Category: CARTA

  • What Do the Beatles Have to Do With the Fossil Lucy?

    The story starts on November 24, 1974, following a long, hot morning of mapping and surveying fossils at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. Before leaving to head back to camp, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray decided to investigate a small gully that had previously been checked twice before by other workers. […]

  • The Human Canvas: Exploring Body Modification Throughout Time

    Permanent body modification is a unique and variable practice among humans that is not observed in other mammals. It has a long history and can be traced back thousands of years across various cultures and civilizations. Practices such as tattooing, scarification, piercing, and branding have been documented in ancient societies around the world. In this […]

  • A New Diet to Feed 10 Billion People and Help Save the Planet

    Human activities are responsible for most of the increase in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. While the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation, there is one other contributing factor… emissions from livestock such as cattle, agricultural soils and rice production. […]

  • Exploring The Human-Ape Paradox

    CARTA’s Fall 2020 symposium, Comparative Anthropogeny: Exploring the Human Ape-Paradox, examines humans as a uniquely evolved, “biologically enculturated,” species as juxtaposed with our closest living relatives, the “great apes” (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans). By definition, each species is unique as it represents the outcome of independent evolution. Yet, humans appear to be a remarkable […]

  • Impact of Early Life Deprivation

    Unlike most other animals, much of human brain development and maturation occurs after birth, a process that continues into early adulthood. This unusual pattern allows for greater influences of environment and culture on the emergence of the adult mind. This series of programs from the recent CARTA symposium addresses the interactive contributions of nature and […]

  • We Are All Africans

    Svante Pääbo once said, “We are all Africans, either living in Africa or in recent exile from Africa.” It is now abundantly clear that Africa was the “cradle of humanity,” with multiple waves of hominins arising on that continent and spreading across the old world, eventually being effectively displaced by our own species, which also […]

  • Tool Use, Technology and the Evolution of the Human Mind

    We “behaviorally modern humans” likely emerged more than 100,000 years ago in Africa, spread across that continent and eventually all over the planet, effectively replacing all closely related potentially competitive species. Among many possible explanations, was the co-evolution of the human mind with tool use and technology – ranging all the way from simple stone […]

  • Imagination and Human Origins

    Try to remember the first time in your life when you imagined something. It may have been imagining what was behind the door or under the bed, or a fantastic universe of wonders and exciting adventure. As children, our imaginations are furtive and encouraged as ways in which we develop our cognitive capabilities. As we […]

  • Why Did Humans Start Eating Meat?

    Humans have been hunter-gatherers for most of our existence as a species and hunting has long been seen as a key human adaptation, thought to have influenced our anatomy, physiology, and behavior, indeed, a force in our evolution as a species. CARTA brings experts from across the globe to explore evidence pertaining to understanding the […]