Educational Resources

General Papers

AnthroNotes
Published by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology. Recent papers include Why Human Skin Comes in Colors by Nina Jablonski (Spring 2011), and New Perspectives on the Evolution of Bipedalism (Spring 2010) by Alison Brooks.

Great Ape Genomes Offer Insight into Human Evolution
2004. PLoS Biol 2(7): e236. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020236 In the genomic era, the age-old question, What makes us human? has become, Why are we not apes? As scientists become more adept at extracting biological meaning from an ever-expanding repository of sequenced genomes, it is likely that our next of kin will again hold promising clues to our own identity.

Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution
This recent report from the National Academies of Science suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies. The report may be read online or downloaded as a pdf.

In the Light of Evolution IV: The Human Condition
The Human Condition is a collection of papers by leading evolutionary biologists and philosophers of science that reflect upon the Darwinian Revolution as it relates to the human condition at levels ranging from the molecular to the theological. The book focuses on understanding the evolutionary origin of humans and their biological and cultural traits. The Human Condition is organized into three parts: Human Phylogenetic History and the Paleontological Record; Structure and Function of the Human Genome; and Cultural Evolution and the Uniqueness of Being Human.