Category archives: Anthropology

How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution

How a handful of prehistoric geniuses launched humanity’s technological revolution

AnthropologyEvolution

By Invited Researcher

For the first few million years of human evolution, technologies changed slowly. Some three million years ago, our ancestors were making chipped stone flakes and crude choppers. Two million years ago, hand-axes. A million years ago, primitive humans sometimes used fire, but with difficulty. Then, 500,000 years ago, technological change accelerated, as spearpoints, firemaking, axes […]

Archaeology in West Africa could rewrite the textbooks on human evolution

Archaeology in West Africa could rewrite the textbooks on human evolution

AnthropologyArchaeology

By Invited Researcher

Our species, Homo sapiens, rose in Africa some 300,000 years ago. The objects that early humans made and used, known as the Middle Stone Age material culture, are found throughout much of Africa and include a vast range of innovations. Among them are bow and arrow technology, specialised tool forms, the long-distance transport of objects […]

When did we become fully human? What fossils and DNA tell us about the evolution of modern intelligence

When did we become fully human? What fossils and DNA tell us about the evolution of modern intelligence

Anthropology

By Invited Researcher

When did something like us first appear on the planet? It turns out there’s remarkably little agreement on this question. Fossils and DNA suggest people looking like us, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. Surprisingly, archaeology – tools, artefacts, cave art – suggest that complex technology and cultures, “behavioural modernity”, evolved more […]

The Enlightenment wars (& 3): but…what kind of humanism do we need?

The Enlightenment wars (& 3): but…what kind of humanism do we need?

AnthropologyEconomicsHistory

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

In the two previous entries (1, 2) of this series I described the different diagnoses that Marina Garcés and Steven Pinker make of humanity’s current predicament, without concealing my sympathies for the latter’s: with up and downs, with unequal division of the benefits, without bringing us a literal paradise, with lots of problems still to […]