Category: Evolution

  • 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. […]

  • The Latest Series from CARTA Explores Impact of Humans on Planet Earth

    The goal of CARTA (UC San Diego’s Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny) is to explore and explain the origins of the human phenomenon. The most recent symposium, “Human Origins and Humanity’s Future: Past, Present and Future of the Anthropocene,” looks at the long and short-term impacts of human activity. This latest series […]

  • New CARTA Series: From Molecules to Societies

    The latest series from CARTA explores the development of several important distinctly human characteristics that range from molecules, to metabolism, anatomy, disease, and behavior. In Episode One, UC San Diego professor Carol Marchetto discusses how a comparative gene expression analysis of human and non-human primates revealed differences in the regulation of a class of transposable […]

  • Altered States

    In this new CARTA series, experts address altered states of the mind that are deliberately induced by humans – from the use of psychoactive compounds both natural and man-made, to self-induced states of consciousness and awareness, to anomalous states precipitated by different physical conditions and behaviors. Find out what is known about origins and mechanisms […]

  • 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 […]

  • CARTA at 10

    More than 20 years ago, a small group of La Jolla academics began periodic meetings for transdisciplinary discussions on explaining the origin of humans – anthropogeny – an effort which has blossomed into an international intellectual collaborative organized by UC San Diego and the Salk Institute as the Center for Academic Research and Training in […]