Ethnicity and Gender in Museum Representations of Human Evolution

Scientific representations of human evolution often embrace stereotypes of ethnicity and gender that are more aligned with socio-cultural discourses and norms than empirical facts. The present study has two connected aims: to understand how ethnicity and gender are represented in an exhibition about human evolution, and to understand how that representation influences learners’ meaning making. First, we analysed an exhibition with realistic reconstructions of early hominids in a museum of natural history, to identify dualisms related to the representation of gender and ethnicity that have been recognised in research. Then, we studied the processes of meaning making in the exhibition during an out-of-school educational activity, in which groups of teenaged students explore and discuss the hominid reconstructions. Our results show that the exhibition displays human evolution in the form of a linear sequence from a primitive African prehistory to a more advanced European present. Behind this depiction of human evolution lies stereotypic notions of ethnicity and gender: notions that were incorporated into the students’ meaning making during the educational activity. When students noticed aspects of ethnicity, their meaning making did not dispute the messages represented in the exhibition; these were accepted as scientific facts. Conversely, when the students noticed aspects related to gender, they often adopted a more critical stance and challenged the representations from different perspectives. We discuss the implications of our findings for exhibit design and evolution education more generally. In doing so, we offer our perspectives on the design of learning environments to salvage inherently sexist, racist, imperial science.

Thyroid Hormone Signalling in Human Evolution and Disease: A Novel Hypothesis

Thyroid hormone (TH) signalling is a universally conserved pathway with pleiotropic actions that is able to control the development, metabolism, and homeostasis of organisms. Using evidence from paleoecology/palaeoanthropology and data from the physiology of modern humans, we try to assess the natural history of TH signalling and its role in human evolution. Our net thesis is that TH signalling has likely played a critical role in human evolution by facilitating the adaptive responses of early hominids to unprecedently challenging and continuously changing environments. These ancient roles have been conserved in modern humans, in whom TH signalling still responds to and regulates adaptations to present-day environmental and pathophysiological stresses, thus making it a promising therapeutic target.

Towards the restoration of ancient hominid craniofacial anatomy: Chimpanzee morphology reveals covariation between craniometrics and facial soft tissue thickness

In modern humans, facial soft tissue thicknesses have been shown to covary with craniometric dimensions. However, to date it has not been confirmed whether these relationships are shared with non-human apes. In this study, we analyze these relationships in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with the aim of producing regression models for approximating facial soft tissue thicknesses in Plio-Pleistocene hominids. Using CT scans of 19 subjects, 637 soft tissue, and 349 craniometric measurements, statistically significant multiple regression models were established for 26 points on the face and head. Examination of regression model validity resulted in minimal differences between observed and predicted soft tissue thickness values. Assessment of interspecies compatibility using a bonobo (Pan paniscus) and modern human subject resulted in minimal differences for the bonobo but large differences for the modern human. These results clearly show that (1) soft tissue thicknesses covary with craniometric dimensions in P. troglodytes, (2) confirms that such covariation is uniformly present in both extant Homo and Pan species, and (3) suggests that chimp-derived regression models have interspecies compatibility with hominids who have similar craniometric dimensions to P. troglodytes. As the craniometric dimensions of early hominids, such as South African australopithecines, are more similar to P. troglodytes than those of H. sapiens, chimpanzee-derived regression models may be used for approximating their craniofacial anatomy. It is hoped that the results of the present study and the reference dataset for facial soft tissue thicknesses of chimpanzees it provides will encourage further research into this topic.

Burning Planet

Raging wildfires have devastated vast areas of California and Australia in recent years, and predictions are that we will see more of the same in coming years as a result of climate change. But this is nothing new. Since the dawn of life on land, large-scale fires have played their part in shaping life on Earth. Andrew C. Scott tells the whole story of fire's impact on our planet's atmosphere, climate, vegetation, ecology, and the evolution of plant and animal life. It has caused mass extinctions, and it has propelled the spread of flowering plants. The exciting evidence we can now draw on has been preserved in fossilized charcoal, found in rocks hundreds of millions of years old, from all over the world. These reveal incredibly fine details of prehistoric plants, and tell us about climates from deep in earth's history. They also give us insight into how early hominids and humans tamed fire and used it. Looking at the impact of wildfires in our own time, Scott also looks forward to how we might better manage them in future, as climate change has an increasing effect on our world.

