Curations from the Human Jungle
[So what's this whole "Jungle" thing all about? My operating premise is that, despite all our modern conveniences and conveyances and conventions, we are essentially the animal critters who lived in the jungle 100,000 years ago, and the better we understand those creatures, the better we will understand ourselves. Forget the modern artifices ... we... Continue Reading →
[So, science is finally catching up with me. Ever since my senior year in college when I took Dr. Pilbeam's course on social anthropology it has bothered me that homo sapiens has been portrayed as these evolutionary newcomer (only 40,000 years old), while neanderthals have been relegated to the genetic scrapheap, even though their lineage... Continue Reading →
[This is a question that has been plaguing me ever since I took Professor Pilbeam's class on social anthropology back in 1969, e.g. how can homo sapiens have such a short span of time (quoted in this article as 40,000 years) on the evolutionary time line? How and why did homo sapiens replace other hominids... Continue Reading →
[Over the course of publishing more than 1660 posts in Silverback Digest, we've relied on Sapiens for ideas of what is new and interesting. Mothing comes quite as close to the core of what this journal is about. Alas, it is soon to fall victim to the economic realities of the contemporary media business. Sapiens... Continue Reading →
[Silverback Digest has published several articles on how our brethren, the Neanderthals, have been historically been portrayed, and manipulated, by various communities to serve their particular purposes. White racists, for example, have pointed towards the presence of Neanderthal DNA in northern populations as being a key factor in differentiating so-called "white cultures" from Africans. (Please... Continue Reading →
[The word "mongoloid" was coined by a German physician to describe children born with Downs Syndrome. It was a disparaging, racist reference to the Mongol people who, under the leadership of Genghis Khan merely established the greatest empire in the history of mankind. It's a great example of how history is re-written for all the... Continue Reading →
[Readers of the Silverback Digest should know by now that the story of our evolutionary development is of particular interest, and it's a story that is changing rapidly. When I was a boy, the story of where we came from was largely mumbo-jumbo and biblical magic. The horizon of the past extended just a few... Continue Reading →
Published: August 31, 2022 12.40pm EDT in The Conversation theconversation.com Academic rigor, journalistic flair https://theconversation.com/ authors: Peter C. Kjærgaard Professor of Evolutionary History and Director, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen Mark Maslin Professor of Earth System Science, UCL Trine Kellberg Nielsen Associate Professor, Department of Archeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University Neanderthals... Continue Reading →
The Revolutionary Genius of Neanderthals Our often-ridiculed ancestors were capable of abstract thought. They deserve some respect. STEPHEN E. NASH / 18 JAN 2017 For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching to Geico is so easy that... Continue Reading →
40,000-year-old sealed cavern in Gibraltar gives new insight into Neanderthal life (photo credit: JON NAZCA/ REUTERS) Vanguard Cave is one of four caves that make up the famous Rock of Gibraltar and a nine-year-excavation project led researchers to a sealed chamber with evidence of long-gone Neanderthal life inside. [Although Homo Sapiens is a relative newcomer... Continue Reading →