Human Migration

The recent discovery that humans with ancestors outside of Africa have Neanderthal DNA definitely made me think about Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond) again and made me question my knowledge of ancient human migration. In an effort to educate myself a bit better about human genetic history I found this interactive map of human migration based upon genetic data. It is definitely worth a quick run through if you are at all interested. There are some interesting bottlenecks and I find it amazing how far humans got before agriculture was developed.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky on sexuality

Ran into this couple of Human Behavioral Biology lectures by Stanford's Dr. Robert Sapolsky. It's pretty '100' level, but it's a very non-technical introduction in to some of the fascinating aspects of sexual evolution and their implications for human sexuality. The lack of detail, some evolutionary psychology and the pace of information can be a bit annoying in parts but it is quite a ride. It's like he is trying to cram in all the most interesting stuff into two lectures. Now I know why women seem to like perfume more than men, and about the evolution of manogamy. While it's two videos, don't bother watching, you can just listen. They are also very long so if you are interested, so be prepared for listening to them in a couple of sessions. Here on boingboing. Video1. Video 2.