Modern humans evolved around 195,065 years ago (give or take a few thousand). What did we learn about in the last year about all those ones that came before it? Look no further for answers. Here are the top 6 news stories about human evolution published here at EvoAnth in 2014.
6. Evolutionary Pyschology is full of pseudoscience
Evolutionary psychology attempts to understand how evolution has shaped our thought processes and behaviours. It's a fascinating field that has the potential to tell us a lot about ourselves and our ancestors. When it's done right.
Which, as this post shows, seems to be in the minority of cases. 3/4 of EP research focuses on Westerners, a sample too narrow to make reliable inferences about the entirety of humanity and our evolution from. This isn't that popular, having only come out this week. But I'm including it because it's the result of my thesis; so holds a special place in my heart. And I'm the one writing this damn list, so I get to put what I want on it.
Make me happy and go read it!5. Neanderthal genes helped humans adapt
Advances in genetics made 2014 full of discoveries about our ancestors' genes. Like recovering the oldest hominin DNA ever. But perhaps the most interesting of all these stories (and most popular, it turns out) was the revelation that some of the genes we inherited from the Neanderthals helped us survive.
Prehistoric Europe was a cold, harsh, unfamiliar place for modern humans. Interbreeding with the Neanderthals appears to have given modern humans some of the genes that helped us adapt and survive in this new world.
4. The hobbit didn't have Down syndrome
The hobbit ( Homo floresiensis) is a fascinating human relative, being quite primitive looking yet living very recently. Also it was ruddy tiny, hence the name. In fact, it's so odd that some people don't think it existed. Instead it was simply a modern human with some sort of disease. So every few years a paper comes out going "the hobbit didn't exist, it was just a human with X"
This post refutes this years such outing, which argued that it was just a human with Down syndrome because of...reasons. I honestly don't remember, I tried to exorcise the BS from my brain once I'd finished writing about it. But whatever it was it was popular enough to be quite high on this list.
Find out what I can't remember by reading the post!3. The human brain is shrinking
People often think of human evolution as this inevitable march of progress. We've evolved to be better and better over the past few million years. Surely it'll keep going?
Maybe not. This post details research that reveals how the human brain has actually decreased in size over the past few thousand years. Although this doesn't seem to have influenced our intelligence, it's still a fascinating find. Are we outsourcing our intellect to technology? Is our brain just getting more efficient and information dense?
Stop your brain shrinkage and read the post!2. There's more than one Lucy
One of the big events early this year was the (in)famouse debate over creationism between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. Unsurprisingly it did not resolve the debate and there were no mass conversions as a result. However, one practical thing did come of it: we found out many young earth creationists are very misinformed about human evolution.
Attendees were seen afterwords asking "why is there only one Lucy?", as though that was some sort of challenge to human evolution. The fact is that there's a lot more than just one Lucy. This post, one of the most popular of the year, lists a few of my favourite examples.
Beat the creationists by reading the post!1. Prehistoric female hunters
And the number one most popular human evolution post of 2014 (that I thought was interesting enough to talk about again)
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Drum roll please
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Prehistoric female hunter gatherers! 12,000 years ago someone decided to engrave an antler with a picture of some people hunting. And one of those people seems to be a female. The implication is obvious: women hunted back in prehistoric times.
Is this an interesting revelation? Or maybe we're just going into archaeology with more biases than we thought, which makes things like this seem interesting? Regardless, this became one of the most popular posts of the year; and of all time.
So you really should go read it!
