Quite simply, the best blog in the world:
johnhawks.net/weblog
John Hawks is a paleoanthropologist at University of Wisconsin - Madison. His blog covers human evolution, biology of the mind, ancient art, hominid fossils, genetics of isolated groups, the fascinating "Hobbit" fossil, and why a cloned Neanderthal would make a substandard linebacker. And buckets more. The guy's a genius, he's funny, and he's able to tease apart bothersome issues in a way that saves the rest of us days of mental labor. You can browse, or summon past posts by subject: Darwin, diet, disease, Dmanisi...
Great Books
FEMALE CHOICES: Sexual behavior of female primates
by Meredith F. Small.
Because Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and co., hammered together a theory of mating and evolution at a time and place (Victorian England) when human females were presumed to be devoid of interest in sex, the lads unfortunately assumed the same to be true of other species. Now biologists play an embarassing game of catch-up. This book chronicals the more liberated reality: The chicks call the shots.
HAPPINESS: The science behind your smile
by Daniel Nettle
Nettle, a respected biological anthropologist, boiled down a boatload of research to produce this pint-sized dose of wit and wisdom. For such a tiny book, Happiness illuminates a sizeable chunk of your personality.
INFANTICIDE: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives
by Glenn Hausfater and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
How can you go wrong with a title like that? Male lions get all the blame for killing infants of their species, but we humans do our part too. This collection of academic papers lays out the reasons behind a phenomenon that's both counterintuitive, and common.
THE HUMAN SPECIES: An introduction to biological anthropology
by John H. Relethoford
It's a college textbook, I suppose, but also a one-stop shop for human biology and evolution. It covers genetics (with a refresher on meiosis and mitosis, etc.) but also the human place among other primates.
UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH
by Lucas Bridges
A missionary child's adult life among the tribes of Tierra del Fuego in the years before the cultured died out in the past century. Accounts of the low-tech lifestyles of isolated tribes always fascinate me. This one, set in hideously inhospitable hills fraught with snow and rain, derailed me "real" research until I had read every word.
UNDER THE MOUNTAIN WALL
by Peter Matthiessen
An account of six months with a stone-age tribe in Papua, New Guinea. When I first read this book years ago it actually answered some questions that had been bothering me about modern human behavior. The writing is so spare and elegant that nothing stands between the reader and the tribe. Matthiessen merely records stone-age behavior, and leaves the reader to draw her own conclusions. and clarity, she explores the facts, fictions, and hopes about the species Homo sapiens. Each of the 11 chapters is devoted to one topic (the brain, perception, diet, communication, etc.), beginning with a short page or two of general description on the chapter's topic as applied to humans, while the remainder of the chapter delves into the topic from a scientific, cultural, and anthropological view. Holmes comfortably uses herself as the example for the topic, and the personalization works well. In reading the fact sheet about the species Homo sapiens we can each see how very much like other animals we are and at the same time how very different. Highly recommended for all science collections.
Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences, RTP, NC
