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Winner of the Selection for Professional Reading List of the U.S. Marine Corps Although the idea that all human beings are descended from Adam is a long-standing conviction in the West, another version of this narrative exists: human beings inhabited the Earth before, or alongside, Adam, and their descendants still occupy the planet. In this engaging and provocative work, David N. Livingstone traces the history of the idea of non-adamic humanity, and the debates surrounding it, from the Middle Ages to the present day. From a multidisciplinary perspective, Livingstone examines how this alternative idea has been used for cultural, religious, and political purposes. He reveals how what began as biblical criticism became a theological apologetic to reconcile religion with science—evolution in particular—and was later used to support arguments for white supremacy and segregation. From heresy to orthodoxy, from radicalism to conservatism, from humanitarianism to racism, Adam's Ancestors tells an intriguing tale of twists and turns in the cultural politics surrounding the age-old question, \"Where did we come from?\"

Mother’s own milk (MOM) offers the highest protection for preterm and low birth weight infants. However, breastfeeding can be challenging during neonatal hospitalization. When MOM is unavailable, donor human milk (DHM) is the recommended alternative for feeding vulnerable neonates. Human milk banks (HMBs) collect, process, and deliver DHM, playing a key role in lactation support and promoting MOM availability. Although HMBs are expanding globally, scale-up remains hindered, restricting equitable DHM access. In Switzerland, despite the existence of eight HMBs, the western region lacked such a facility until 2022. To address this gap, an interdisciplinary team from the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and the Swiss Red Cross Interregional Blood Transfusion Centre (TIR) collaborated to establish a regional HMB. This partnership leveraged both institutions’ available expertise, infrastructure, and resources. After two years of preparation, the CHUV Lactarium launched in 2022 with the support of the Department of Health and Social Action (DSAS) of the Canton of Vaud. This novel human milk bank–blood bank model is fully integrated into the hospital’s neonatal care, nutrition, and breastfeeding programs, operating under a strict quality and coordination system. Since its implementation, the HMB has met 100% of DHM needs, with an 80% breastfeeding bridging rate. It has had a positive impact on neonatal care, family engagement, professional interest, and community awareness of human milk. This case study illustrates how synergistic collaboration can help bridge gaps in establishing a safe, efficient, and equitable HMB model. It also offers a scalable framework adaptable to other settings.

A procedure is outlined for distinguishing among competing hypotheses for fossil morphology and then used to evaluate current views on the meaning of Neandertal skeletal morphology. Three explanations have dominated debates about the meaning of Neandertal cranial features: climatic adaptation, anterior dental loading, and genetic drift. Neither climatic adaptation nor anterior dental loading are well supported, but genetic drift is consistent with the available evidence. Climatic adaptation and activity patterns are the most discussed explanations for Neandertal postcranial features. Robust empirical relationships between climate and body form in extant humans and other endotherms currently make climatic adaptation the most plausible explanation for the wide bodies and relatively short limbs of Neandertals, and many additional postcranial features are likely secondary consequences of these overall skeletal proportions. Activity patterns may explain certain Neandertal postcranial features, but unlike the situation for climate, relationships in extant humans between morphology and activities are typically not well established. For both the cranium and the postcranium, changes in diet or activity patterns may underlie why Neandertals and Pleistocene modern humans tend to be more robust than Holocene humans.

It is widely believed that human culture originated in the appearance of Oldowan stone-tool production (circa 2.9 Mya) and a primitive but effective ability to copy detailed know-how. Cumulative cultural evolution is then believed to have led to modern humans and human culture via self-reinforcing gene-culture co-evolution. This outline evolutionary trajectory has come to be seen as all but self-evident, but dilemmas have appeared as it has been explored in increasing detail. Can we attribute even a minimally effective know-how copying capability to Oldowan hominins? Do Oldowan tools really demand know-how copying? Is there any other evidence that know-how copying was present? We here argue that this account, which we refer to as “Trajectory A”, may be a red herring, and formulate an alternative “Trajectory B” that resolves these dilemmas. Trajectory B invokes an overlooked group-level channel of cultural inheritance (the Social Protocell) whereby networks of cultural traits can be faithfully inherited and potentially undergo cumulative evolution, also when the underpinning cultural traits are apelike in not being transmitted via know-how copying (Latent Solutions). Since most preconditions of Trajectory B are present in modern-day Pan , Trajectory B may even have its roots considerably before Oldowan toolmaking. The cumulative build-up of networks of non-cumulative cultural traits is then argued to have produced conditions that both called for and afforded a gradual appearance of the ability to copy know-how, but considerably later than the Oldowan.

