Our Species Has Spent Its History Mating with Anyone Close By     In graduate school for anthropology many decades ago, I learned that the phylogenic tree of human evolution was best represented by a sturdy central trunk. That trunk embodied the singular path of our species but there were also several weak branches sprouting off the truck that had withered and died. The roots of that central trunk were the first bipedal hominids, Australopithecines living about 4.5 million years ago, and the top canopy was Homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans. But…

The Enduring Story of Human Wanderlust     A recently calculated time frame for a series of ancient human footprints at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, is bringing people, especially anthropologists and archeologists, to their feet.   These footprints were discovered in 2009 by park staff; turns out there are thousands of preserved human other animal footprints — mammoth and giant sloths, for example — all over White Sands. But The United States Geological Survey has just completed working out the age of human prints, and their date of 23,000 years old significantly changes…

Humans Are Designed to Be One and yet We Splinter into Many     We are living in difficult and confusing times. Over the past year, we have been pulled together battling a global pandemic while at the same time falling apart because of disturbing, dangerous, and ubiquitous culture wars.   The pandemic obviously unites us. Covid-19 has jumped from person to person, oblivious of individual identity, community or country affiliation, race, ethnicity, age, or gender. In its contagion, the virus dramatically shows that everyone is prey to the same germs and that…