by Christine Kenneally BH | Oct 30, 2007 | Books
With his characteristic flair ("verbivores," "whimperatives," "malefactive verbs," "momentaneous events"), Pinker picks language apart to reveal the conceptual scaffolds and preoccupations that underlie it, including pervasive...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Oct 18, 2007 | FoxP2, Genes, Neandertals
It was announced today that Neandertals had the same version of the FoxP2 gene that humans do. Because it’s thought that our particular version of FoxP2 is involved in speech and language, it may be that Neandertals also had these skills. It’ll be...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Oct 16, 2007 | FoxP2
Finally, I’m catching up on the bat FoxP2 news. The FoxP2 gene appears to be crucial in humans, quite possibly for the role it played in language evolution. It looks like human FoxP2 changed as a result of adaptation, and so now does FoxP2 in bats. FoxP2 in bats...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Oct 16, 2007 | Homo floresiensis
More evidence that the hobbit, a newly discovered human-like species that grew to only a meter in adulthood, is actually a separate species. Critics suggested that the hobbit, found on the Indonesian island of Flores, was not a separate species but a deformed human. A...
by Christine Kenneally BH | Oct 16, 2007 | Genes, Neandertals
More news from one the teams sequencing the Neandertal genome. Our large cousins traveled at least 2000 miles further than thought. Mitochondrial DNA analyses carried out by Svante Paabo and colleagues show that Neandertals traveled to central Asia and Siberia, and...
