Evolution also does not claim humans evolved from primates. Neither does it say non-human primates, including monkeys, baboons, chimpanzees and gorillas, will evolve into humans with time.
Ochre is still used throughout parts of Africa as a form of sunscreen. Its uses go back 285,000 years.
Supplied
“The worst call in Super Bowl history,” read a headline in my hometown Seattle Times after Seahawks’ head coach Pete Carroll seemingly threw the game away with his ill-fated decision to pass – rather than…
Our reaction to disgusting things may be evolutionarily-derived.
Flickr/Rainja
Feeling queasy? How about deceitful? New research shows feelings of disgust encourage unethical, self-interested behaviours such as lying to get more money. At first look, these findings would suggest…
It’s often said that blood is thicker than water – that family ties trump all others. But research with groups of men fighting in Libya has suggested that the bonds they formed in times of great adversity…
Mobile phone networks join the dots about where we live and travel.
Ovchinnkov Vladimir
There are now more mobile phones in use than there are people in the world to use them – some 7.2 billion phones. Mobile phones are becoming integral parts of our lives, penetrating into areas of the developing…
In an experiment for a forthcoming National Geographic television show Mind Over Masses, a pavement was divided into lanes, separating those that are walking from those walking while talking on mobile…
The pigeon is still blaming humans though.
Wagner Free Institute
Once the most numerous bird species in North America, passenger pigeons went from numbering in the billions to being extinct in less than a century. Their decline has been mostly blamed on intensive hunting…
If only it were this easy.
Alessandra Tarantino/AP
I’ve just asked Siri about Her. Two screens of text appear in answer to my query. “Is that all you can find for Her?” I ask. “Let me check on that,” comes the response. More screens of text appear with…
Do you like Gilbert and George more now?
pippiberka
When meeting someone for the first time, your impression of that person may be different if you meet that person at a formal dinner party, a cocktail party, or a pool party. These settings typically influence…
In our everyday lives we constantly compare things. We care about whether we are better or worse off than others around us, or than we were in the past. Why we do this has long puzzled scientists, because…
Is there a link between our cooperative nature and our love of lying?
jinterwas
Ultimately, our ability to convincingly lie to each other may have evolved as a direct result of our cooperative nature. Thus concludes the abstract of a new paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal…
Social psychology addresses many of the important questions that concern us as human beings. It’s also the subject of newspaper editorials on most days: why is there conflict between groups? How can it…
Cheating on a partner is always a choice, not a biologically determined effect.
flickr/dhammza
Biologists and psychologists like to tussle with human characteristics: what’s inherent? What’s learnt? What’s genetically coded? What’s malleable? Every so often an “expert” will reignite the nature vs…