CARTA - Anthropogeny (Audio)

Leslie Aiello (Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) reviews the historical development of ideas in relation to the evolution of bipediality. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23670]

Jeremy DeSilva (Boston University) shares his insights into the foot and ankle diversity of australopiths and refutes the hypothesis that there is only one kinematic way to be a striding biped. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23664]

Steven Churchill (Duke University) talks about the evolution of the human pelvis and the major architectural changes which reflect an improvement in the ability of this structure to engage in bipedal locomotion.

Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23663]

In the classic nature-nurture dichotomy, nature has a stronger or weaker influence on nurture, but certainly nurture was supposed to have no impact on nature. Human culture is often taken to be a form of nurture. However, culture itself has evolutionary properties. In particular, culture generates novel environments that in turn select for novel genes. A few dramatic cases of this effect are well known and many more are suspected. Peter Richerson, UC Davis, explains why the nature-nurture dichotomy is an impediment to clear thinking and should be abandoned. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24108]

Indo-European languages are native to populations from Ireland to Afghanistan and India and, in historical times, to the Tarim Basin in China. This spread occurred within a few thousand years carried by people who were mostly horse pastoralists and who carried a mutant regulator of the lactase gene so that they could as adults digest milk sugar. Henry Harpending, University of Utah, discusses how individuals with such lactase persistence are able to extract 40% more calories from milk, while others usually ferment away the milk sugar lactose by making cheese or yogurt. While superior technology of invaders can be adapted by indigenous people, such a biological advantage cannot be copied. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24112]

As our australopithecine ancestors moved out of receding rain forests and into drier habitats, they abandoned a primarily fruit-based diet and began consuming more meat and tubers. This increase in consumption of protein, fat, and starch coincided in time with important evolutionary changes in cognition and brain size. Gregory Wray, Duke University, discusses how genetic and genomic methods are providing insights into the relationship between these two parallel sets of adaptations. Several genes have now been identified that may have mediated a link between changes in diet and changes in behavior during human origins. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24110]

What constitutes the essential behavior of our species is contentious. Evolutionary scenarios leading to both the capacity for and practice of these essential behaviors are even more debated. Genetics, cognitive and evolutionary psychology, morphology, reconstructions of climate variation, and the archaeology of human behavior all provide pathways to explore these questions. This presentation by Alison Brooks, George Washington University, will review the evidence for the accumulation of distinctive human behaviors in a comparative framework. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24107]

The history of human evolution and dispersal was associated with remarkable environmental challenges to those processes that maintain stable physiological conditions. Indeed, environmental change over time and over space has been a major feature of human evolution. Though many adaptations undoubtedly occurred at the cultural and behavioral levels, the striking variation of human phenotypes suggests that adaptations also involved genetic changes. Cultural changes, e.g. different modes of subsistence or diets, in turn created new selective pressures. Anna Di Rienzo, University of Chicago, has developed approaches to test for the impact that selective pressures associated with specific environmental factors have had on the human genome. Using these approaches, she and her colleagues identify adaptations to selective pressures related to climate as well as diet and subsistence. Some of these beneficial alleles were selected in multiple continents while others represent continent-specific adaptations. Interestingly, many alleles strongly correlated with climate variables also influence risk to diseases of the immune response. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24109]

Carol Ward (University of Missouri) reviews the growing, although still imperfect, evidence for torso form in apes and early hominins, and relates that to hypotheses about the origins and early evolution of hominin bipedality. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23667]

Efforts to reconstruct gait and other aspects of behavior in extinct hominins continue to be hampered by disagreements over how to interpret anatomical evidence from the fossil record. Brian Richmond (George Washington University) offers unique evidence about early Pleistocene hominin gait and foot shape based on his recent discovery of hominin footprints in the Koobi Fora Formation, Kenya (1.52 Ma). Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23666]