john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Gotta change

Thu, 2007-05-24 09:55 -- John Hawks

Bizarrely, I'm now listening to the voice of Drew Carey telling me about Neanderthals. It's on Prehistoric Planet, which is one of the Discovery Kids shows. This particular Neanderthal, who looks like an outtake from "Walking with Cavemen," is being charged by a wooly rhinoceros.

Yeaoww! The rhino just gored him!

Oh, yep, they are the Neanderthals from "Walking with Cavemen." "Prehistoric Planet" is a repackaged version with new narration for kids.

Now a bunch of mammoths are just walking along the edge of a very high cliff. This seems like a critical error of mammoth judgement.

And the Neanderthals are waiting with blazing firebrands.

It's risky getting right up in your prey's face like this. Especially when your prey has tusks!

It's an interestingly jumbled ending, with Neandertals going extinct because "they can't adapt to their changing world," the mammoths going extinct -- 19,000 years later -- because it gets too warm for them, and Cro-Magnons having a happy ending as they become ... us! All temperature, no killing spree. Don't you see, you just have to be able to change!

Well, it didn't keep Goodwin's attention, but then he's only two.

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.