CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (Audio)

This talk by Michael Sawka of Georgia Tech examines the role of skin in human thermoregulation as a potentially important evolutionary factor for modern man. Two strong selective factors for survival in early hominins were the ability to forage during peak daily heat when their predators were not a threat, and the capability for persistence hunting (track and pursue prey to cause hyperthermia-induced exhaustion of prey). Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30214]

Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute explains in this talk how studying the molecular evolution of the three types of human lice (head louse, body louse, pubic louse) can reflect important developments of human evolution. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30217]

Sarah Millar of the University of Pennsylvania summarizes our current state of knowledge of the molecular events that control hair follicle, mammary gland and sweat gland development. She also highlights major questions still remaining. Using the mammary gland as an example, she discusses how evolutionary pressures may have driven specific changes in molecular pathways to permit organ diversification, and further refinements in glandular number and location that permitted efficient feeding of newborn mammals including humans. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30215]

Closing remarks to symposium on human skin in an evolutionary framework. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30219]

Welcome remarks to symposium on human skin in an evolutionary framework. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30208]

Mark Shriver of Pennsylvania State University explains in this talk how evolutionary approaches to understanding which genes affect pigmentation can provide important insights into both normal development and pathophysiology. Likewise, genetic and genomic investigations can help illuminate where and when the genes that affect contemporary skin color levels changed and, ultimately, which evolutionary forces shaped the wide range of skin colors we see today. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30210]

This presentation by UC San Diego’s Richard Gallo provides an overview of the multiple cell types, both human and microbial, that comprise the human skin super-organism. Understanding their relationship changes how we think about evolution, gene transfer, and the impact of current hygiene and antibiotic therapies. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30213]

Opening remarks to symposium on human skin in an evolutionary framework. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30209]

In this talk, Chris Kuzawa (Northwestern Uni) argues that human body fat co-evolved not just with the energetically-demanding and vulnerable brain, but also with the cultural strategies that humans use to buffer offspring intake. The human infant’s need for ample baby fat traces to the fact that the main causes of nutritional stress at this age are infections, which force a reliance on onboard energy by reducing appetite and impairing digestion. However, by early childhood, we are less reliant upon this resource as a result of another uniquely human buffering system: food sharing and our cooperative strategy of caring for and feeding our young. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 30218]

All humans have the capacity for aggression and reconciliation. However, it is cultural institutions that harness aggression by shaping cognition, corresponding emotions and defining appropriate responses. In this talk, Polly Wiessner (Univ of Utah) compares the cultural institutions related to aggression and violence and their outcomes in two different societies: Ju/’hoan hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari and Enga horticulturists of Papua New Guinea. She tries to show “what culture has to do with it” and demonstrate real consequences. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 28353]

In this talk, Carol Ember (Yale Univ) describes the results from decades-long research that tested a variety of theories about warfare and other forms of violence in a sample of 186 societies. Many of the theories of warfare assumed to be plausible fell short, such as the idea that war becomes more likely with agriculture and political complexity. On the other hand, resource scarcity, particularly unpredictable scarcity such as drought, is a particularly strong predictor of more warfare. Warfare is, however, not an isolated form of violence; indeed warfare is correlated with many other types of violence. Ember concludes with a discussion about the relevance of these research findings to the world today. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 28352]

Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology on the climatic framework of Neandertal evolution. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 29689]

Renowned historian of science Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University addresses the question of human impacts on climate and whether we will survive the future, and posits that humanity will need to make substantial change in what we do and how we think. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 29695]

Why does humor exist at all? It consumes a lot of time and energy, and some humans are arguably addicted to humor. Daniel Dennett (Tufts Univ) explores what, in biological terms, sustains this costly habit. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 24981]

This symposium presents varied perspectives from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists on how climate may have shaped human evolution, as well as the prospects for the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species. Elizabeth Hadly begins with a discussion about A Tipping Point: Using the Past to Forecast Our Future, followed by Naomi Oreskes on Human Impacts: Will We Survive the Future?, and Veerabhadran Ramanathan on Climate Change Mitigation: In Pursuit of the Common Good. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 29685]

