john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

The sixth sense

Wed, 2009-09-23 08:30 -- John Hawks

Quinn Norton started wearing a vibrating compass to her leg to experiment with sense augmentation: "My New Sense Organ"

I returned home to Washington DC to find that, far worse than my old haunt San Francisco, my mental map of DC swapped north for west. I started getting more lost than ever as the two spatial concepts of DC did battle in my head. Eventually, the Northpaw won, and the NW/NE/SW/SE on DC street signs started making a whole lot more sense.

Tags: 
biotech
future
enhancement

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.