john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Archaeology of bling

Sun, 2009-12-27 07:20 -- John Hawks

This is sort of sad: National Geographic News' "Top Ten Archaeology" stories of 2009. The top four all involve buried treasure of some kind.

Oh, and one of them involves vampires.

UPDATE (2009-01-05): A reader writes to suggest I tell everybody these are the top ten by views, not by editor choices. I had hoped that would be apparent to those who read the list; that's the main reason I find it sad!

Tags: 
paleonews
media

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.