Early hominids may have been weed species

Panid, gorillid, and hominid social structures appear to have diverged as dramatically as did their locomotor patterns as they emerged from a late Miocene last common ancestor (LCA). Despite their elimination of the sectorial canine complex and adoption of bipedality with its attendant removal of their ready access to the arboreal canopy, Australopithecus was able to easily invade novel habitats after florescence from its likely ancestral genus, Ardipithecus sp. Other hominoids, unable to sustain sufficient population growth, began an inexorable decline, culminating in their restriction to modern refugia. Success similar to that of earliest hominids also characterizes several species of macaques, often termed “weed species.” We here review their most salient demographic features and find that a key element is irregularly elevated female survival. It is reasonable to conclude that a similar feature characterized early hominids, most likely made possible by the adoption of social monogamy. Reduced female mortality is a more probable key to early hominid success than a reduction in birth space, which would have been physiologically more difficult.

A neurochemical hypothesis for the origin of hominids

It has always been difficult to account for the evolution of certain human characters such as language, empathy, and altruism via individual reproductive success. However, the striatum, a subcortical region originally thought to be exclusively motor, is now known to contribute to social behaviors and “personality styles” that may link such complexities with natural selection. We here report that the human striatum exhibits a unique neurochemical profile that differs dramatically from those of other primates. The human signature of elevated striatal dopamine, serotonin, and neuropeptide Y, coupled with lowered acetylcholine, systematically favors externally driven behavior and greatly amplifies sensitivity to social cues that promote social conformity, empathy, and altruism. We propose that selection induced an initial form of this profile in early hominids, which increased their affiliative behavior, and that this shift either preceded or accompanied the adoption of bipedality and elimination of the sectorial canine. We further hypothesize that these changes were critical for increased individual fitness and promoted the adoption of social monogamy, which progressively increased cooperation as well as a dependence on tradition-based cultural transmission. These eventually facilitated the acquisition of language by elevating the reproductive advantage afforded those most sensitive to social cues.

Of Killer Apes and Tender Carnivores

The evolutionary emergence of the human species in a predatory niche has often been seen as the root cause of all the bloodshed and aggression that besets the human condition, particularly religious violence. This is certainly the case with the thought of Walter Burkert and René Girard, both of whom argue that, because the earliest humans were hunters, collective murder or “sacrifice” is the founding practice of all religions. Consequently, for them, the dark specter of bloodshed and violence lies at the heart of all religious thought. However, Burkert’s and Girard’s accounts rest on unexamined and problematic assumptions concerning predation, hunting and violence. Specifically, their characterization of predation and prehistoric hunting peoples as intrinsically aggressive is both ecologically and anthropologically naïve and ill-informed. By contrast, the ecologist Paul Shepard’s empirically informed account challenges not only the link between aggression and predation but also that between hunting and sacrifice. He argues that, far from producing a “killer ape,” the evolutionary transition of early hominids into a predatory niche resulted in a “tender carnivore” with an increased capacity for empathy with other humans and animals. Furthermore, he argues that blood sacrifice, far from lying with hunting at the dawn of human history, in fact emerged with the advent of agriculture and domestication. Thus, in challenging the commonly held association between hunting, violence and sacrifice, Shepard is asking us to rethink our understanding of the sacramentality of hunting, nature and life itself.

An Acheulean biface from the Deh Luran Plain, Iran

In 1960, Robert Braidwood discovered, by chance, an Acheulean biface at Gakia, Kermanshah Province, in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran (Braidwood 1960). Since then, only around ten Lower Palaeolithic sites have been identified on the Iranian Plateau, most of which are open-air sites (see Biglari & Shidrang 2006). Despite growing interest in the Palaeolithic of Iran over the past decade, studies generally continue to focus on particular sites and are largely concerned with the technology and typology of raw materials. A major problem for studies of the Lower Palaeolithic, in particular, is the rarity of cave sites, making it very difficult to study the behaviour of the early hominids through excavation. This paper reports the discovery of an Acheulean biface during a survey of the Deh Luran Plain to the south of the plateau, adding to the picture of human dispersal during the Pleistocene.