The time of arrival of people in Australia is an unresolved question. It is relevant to debates about when modern humans first dispersed out of Africa and when their descendants incorporated genetic material from Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly other hominins. Humans have also been implicated in the extinction of Australia’s megafauna. Here we report the results of new excavations conducted at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia. Artefacts in primary depositional context are concentrated in three dense bands, with the stratigraphic integrity of the deposit demonstrated by artefact refits and by optical dating and other analyses of the sediments. Human occupation began around 65,000 years ago, with a distinctive stone tool assemblage including grinding stones, ground ochres, reflective additives and ground-edge hatchet heads. This evidence sets a new minimum age for the arrival of humans in Australia, the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, and the subsequent interactions of modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Optical dating of sediments containing stone artefacts newly excavated at Madjedbebe, Australia, indicate that human occupation began around 65,000 years ago, thereby setting a new minimum age for the arrival of people in Australia. First Australian foray pushed further into the past When did humans first colonize Australia? The date of the initial landing on the continent that is now associated with cold lager and 'Waltzing Matilda' has been highly controversial. Dates from a site called Madjedbebe in northern Australia had put the presence of modern humans in Australia at between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago, but these results have since been hotly contested. Here, the results from a comprehensive program of dating of new excavations at the site confirm that people first arrived there around 65,000 years ago. The results show that humans reached Australia well before the extinction of the Australian megafauna and the disappearance of Homo floresiensis in neighbouring Indonesia.

What did earlier humans really look like? What was life like for them, millions of years ago? How do we know? In this book, internationally renowned paleoartist John Gurche describes the extraordinary process by which he creates forensically accurate and hauntingly realistic representations of our ancient human ancestors. Inspired by a lifelong fascination with all things prehistoric, and gifted with a unique artistic vision, Gurche has studied fossil remains, comparative ape and human anatomy, and forensic reconstruction for over three decades. His artworks appear in world-class museums and publications ranging fromNational Geographicto the journalScience,and he is widely known for his contributions to Steven Spielberg'sJurassic Parkand a number of acclaimed television specials. For the Smithsonian Institution's groundbreaking David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, opened in 2010, Gurche created fifteen sculptures representing six million years of human history. InShaping Humanityhe relates how he worked with a team of scientists to depict human evolution in sculpture for the new hall. He reveals the debates and brainstorming that surround these often controversial depictions, and along the way he enriches our awareness of the various paths of human evolution and humanity's stunning uniqueness in the history of life on Earth.

The fate of the Neandertals is the oldest debate in paleoanthropology and one of the longest, most contentious in science. Here I present my perspective on the biological distinction of Neandertals and their role in the emergence of modern people in Europe and the circum-Mediterranean. Neandertals were highly adapted to life in the cold, demanding realm of Europe during the later Pleistocene. This adaptation was strongly biological, and it came at a high energetic price—a price that negatively affected Neandertal reproduction and ultimately resulted in their \"extinction.\" The word \"extinction\" is in quotes because Neandertals did not go extinct in the classic sense. Rather, both morphological and genetic evidence demonstrate a relatively small, but certainly not insignificant, contribution by them to the earliest modern populations that migrated into their range. From my perspective, the current data best support the assimilation model of modern human origins, first formally presented by two of my graduate students and me almost 25 years ago (Smith et al. 1989), to explain Neandertal–early modern population dynamics. I present an update of that argument here. Also I present my views on why it took modern people so long to establish themselves in Europe and what all this means for the study of biological race in humans.

Scientists have identified a series of milestones in the evolution of the human food quest that are anticipated to have had far-reaching impacts on biological, behavioural and cultural evolution: the inclusion of substantial portions of meat, the broad spectrum revolution and the transition to food production. The foraging shift to dense and predictable resources is another key milestone that had consequential impacts on the later part of human evolution. The theory of economic defendability predicts that this shift had an important consequence—elevated levels of intergroup territoriality and conflict. In this paper, this theory is integrated with a well-established general theory of hunter–gatherer adaptations and is used to make predictions for the sequence of appearance of several evolved traits of modern humans. The distribution of dense and predictable resources in Africa is reviewed and found to occur only in aquatic contexts (coasts, rivers and lakes). The palaeoanthropological empirical record contains recurrent evidence for a shift to the exploitation of dense and predictable resources by 110 000 years ago, and the first known occurrence is in a marine coastal context in South Africa. Some theory predicts that this elevated conflict would have provided the conditions for selection for the hyperprosocial behaviours unique to modern humans. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.

The study of human origins is one of the most fascinating branches of anthropology. Yet it has rarely been considered by social or cultural anthropologists, who represent the largest subfield of the discipline. In this powerful study Alan Barnard aims to bridge this gap. Barnard argues that social anthropological theory has much to contribute to our understanding of human evolution, including changes in technology, subsistence and exchange, family and kinship, as well as to the study of language, art, ritual and belief. This book places social anthropology in the context of a widely-conceived constellation of anthropological sciences. It incorporates recent findings in many fields, including primate studies, archaeology, linguistics and human genetics. In clear, accessible style Barnard addresses the fundamental questions surrounding the evolution of human society and the prehistory of culture, suggesting a new direction for social anthropology that will open up debate across the discipline as a whole.

The emergence of the Acheulean from the earlier Oldowan constitutes a major transition in human evolution, the theme of this special issue. This paper discusses the evidence for the origins of the Acheulean, a cornerstone in the history of human technology, from two perspectives; firstly, a review of the history of investigations on Acheulean research is presented. This approach introduces the evolution of theories throughout the development of the discipline, and reviews the way in which cumulative knowledge led to the prevalent explanatory framework for the emergence of the Acheulean. The second part presents the current state of the art in Acheulean origins research, and reviews the hard evidence for the appearance of this technology in Africa around 1.7 Ma, and its significance for the evolutionary history of Homo erectus. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.