Stress and Human Evolution
How do trauma, poverty, and racial discrimination influence our health? What about our evolutionary history causes our bodies to respond in this way? Biological anthropologist Zaneta Thayer explores the biological mechanisms through which early life stress influences biology and health later on. This lecture took place at the American Museum of Natural History on April 5, 2017.
It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small
We hold in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. We rarely consider just how amazing our teeth are.
Ngogo Chimpanzees on Patrol
Territorial boundary patrolling by chimpanzees is a striking example of group-level cooperation displayed by our closest primate relatives.
3.3 Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals the Antiquity of the Human Spine
For more than 3 million years, Selam lay silent and still. Eager to tell her story, the almost perfect fossil skeleton of a 2 1/2 year-old toddler was discovered at Dikika, Ethiopia -- and she had a lot to say.
Modern People Making Stone Age Tools
How did humans get to be so smart, and when did this happen? To untangle this question, we need to know more about the intelligence of our human ancestors who lived 1.8 million years ago. It was at this point in time that a new type of stone tool hit the scene and the human brain nearly doubled in size.