Homo religiosus - The Natural History of Religion | Biology of Religion. There are still many people around who claim an inevitable enmity between science and religions. But in the last years, scientists from different fields and backgrounds started to explore religiosity (here defined as behavior toward supernatural agents) from the perspective of evolutionary theory. We agree that questions of existence or nonexistence of supernatural agents as ancestors, spirits, bodhisattvas or God may be beyond the scope of empirical sciences, but that we may explore religious behavior, its workings and functions with the same scientific respect and curiosity as any other natural, biocultural trait (i.e. musicality or speaking). The question from the perspective of evolutionary biology is: Why do people among all human populations invest so much time and energy in religious activities? Why did Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis start to bury their dead as early the middle paleolithic, increasingly accompanied by rituals and gifts to the dead?
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Technological evolution and intelligence « EvoAnth. Archaeologists love to categorise things. It helps turn vague interpretations into concrete groupings (or typologies), speeding up the analysis of finds and allowing a quick and easy comparison between sites; even permitting one to track the evolution of technology by identifying changes between groups. The first such “evolutionary” typology came from Denmark and postulated there was a Stone Age, followed by the Bronze Age and finally the Iron Age. Despite being first suggested over two hundred years ago, the “three age” system is still used today. Its even found its way into popular culture, being the technological evolution you undergo in the game “Age of Empires“. Which means playing this counts as studying, right? However, nothing really happened in the Bronze and Iron ages. But how can one track the evolution of sharp rocks into sharp rocks on sticks if they’re both considered “Stone Age?”
This is where the mode system comes in. “I could make a civilisation, I choose not too” Exhibition uses forensics to rebuild 27 faces of man's ancestors, stretching back 7m years. Models built from forensic reconstruction of fossil skullsReconstructs face age when humans and chimps shared common ancestryAncestors from when 'hominids' first emerged in Africa By Rob Waugh Updated: 21:58 GMT, 6 January 2012 An exhibition in Dresden, Germany has used forensic technology to recreate some of the most distant members of the human evolutionary 'family' - ancestors stretching back seven million years. The 27 model heads were created using fossil remains, and includes a glimpse of sahelanthropus tchadensis, an ancestor dated to about seven million years ago, when our 'hominid 'ancestors' first originated in Africa.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis lived seven million years ago - before the divergence of man and our closest evolutionary cousins, chimpanzees Homo rudolfensis lived around two million years ago. The remains were found in Kenya - it's still not entirely clear where this ancestor fits into human evolution Australopithecus Africanus lived around two milion years ago. Robert Sapolsky: Are Humans Just Another Primate? On the Origin of Cooperative Species: New study reverses a decade of research claiming chimpanzee selfishness | The Primate Diaries.
A new study reverses a decade of research claiming chimpanzee selfishness. "Sharing is Caring" by Nathaniel Gold Charles Darwin had more in common with chimpanzees than even he realized. Before he was universally known for his theory of natural selection, the young naturalist was faced with one of the great moral choices in the history of science. The decision he made has long been hailed as the type of behavior that fundamentally separates humans from other apes. But a new study reveals for the first time that thinking of others unites humans and chimpanzees in a cooperative bond that reaches across two epochs to the very evolutionary ancestor Darwin predicted. On the morning of June 18, 1858, a parcel arrived that threatened to undo the originality of Darwin’s masterwork. “Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters,” Darwin wrote, almost in a panic.
What should he do? Figure 1. Figure 2. As Carl Sagan famously wrote, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Reference: Chimps vs. Humans: How Are We Different? "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you. " That's the longest string of words that Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who scientists raised as a human and taught sign language in the 1970s, ever signed. He was the subject of Project Nim, an experiment conducted by cognitive scientists at Columbia University to investigate whether chimps can learn language. After years of exposing Nim to all things human, the researchers concluded that although he did learn to express demands — the desire for an orange, for instance — and knew 125 words, he couldn't fully grasp language, at least as they defined it.
Language requires not just vocabulary but also syntax, they argued. "Give orange me," for example, means something different than "give me orange. " Many cognitive scientists believe that humans' ability to innovate by varying syntax engenders much of the richness and complexity of our thoughts and ideas.
Stance Strength Conversation Why does he think that? Genes. Osher UCSD: Redrawing Lines Between Chimps and Humans - UCSD-TV - University of California Television. Place de l'Homme dans l'évolution - SVT en ligne. RACE - Are We So Different? :: A Project of the American Anthropological Association. Trace Your Ancestry with DNA - DNA Ancestry Project. Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution. Human Evolution: The fossil evidence in 3D. Welcome to the UCSB online 3D gallery of modern primate relatives and fossil ancestors of humans. This gallery contains five modern primate crania, and five fossil crania.
The crania can be rotated 360 degrees. Each cranium is accompanied by a short description of its relevance to human evolution, and a site map. You will need the Shockwave plugin from Macromedia to view this gallery (most browsers have this installed already). Click here to enter the gallery. Click here for information on the much largerCD-ROM version. Trouble viewing the gallery? The gallery was developed by Phillip Walker and Ed Hagen, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara. This site also hosts the Evolutionary Psychology FAQ. Fossil Hominids: the evidence for human evolution. Un Homme moderne vieux de 32000 ans découvert en Crimée. Fabrice Leclerc: ""Q&A: Who is H. sapiens Re. Hominidés - Préhistoire - Homme en évolution de Toumai à Homo Sapiens. The Neandertal Genome - Background. Evidence | How Do We Know What We Know? | Human Origins.
The Leakey Foundation. TheLeakeyFoundation's Channel Human evolution. Smithsonian Human Origins Program - Smithsonian National Museum. Becoming Human.