This symposium presents varied perspectives from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists on how climate may have shaped human evolution, as well as the prospects for the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species with Jeff Severinghaus on Abrupt Climate Transitions and Humans, followed by William Ruddiman on How Humans Took Control of Climate, and Charles Kennel on The Impacts of Arctic Sea Ice Retreat on Contemporary Climate. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 29684]

Charles Kennel of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego addresses the impacts of Arctic sea ice retreat on contemporary climate. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 29693]

Co-Director of The Center for Advanced Research and Training in Anthropogen, Ajit Varki, welcomes guests and partcipants to this symposium which presents varied perspectives from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists on how climate may have shaped human evolution, as well as the prospects for the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 29686]

Peter deMenocal of Columbia University on cycles of African climate change and its effect on human evolution. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 29688]

Questions and answers and closing remarks for the symposium Human-Climate Interactions and Evolution: Past and Future. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 29697]

Rick Potts of the Smithsonian Institution addresses how climate instability affected the evolution of human adaptability. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 29690]

This symposium presents varied perspectives from earth scientists, ecologists, and paleoanthropologists on how climate may have shaped human evolution, as well as the prospects for the future of world climate, ecosystems, and our species with Peter deMenocal on African Climate Change and Human Evolution, followed by Jean-Jacques Hublin on The Climatic Framework of Neandertal Evolution, and Rick Potts on Climate Instability and the Evolution of Human Adaptability. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 29683]

In human languages, spoken and signed, words or signs are products of combinatorial systems that combine meaningless smaller units in different ways to yield different words or signs with different meanings. In spoken languages, those smaller units are the sounds of speech (phonemes). In sign languages, they are handshapes, movements, and the places on the body where signs are made. In this talk David Perlmutter of UC San Diego suggests that the evolutionary path for signs of iconic origin could provide an appropriate working model of the parallel evolution of non-iconic signs in sign languages and of the spoken words of spoken languages. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29401]

Merlin Donald (Queen’s Univ) opines that if one crucial adaptation had to be singled out as the signature move that started the human journey, he would nominate “mimesis,” or body artistry, which is the platform on which all complex skilled performance, including language, has evolved. A capacity for refining skill started to evolve very early in the emergence of hominids, as testified by the existence of very ancient stone tools that predate the appearance of our species. Such tools cannot be made without a capacity to rehearse systematically and an ability to imagine an idealized performance. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24984]

CARTA: Behaviorally Modern Humans: The Origin of Us – Michael Hammer: Interbreeding with Archaic Humans in Africa Today there is an abundance of DNA sequence data from the entire genome of contemporary human populations, as well as from ancient DNA recovered from extinct forms of humans. Michael Hammer (Univ of Arizona) discusses how analyses of these data, with increasingly sophisticated computational tools, are yielding new insights into human evolutionary history. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 25394]

V.S. Ramachandran (UC San Diego) argues that human mental uniqueness emerged from the fortuitous co-emergence of certain novel anatomical structures and functions and equally fortuitous synergistic interactions between them. These include structures involved in inter-sensory abstraction (IPL and its uniquely human subdivisions; supra-marginal gyrus and angular gyrus; certain frontal structures, Wernicke’s area, etc.) and sensorimotor abstraction (mirror neurons). He contends that these were then adapted for higher-level abstractions such as metaphor. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 24986]

A key feature of human social interactions is the ability to make inferences about other individuals’ mental states (e.g. others’ knowledge, beliefs and desires). Juliane Kaminski (Univ of Portsmouth, UK) reviews studies which investigate whether the cognitive capacities underlying these skills are uniquely human or shared, at least to some degree, with other species. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 26077]

This CARTA symposium addresses the question of how human language came to have the kind of structure it has today, focusing on three sources of evidence. One source, which is discussed in these three talks, concerns neuroscientific investigations of functional specialization for language in the human brain and its dependence on the linguistic input the language learner gets during cognitive development. Evelina Fedorenko (Massachusetts General Hospital) begins with an examination of Specialization for Language in the Human Brain, followed by Rachel Mayberry (UC San Diego) on How the Environment Shapes Language in the Brain, and Edward Chang (UC San Francisco) on Neuroscience of Speech Perception and Speech Production. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29395]

