Human Evolution
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Anthropology Current Affairs
Weekly Digest · 16–22 August 2026 For the UPSC Anthropology optional Published Sunday, 23 August 2026 Today is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition This week’s digest brings together major developments in palaeoanthropology alongside an instructive story on community health from Sikkim. A bold proposal to include Australopithecus… Continue reading
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Anthropology Current Affairs
Weekly Digest: 9 – 15 August 2026 For the UPSC Anthropology optional · Published Sunday, 16 August 2026 · HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! This week’s digest brings together major developments in palaeoanthropology, and prehistoric archaeology, forensic anthropology alongside an unusually consequential Indian week: the Census 2027 notification that returns caste enumeration to the national count after… Continue reading
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Anthropology Current Affairs
Weekly Digest · 2 August – 8 August 2026 For the UPSC Anthropology optional · Published Sunday, 9 August 2026 · Today, 9 August, is the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – observed in India as World Tribal Day (Vishwa Adivasi Divas) – and the digest opens with the Day itself and its… Continue reading
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Anthropology Current Affairs
Anthropology Current Affairs Anthropology Weekly – the week of 26 July to 1 August 2026 Published Sunday, 2 August 2026 A million and a half years ago, on the soft mud of a lakeshore in northern Kenya, a group of eight walked past one after another, and the ground kept the record. No tools, no… Continue reading
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Great apes were using touch to reassure and keep the peace six million years before humans evolved – new research
Jake Brooker, Utrecht University and Zanna Clay, Durham University During an eight-month-long research trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia, we studied consolation: the way bonobos and chimpanzees comfort each other after conflicts and distress. But early on, we kept noticing something that didn’t quite fit. The animals were exchanging a lot… Continue reading
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Smaller brains? Fewer friends? An evolutionary biologist asks how AI will change humanity’s future
Rob Brooks What will humans be like generations from now in a world transformed by artificial intelligence (AI)? Plenty of thinkers have applied themselves to questions like this, considering how AI will alter lives – often for better, sometimes for worse. They have conjured dramatic scenarios, like AI-driven extinction of humans (and many other species),… Continue reading
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The whole story of human evolution – from ancient apes via Lucy to us
In pursuit of knowledge, the evolution of humanity ranks with the origins of life and the universe. And yet, except when an exciting find hits the headlines, palaeoanthropology and its related fields have gained far less scientific support and funding – particularly for scientists and institutions based in the African countries where so many landmark… Continue reading
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Understanding Gene Expression in Anthropology
Gene expression refers to the process by which the genetic information stored in DNA is converted into functional products, primarily proteins, that perform various functions within the cell. This process typically involves two main steps: transcription, where the DNA is transcribed into a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule, and translation, where the mRNA is then translated… Continue reading
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Self-medicating Chimpanzees!
An adult chimpanzee named Suzee was seen medicating the wound of her adolescent son Sia, using insects in the process. This behaviour was found amongst the chimpanzees in Loango National Park in Gabon. The incident was reported by a group of researchers in Current Biology in February 2022 and is considered the first of such… Continue reading
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DNA study reveals modern humans emerged from several groups in Africa, not one.
Past studies of human genetics have proposed the theory that modern humans originated from a single population in Africa. But a new paper, published last week in the journal Nature, put this idea to the test-and concluded it doesn’t hold up. The paper relies on modeling using the genomes of 290 living people from southern, eastern… Continue reading
i think, therefore i am.
Cogito, ergo sum is a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”, probably the one thing that defines our specie.