Word: homo
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...second son of famed paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey, Richard first burst into global prominence in 1972 when his team in Kenya unearthed a beautifully preserved 1.9 million-year-old skull of Homo habilis, an early hominid species first discovered by his parents. Ian Tattersall, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, observes that the younger Leakey has more than his share of luck. "Louis Leakey had to crawl over hot rocky outcrops for 30 years before he found anything of importance; Richard struck gold from the start." Roger Lewin, collaborator on three...
...long been presumed that either Neanderthals were the ancestors of modern humans or they died out before Homo sapiens showed up. But new, extremely accurate radioactive dating of bones dug up in Israel shows both Neanderthals and people like us lived in the same place at the same time -- raising the interesting question of whether Neanderthals were victims of species cleansing...
...Homo Querulosus--This species is also known as the Protester. A common misconception is that for each cause, there is a different species. But all protesters, from the Old Fogeys-to-be of AALARM to the myriad of screechy hyperactivists of the left are cut from the same cloth. They are blowfish inflated with self-righteousness--never upset but "shocked" and "outraged." A profoundly masochistic breed, they are never so gleeful as when they are aggrieved. Conversely, they are never so lost, dejected, and confused as when they get what they want. Rather than suffer from such a fate...
...other animals developed big brains. Gorillas, orangutans and bonobos are roughly the intellectual peers of chimps but rarely resort to tool use. Nor does the need to build tools fully account for the enormous expansion of human brainpower during the past million years. As recently as 100,000 B.C., Homo sapiens were using only the crudest tools, even though their brains had already reached the present size -- large enough to put men on the moon, probe the basis of matter and tinker with the genetic code. Because big brains need a lot of high- calorie food and require large craniums...
...became larger, the need to keep track of ever more complex social interactions was what really pushed the human brain toward superiority. Both dolphins and chimps have very complex interactions, but the intricacy of their social world pales beside the lattice of entanglements that characterized human society as early Homo sapiens banded together to gather food and defend themselves. In Somalia today, warring clans identify friend or foe by demanding that those accosted recite their ancestry going back many generations. It is easy to see how similar challenges in antiquity might have driven the development of brainpower...