Human Evolution and Paleoanthropology

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder, for yet another subject I find interesting but don't really understand. (The fact that I write this, and then go on to recommend things I've read, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about these notebooks.)

William Calvin, The Ascent of Mind
Esther Herrmann, Josep Call, María Victoria Hernàndez-Lloreda, Brian Hare and Michael Tomasello, "Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis", Science 317 (2007): 1360--1366
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
- The Woman Who Never Evolved
- Mother Nature
Adam Powell, Stephen Shennan and Mark G. Thomas, "Late Pleistocene Demography and the Appearance of Modern Human Behavior", Science 324 (2009): 1298--1301
Wiktor Stoczkowski, Explaining Human Origins: Myth, Imagination, and Conjecture [Or, why does Lucretius sound so startlingly modern? My comments]

Alan Barnard, Social Anthropology and Human Origins
Robert A. Barton and Chris Venditti, "Human frontal lobes are not relatively large", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 110 (2013): 9001--9006
Kyle S. Brown, Curtis W. Marean, Zenobia Jacobs, Benjamin J. Schoville, Simen Oestmo, Erich C. Fisher, Jocelyn Bernatchez, Panagiotis Karkanas and Thalassa Matthews, "An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa", Nature 491 (2012): 590--593
Susan Cachel, Primate and Human Evolution
Anders Eriksson and Lia Betti and Andrew D. Friend and Lycett, Stephen J. and Singarayer, Joy S. and von Cramon-Taubadel, Noreen and Valdes, Paul J. and Balloux, Francois and Manica, Andrea, "Late Pleistocene climate change and the global expansion of anatomically modern humans", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 109 (2012): 16089--16094
Patrick D. Evans, Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov, Eric J. Vallender, Richard R. Hudson, and Bruce T. Lahn, "Evidence that the adaptive allele of the brain size gene microcephalin introgressed into Homo sapiens from an archaic Homo lineage", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 103 (2007): 18178--18183 [Not from the Monolith?]
Dean Falk and Kathleen R. Gibson (eds.), Evolutionary Anatomy of the Primate Cerebral Cortex
Clive Finlayson, Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective
Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal, "Context modulates signal meaning in primate communication", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 104 (2007): 1581--1586
Michael Haslam, Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar, Victoria Ling, Susana Carvalho, Ignacio de la Torre, April DeStefano, Andrew Du, Bruce Hardy, Jack Harris, Linda Marchant, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, William McGrew, Julio Mercader, Rafael Mora, Michael Petraglia, Helene Roche, Elisabetta Visalberghi and Rebecca Warren, "Primate archaeology", Nature 460 (2009): 339--344
Brenna M. Henn, L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus W. Feldman, "The Great Human Expansion", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 109 (2012): 17758--17764
Lynne A. Isbell, The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent: Why We See So Well [I am curious to see how she explains the fact that other primates do not point to focus shared attention, or have language.]
Barbara J. King, The Information Continuum: Evolution of Social Information Transfer in Monkeys, Apes, and Hominids
Richard G. Klein and Blake Edgar, The Dawn of Human Culture
Kevin Laland and Amanda Seed, "Understanding Human Cognitive Uniqueness", Annual Review of Psychology 72 (2021): 689--716
Stephen C Levinson and Pierre Jaisson (eds.), Evolution and Culture: A Fyssen Foundation Symposium
Elisabeth A. Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution
Haim Ofek, Second Nature: Economic Origins of Human Evolution
Michael C. Oldham, Steve Horvath and Daniel H. Geschwind, "Conservation and evolution of gene coexpression networks in human and chimpanzee brains", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 103 (2006): 17973--17978
Sue Taylor Parker and Michael L. McKinney, Origins of Intelligence: The Evolution of Cognitive Development in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans [review by Clive D. L. Wynne in American Scientist. Whatever its other merits, the cover is inspired.]
Duane Quiatt and Vernon Reynolds, Primate Behaviour: Information, Social Knowledge, and the Evolution of Culture
Gerhard Roth and Ursula Dicke, "Evolution of the brain and intelligence", Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005): 250--257
Sigrid Schmaler, The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China
Robert W. Shumaker, Kristina R. Walkup, and Benjamin B. Beck, blurbAnimal Tool Behavior: The Use and Manufacture of Tools by Animals [Contrast cases, as it were.]
Georg F. Striedter, "Precis of Principles of Brain Evolution", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (2006): 1--12 [With extensive peer commentary following]
Karen B. Strier, Primate Behavioral Ecology
Pierre-Jean Texier, Guillaume Porraz, John Parkington, Jean-Philippe Rigaud, Cedric Poggenpoel, Christopher Miller, Chantal Tribolo, Caroline Cartwright, Aude Coudenneau, Richard Klein, Teresa Steele, and Christine Verna, "A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 107 (2010): 6180--6185
Gary Tomlinson, Culture and the Course of Human Evolution
Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, Sergio Rojo, Katrin Heimann, Nicolas Fay, Niels N. Johannsen, Felix Riede, and Marlize Lombard, "The evolution of early symbolic behavior in Homo sapiens", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 117 (2020): 4578--4584
Peter S. Ungar, Evolution's Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins
Adam P. Van Arsdale, "Population Demography, Ancestry, and the Biological Concept of Race", Annual Review of Anthropology 48 (2019): 227--241
S. G. Webb, The First Boat People [Somewhat eccentric-sounding theory about the peopling of Australia]
Ken Wessen, Simulating Human Origins and Evolution
João Zilhão, Diego E. Angelucci, Ernestina Badal-García, Francesco d'Errico, Floréal Daniel, Laure Dayet, Katerina Douka, Thomas F. G. Higham, María José Martínez-Sánchez, Ricardo Montes-Bernárdez, Sonia Murcia-Mascarós, Carmen Pérez-Sirvent, Clodoaldo Roldán-García, Marian Vanhaeren, Valentín Villaverde, Rachel Woodg, and Josefina Zapata, "Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 107 (2010): 1023--1028