Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Another magnificent piece of writing from Zimmer. This time on arctic adventurers, fish, and "one of the most crucial transitions in history of life": How the first tetrapods emerged from water, and started to move about on dry land
Plenty of dogs save their owners—waking them during fires, fetching help after an accident. But that's not all. "They may have saved not only individuals but also our whole species, by 'domesticating' us while we domesticated them"
Margie Profet was a maverick thinker in evolutionary biology, possibly a genius, but never settled down in academia. Won a MacArthur grant, published three landmark papers while still in her thirties—and then vanished, in 2004
Harvard biologist tackles evolution of culture in a monumental essay. Captivating throughout. "Rich and seemingly boundless as the creative arts seem to be, each is filtered through the narrow biological channels of human cognition"
On tribalism, both our greatest and most dangerous genetic inheritance. "It is an uncomfortable fact that even when given a guilt-free choice, individuals prefer the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion"
"Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning." Only now do we realise the full impact of 1920s parenting advice
For decades, Piltdown Man was thought to be one of the most important discoveries in human evolutionary history. Alas, it was a fraud. But who were the hoaxers, how did they do it, and why? The mystery may be about to be unravelled
Nice move, to hand a clutch of books about evolutionary biology and neuroscience to a conservative philosopher for review. What comes back is a deft argument that inequalities are to be accepted as the product of natural selection
Paleoanthropologist on impact of genetics. "Twenty years ago I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East or South Africa. A small population of humans became modern. Now I don’t think it was that simple"
Classic scientific approach to study of language and the brain concentrated on importance of brain's left hemisphere. But recent research suggests something more at work. It has important implications for how we understand language
"There’s no culture on Earth without teachers. But just because something’s easy doesn’t mean it’s not special. And in the animal kingdom, teaching is exceedingly rare. In fact, it’s not clear whether any other animal can teach"
Evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy unpicks the "amoral logic of natural selection". Early women were not particularly gentle. Early mothers were not particularly altruistic. Mothering isn't even all that important
Image by Donmatas on Wikimedia Commons
"If a time machine could serve you up your 200-millionth-great-grandfather, you would eat him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon. He was a fish"