Pascal Gagneux, associate director of CARTA, introduces this symposium which addresses the question of how human language came to have the kind of structure it has today. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29396]

This CARTA symposium addresses the question of how human language came to have the kind of structure it has today, focusing on three sources of evidence. In this program, the speakers field questions from the audience and the seminar is concluded. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29406]

Edward Chang of UC San Francisco is interested in determining the basic mechanisms that underlie our ability to perceive and produce speech. While much of this processing has been localized to the peri-sylvian cortex, including Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, the fundamental organizational principles of the neural circuits within these areas are completely unknown. To address this, his laboratory applies a variety of experimental approaches to examine both local circuitry and global network dynamics spanning multiple cortical and sub-cortical regions with unparalleled spatial and temporal resolution in humans. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29405]

Using data from brain imaging investigations and studies of patients with brain damage, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Evelina Fedorenko argues that a set of brain regions in the adult human brain – in the frontal and temporal lobes of the left hemisphere -- are specialized for high-level language processing. She further argues that this fronto-temporal network develops as we acquire language knowledge. In the adult brain, this system stores our linguistic knowledge representations and uses these representations to interpret and generate new utterances. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29403]

Roger Levy, Co-Chair of this CARTA symposium on the evolution of Language, introduces the speakers and topics for this symposium which addresses the question of how human language came to have the kind of structure it has today. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 29407]

This CARTA symposium addresses the question of how human language came to have the kind of structure it has today, focusing on three sources of evidence. One source, which is discussed in these three talks, concerns what contrasts between new and mature languages reveal about how language evolves. Mark Aronoff (Stony Brook Univ) begins with an examination of the Co-emergence of Meaning and Structure in a New Language, followed by David Perlmutter (UC San Diego) on Combinatoriality within the Word: Sign Language Evidence, and Ray Jackendoff (Tufts Univ) on What Can You Say without Syntax? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29394]

Mark Aronoff focuses on the emergence of words and lexical categories in new sign languages in this talk. Using naming experiments with groups of non-signing gesturers and signers of new languages, his research team has shown how all groups consistently distinguish between names and actions. They have also shown that emerging lexical distinctions are both cognitive and communicative in nature. They constitute common categories found in languages because they reflect the shared ways that humans interact with the world, involving self, other and mediating tools. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29400]

Matt Cartmill (Boston University) explains the connection between human body fat and bipedality. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23671]

This CARTA symposium addresses the question of how human language came to have the kind of structure it has today, focusing on three sources of evidence. One source, which is discussed in these three talks, has to do with the ways languages get new structure not present in the language of the previous generation(s) of speakers or signers. Simon Kirby (Univ of Edinburgh) begins with an examination of Language Evolution in the Lab: The Emergence of Design Features, followed by Carmel O’Shannessy (Univ of Michigan) on Contact Languages and Light Warlpiri, and Ann Senghas (Barnard College) on Rethinking Recapitulation: Sources of Structure in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29393]

In this talk Ray Jackendoff explores forms of language with very limited organization. Such languages largely lack the familiar manifestations of syntactic structure, but they still manage to map between sound and meaning. Examples include early stages of child language, stages in acquisition of second languages by adults, pidgins, “home sign” (the sign systems invented by deaf children with no sign language input), and “village signs” spoken in isolated communities with hereditary deafness. He suggests that linear grammar is a plausible steppingstone in the evolution of the language faculty – an intermediate stage between primate call systems and modern human language. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29402]

By realizing that cultural as well as biological evolution has a central role to play in the origins of language, Simon Kirby and his team have unlocked a method that allows them to observe the evolutionary emergence of language structure in miniature cultures that they have created in the lab. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29397]

Contact languages represent some of the ways that new languages can be created, as they systematically combine elements from more than one existing language, resulting in novel linguistic systems. When multiple sources provide input to a rapidly emerging new system, elements are likely to be reanalyzed, and new structural categories may be created that differ from those in the source languages. In this talk Carmel O’Shannessy gives examples of restructuring in contact languages, including Light Warlpiri. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29398]

