john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Book recommendation

Tue, 2009-12-01 17:30 -- John Hawks

I was in a conversation last night about a book I had really enjoyed this year, and I remarked that I had meant to review it on the blog and hadn't done it yet. The book is Dale Guthrie's The Nature of Paleolithic Art, which I enjoyed for the text and his style of analysis, but most especially for the many hundreds of hand-rendered drawings of Paleolithic cave art.

It's a tremendous body of work. I may write more when I get home this week, but in the meantime, it's a great gift for artists or people who like art, with an interest in the prehistoric. And it's at a great price.

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.