NOT A CHIMP

Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?

Friday, 30 May 2014

Domestication of dogs may explain mammoth kill sites and success of early modern humans

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-domestication-dogs-mammoth-sites-success.html

An interesting piece relating to Pat Shipman's recent work investigating huge mammoth kill sites in eastern Europe. She contends that the steep increase in wholesale dispatch of mammoths coincides with evidence of wolf-like dogs and suggests this may be evidence of early domestication of dogs and that dogs might have been invaluable for hunting, surrounding and killing mammoths. If she is right this tilts the argument over the evolution of dogs back towards the direct domestication of wolves hypothesis.