The Neandertals and Modern Human Origins
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 15: 193-218 (Volume publication date October 1986)
Eric Trinkaus
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)
Letters to My Tutor…
My dearest Simone,
I read this article based on the title after having come across a rather fluffy piece in the Guardian titled “Should We Clone Neanderthals?”An article of the same title, but with a more serious discussion can be found at Archaeology (“Should We Clone Neanderthals?”).
The New York Times has an article discussing the analysis of the Neanderthal gene sequence and the extent to which Neanderthals may have interbred with humans, Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans, with some scientists saying that interbreding was relatively insignificant and others saying that it may have had noticeable impact on the evolution of modern non-African humans. Writing in 1986, Trinkaus mentions this same discussion. From reading the NYT article, it seems the introduction of genetic evidence has heightened this discussion, but hasn’t interjected the clarity one might expect.
I was most interested in Trinkaus’ discussion of some of the details of the origins of modern humans such as possible connections between changes in upper limb morphology and advantageous changes in tool use and tool development. Further reading of this type would probably make my B-List of things to read.
Eric Trinkaus’ has a wikipedia page. When googling Trinkaus, his page on Rate My Professor came up in the results. It seems that the vast majority of the review articles are written by people who teach somewhere. Before now, I had never thought of looking them up at Rate My Professor.
That’s it for now.
Kind thoughts,
S.