In this talk Ann Senghas traces the development of basic sentence structure and vocabulary in Nicaraguan Sign Language, in order to uncover the effect of language acquisition processes on language emergence and convergence across age cohorts. Evolutionary principles must apply not only to the development of humans as language learners, but also to the development of languages as systems that change and adapt over generations. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 29399]

Conjugal families are often assumed to be building blocks of human societies and the primary site of childrearing in traditional communities. Alternatively, Kristen Hawkes (Univ of Utah) contends that the Grandmother Hypothesis draws attention to other relationships likely fundamental in the evolution of our lineage. Persistent ties that crosscut conjugal families are implied by our cooperative childcare, distinctive prosociality, and extraordinary operational sex ratios. These high operational sex ratios also affect the way men negotiate with other men, which in turn affects the economics of childrearing. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 28036]

James Noonan, Assistant Professor of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine, focuses on identifying changes in gene regulation during early embryonic development that contributed to the evolution of uniquely human biological traits. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 21988]

Apart from references to the oldest fossil hominins attributed to Homo sapiens, the East African record is often ignored in current scenarios of modern human origins in favor of the much more detailed, well-preserved and better-explored region at the southern end of the continent. Alison S. Brooks (George Washington Univ/Smithsonian Institution) opines that over 20 years of research in the eastern and south-central African zones of woodlands and savannas surrounding the central African rainforest have produced new evidence concerning the transition from pre-sapiens behavior to behaviors more characteristic of the Late Pleistocene humans who expanded from Africa and replaced the pre-existing populations of Eurasia. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Show ID: 25391]

In this presentation, Matthew Tocheri (Smithsonian Institution) shows how the morphology of four foot bones – the medial cuneiform, talus, calcaneus, and cuboid – is clearly distinguishable among living gorilla taxa in ways that are relevant to interpreting bipedal evolution in hominins. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 23665]

When many people want to discover the core of human nature, they turn to those people who allegedly are or represent humanity’s original condition, hunter-gatherers. Do hunter-gatherers have a special ability to reveal human nature? Robert Kelly (Univ of Wyoming) examines this question by focusing on the issue of violence. Do hunter-gatherers say that we are inherently predisposed to violence, or to peaceful cooperation? Trying to answer this question raises a more general one: Is there such a thing as human nature? Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 28355]

Kazuo Okanoya (Univ of Tokyo) describes his research with Bengalese finches, a domesticated strain of wild white-rumped munias that were imported from China to Japan 250 years ago. He shows that evolution of song complexity involves not only factors related to sexual selection and species identification, but also to socio-emotional factors due to domestication. He then speculates that language evolution in humans might also be based on sexual selection and self-domestication. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 28901]

UC San Diego’s Robert Kluender provides an excellent introductory overview of this symposium which addresses the study of animal domestication, our relationships with domesticated species, and what that might tell us about our own evolution as a species in the more distant past. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 28894]

CARTA: Behaviorally Modern Humans: The Origin of Us – Richard “Ed” Green: Interbreeding with Archaic Humans outside Africa. Neanderthals and Denisovans are the closest extinct ancestors of modern humans. High-quality genome sequence data is now available from both and has revealed multiple instances of admixture between these archaic hominins and the ancestors of currently living humans. Ed Green (UC Santa Cruz) discusses how he is using these data to refine the demographic models describing recent human evolution and to detect selective sweeps that post-dated our split from Neanderthals and Deniosvans. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Science] [Show ID: 25395]

Research on infancy and childhood among !Kung (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers of northwestern Botswana, the first hunting-gathering group where childhood was quantitatively studied, yielded a distinctive characterization of their patterns of child care and behavioral development, and surveys of prior ethnographic literature suggested that core features of these patterns were seen in other hunter-gatherers. In this lecture, Melvin Konner (Emory Univ) contextualizes these findings in the light of recent advances in our understanding of the evolution of human life histories and against the background of basic primate adaptations for infant and juvenile care. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 28035]