The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.

Bones of recent mammals in the Amboseli Basin, southern Kenya, exhibit distinctive weathering characteristics that can be related to the time since death and to the local conditions of temperature, humidity and soil chemistry. A categorization of weathering characteristics into six stages, recognizable on descriptive criteria, provides a basis for investigation of weathering rates and processes. The time necessary to achieve each successive weathering stage has been calibrated using known-age carcasses. Most bones decompose beyond recognition in 10 to 15 yr. Bones of animals under 100 kg and juveniles appear to weather more rapidly than bones of large animals or adults. Small-scale rather than widespread environmental factors seem to have greatest influence on weathering characteristics and rates. Bone weathering is potentially valuable as evidence for the period of time represented in recent or fossil bone assemblages, in- cluding those on archeological sites, and may also be an important tool in censusing populations of animals in modern ecosystems.

Taphonomic and Ecologic Information Form Bone Weathering

Humans are extraordinary creatures, with the unique ability among animals to imitate and so copy from one another ideas, habits, skills, behaviours, inventions, songs, and stories. These are all memes, a term first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. Memes, like genes, are replicators, and this enthralling book is an investigation of whether this link between genes and memes can lead to important discoveries about the nature of the inner self. Confronting the deepest questions about our inner selves, with all our emotions, memories, beliefs, and decisions, Susan Blackmore makes a compelling case for the theory that the inner self is merely an illusion created by the memes for the sake of replication.

http://people.morrisville.edu/~reymers/readings/SOCI201/Into%20the%20Internet%20-%20Blackmore%201999.pdf

The Meme Machine

Les tissus du cerveau sont une extension metabollique, mais il n'existe pas de correlation significative entre le taux metabolique relatif de base et la taille relative du taille chez les humains et autres mammiferes a encephale. L'apport en graisses animales dans la nourriture est essentiel dans l'evolution du cerveau humain

The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive System in Human and Primate Evolution

Human life histories as compared to those of other primates and mammals have at least four distinctive characteristics: an exceptionally long life span an extended period of juvenile dependence support of reproduction by older post-reproductive individuals and male support of reproduction through the provisioning of females and their offspring. Another distinctive feature of our species is a large brain with its associated psychological attributes: increased capacities for learning cognition and insight. In this paper the authors propose a theory that unites and organizes these observations and generates many theoretical and empirical predictions. The authors present some tests of those predictions and outline new predictions that can be tested in future research by comparative biologists archaeologists paleontologists biological anthropologists demographers geneticists and cultural anthropologists. (authors)

/pdf/a-theory-of-human-life-history-evolution-diet-intelligence-29733gq025.pdf

A theory of human life history evolution: Diet, intelligence, and longevity

Burnt bones and teeth: an experimental study of color, morphology, crystal structure and shrinkage

Early hominid hunting, butchering, and carcass-processing behaviors: Approaches to the fossil record

Surface modification on bone: Trampling versus butchery

HOSE WHO TRY to reconstruct past environments and hominid T behaviors have only four sources of information: (1) geological evidence; (2) the preserved remains of various hominid and nonhominid species; (3) occasionally, artifacts fashioned and used by our near or distant ancestors; (4) imagination or divine inspiration. Given that the last of these is difficult to use in persuading critics and that the interpretation of artifacts and geological exposures is best discussed by others, I shall focus in this paper on the fossil or osteological evidence of once-living animals and its interpretation. Powerful as such evidence may be in providing glimpses of the past, it is vulnerable to massive distortion. Various agents that act on bones and teeth during the postmortem and predepositional period differentially destroy, preserve, transport, or concentrate skeletal elements until an assemblage may bear little resemblance to the animal community (or bone community) from which it was drawn. As a taphonomist, I must ask of each assemblage how badly i t misrepresents the original collection of bones or species. This question underlies all attempts at paleoecological reconstruction. Answering i t is equally important whether the assemblage has been retrieved from an archeological stie only a few thousand years old or from a paleontological site many millions of years old. In order to answer this question, various studies1-15 of modern processes of death, decay, and dispersal of bones have been carried out.

Pat Shipman

Papers

Burnt bones and teeth: an experimental study of color, morphology, crystal structure and shrinkage

Early hominid hunting, butchering, and carcass-processing behaviors: Approaches to the fossil record

Surface modification on bone: Trampling versus butchery

Applications of Scanning Electron Microscopy to Taphonomic Problems

The costs of becoming a predator