically modern humans first appeared in Africa roughly 250,000–350,000 y…
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Convergent evolution in human and domesticate adaptation to high-altitude environments Open
Humans and their domestic animals have lived and thrived in high-altitude environments worldwide for thousands of years. These populations have developed a number of adaptations to survive in a hypoxic environment, and several genomic stud…
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Pleistocene sediment DNA reveals hominin and faunal turnovers at Denisova Cave Open
Denisova Cave in southern Siberia is the type locality of the Denisovans, an archaic hominin group who were related to Neanderthals 1–4 . The dozen hominin remains recovered from the deposits also include Neanderthals 5,6 and the child of …
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Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years Open
This paper reviews some of the main advances in our understanding of human evolution over the last 1 million years, presenting a holistic overview of a field defined by interdisciplinary approaches to studying the origins of our species. W…
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Khoe-San Genomes Reveal Unique Variation and Confirm the Deepest Population Divergence in Homo sapiens Open
The southern African indigenous Khoe-San populations harbor the most divergent lineages of all living peoples. Exploring their genomes is key to understanding deep human history. We sequenced 25 full genomes from five Khoe-San populations,…
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The colours of humanity: the evolution of pigmentation in the human lineage Open
Humans are a colourful species of primate, with human skin, hair and eye coloration having been influenced by a great variety of evolutionary forces throughout prehistory. Functionally naked skin has been the physical interface between the…
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Using hominin introgression to trace modern human dispersals Open
The dispersal of anatomically modern human populations out of Africa and across much of the rest of the world around 55 to 50 thousand years before present (ka) is recorded genetically by the multiple hominin groups they met and interbred …
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New footprints from Laetoli (Tanzania) provide evidence for marked body size variation in early hominins Open
Laetoli is a well-known palaeontological locality in northern Tanzania whose outstanding record includes the earliest hominin footprints in the world (3.66 million years old), discovered in 1978 at Site G and attributed to Australopithecus…
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The origins of the Acheulean: past and present perspectives on a major transition in human evolution Open
The emergence of the Acheulean from the earlier Oldowan constitutes a major transition in human evolution, the theme of this special issue. This paper discusses the evidence for the origins of the Acheulean, a cornerstone in the history of…
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The spatiotemporal patterns of major human admixture events during the European Holocene Open
Recent studies have shown that admixture has been pervasive throughout human history. While several methods exist for dating admixture in contemporary populations, they are not suitable for sparse, low coverage ancient genomic data. Thus, …
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Evolution of mechanisms and behaviour important for pain Open
Our understanding of the biology of pain is limited by our ignorance about its evolution. We know little about how states in other species showing various degrees of apparent similarity to human pain states are related to human pain, or ho…
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Unraveling the evolution of uniquely human cognition Open
A satisfactory account of human cognitive evolution will explain not only the psychological mechanisms that make our species unique, but also how, when, and why these traits evolved. To date, researchers have made substantial progress towa…
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Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago Open
Significance Decreases in hunter-gatherer mobility during the Late Pleistocene altered relationships with animal communities and led to domestication. Little is known, however, about how selection operated in settlements of varying duratio…
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Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition Open
Population size history is essential for studying human evolution. However, ancient population size history during the Pleistocene is notoriously difficult to unravel. In this study, we developed a fast infinitesimal time coalescent proces…