john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

"It cost too much, staying human."

Thu, 2006-11-02 11:46 -- John Hawks

Wired is running a feature with short stories in 6 words, by famous authors -- mainly sci-fi but with a mix of some others.

Some are trivial, others fairly profound, but all interesting, and all of them presented within artsy-type illustrations. The post title is my favorite, by Bruce Sterling, but there is also this one from Orson Scott Card:

The baby's blood type? Human, mostly.

And the model of them all is a very poignant 6-word Hemingway story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Tags: 
society

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.