30 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
"Run the Tape Again"
Run the tape again, and let the tiny twig of Homo sapiens expire in Africa. Other hominids may have stood on the threshold of what we know as human possibilities, but many sensible scenarios would never generate our level of mentality. Run the tape again, and this time Neanderthal perishes in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia (as they did in our world). The sole surviving human stock, Homo erectus in Africa, stumbles along for a while, even prospers, but does not speciate and therefore remains ... 1 
notes
notesWe are here by luck, not fate.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Sifting Through Photographs of Our Ancestors to See Evolu...
Find a picture of yourself. Now take a picture of your father and place it on top. Then find a picture of his father, your grandfather. Then place on top of that a picture of your grandfather's father, your great-grandfather. You may not have ever met any of your great-grandfathers. I never met any of mine, but I know that one was a country schoolmaster, one a country doctor, one a forester in British India, and one a lawyer, greedy for cream, who died rock-climbing in old age. Still, even if...
1 A great thought-experiment that takes us all the way back to when our ancestor was a fish, but shows us that the neighbors of any ancestor looked identical.
04 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Neoteny in Humans
...the concept of "neoteny"—the retention of juvenile features into adult life. It is a commonplace of human evolution that the transition from Australopithecus to Homo and from Homo habilis to Homo erectus and thence to Homo sapiens all involved prolonging and slowing the development of the body so that it still looked like a baby when it was already mature. The relatively large brain case and small jaw, the slender limbs, the hairless skin, the unrotated big toe, the thin bones, even the ex...
1 Adult humans look like baby chimpanzees
03 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
A lot happens in 100k Years of Evolution
Inside my skull is a brain that was designed to exploit the conditions of an African savanna between 3 million and 100,000 years ago. When my ancestors moved into Europe (I am a white European by descent) about 100,000 years ago, they quickly evolved a set of physiological features to suit the sunless climate of northern latitudes: pale skin to prevent rickets, male beards, and a circulation relatively resistant to frostbite. But little else changed: Skull size, body proportions, and teeth ar...Folksonomies: evolution human evolution
Folksonomies: evolution human evolution
A brief descriptions of the characteristics acquired in 100,000 years of human history.
Summaries of comments made during the science art session by artists and audience members:
- Hawks – interested in reconstruction, detailed realism, Neanderthal terminator, there is a tradition in anthropology of illustrating, Neanderthal are reconstructed to look doomed and confused, like it when illustrators and artists bring humanity into them, humor, Kenise Brothers give smiles to them, pose them, which isn’t scientific because we don’t know these things, but also more scientific because it isn’t so clinical
- Orr – orogenic.blogspot.com geometric, abstract illustrations of birds
- Links ot other artists on the wiki page: Carl Buell, etc http://scio11.wikispaces.com/Science-Art
- Radiohead/Nine Inch Nails Model: put a lot free stuff online in hopes of eventually being hired to do something custom, people expect images for free
- Criticism of Mellow's Darwin painting: the steps were too linear, it should have been a bush growing out of his head
- Svpow.wordpress.com – fantasy images of brachiosaurs, not scientifically accurate, but memorable. Brian Ang.
- My Favorite Anthropology Sculpture of Homo Erectus at the Hall of Human Origins - post a link to this image in the wiki.
- The monkey rising to become man iconic image is really wrong and hurts evolution’s image outside of the field. Mitochondria is another example, in cells they are not blobs, but are networked.
