Becoming Human (October 2012)
Special Editions

Cover; Becoming Human; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Table of Contents; Becoming Human; by Staff Editor; 3 Page(s)

Letter from the Editor; Becoming Human; by Mariette DiChristina; 1 Page(s)

An Unlikely Ascendancy
MARIETTE DICHRISTINA is editor in chief of Scientific American.

Planet of the Apes; Becoming Human; by David R. Begun; 10 Page(s)

During the Miocene epoch, as many as 100 species of apes roamed throughout the Old World. New fossils suggest that the ones that gave rise to living great apes and humans evolved not in Africa but Eurasia
DAVID R. BEGUN is professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. Focusing on Miocene hominoid evolution, Begun has excavated and surveyed fossil localities in Spain, Hungary, Turkey and Kenya. He is currently working with colleagues in Turkey and Hungary on several fossil ape sites and is trying to reconstruct the landscapes and mammalian dispersal patterns that characterized the Old World between 20 million and two million years ago.

Bonobo Sex and Society; Becoming Human; by Frans B. M. de Waal; 8 Page(s)

The behavior of a close relative challenges assumptions about male supremacy in human evolution
FRANS B. M. DE WAAL was trained as an ethologist in the European tradition, receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1977. After a six-year study of the chimpanzee colony at the Arnhem Zoo, he moved to the U.S. in 1981 to work on other primate species, including bonobos. He is now director of Living Links at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta and C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University. He has written and co-authored several popular books about primates and morality, including The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society (Harmony Books, 2009).

Diet and Primate Evolution; Becoming Human; by Katharine Milton; 8 Page(s)

Many characteristics of modern primates, including our own species, derive from an early ancestor's practice of taking most of its food from the tropical canopy
KATHARINE MILTON is professor of environmental science at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning her doctorate from New York University in 1977, she began field studies on the foraging behavior of howler and spider monkeys in Panama. She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1980. Milton has also studied the dietary behavior of indigenous human populations living in the Amazon Basin of Brazil.

Why Are Some Animals So Smart?; Becoming Human; by Carel van Schaik; 8 Page(s)

The unusual behavior of orangutans in a Sumatran swamp suggests a surprising answer
CAREL VAN SCHAIK is director of the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. A native of the Netherlands, he earned his doctorate at the University of Utrecht in 1985. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University and another short stint at Utrecht, he went to Duke University, where he was professor of biological anthropology until he returned to the Old World in 2004. His book Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture (Harvard University Press, 2004) gives a more detailed treatment of the ideas covered in this article.

Stranger in a New Land; Becoming Human; by Kate Wong; 10 Page(s)

Stunning finds in the Republic of Georgia upend long-standing ideas about the first hominids to journey out of Africa
KATE WONG is a senior editor at Scientific American, covering paleontology, archaeology and life sciences. She is co-author of Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins (Harmony Books, 2009).

The Littlest Human; Becoming Human; by Kate Wong; 10 Page(s)

A spectacular find in Indonesia reveals that a strikingly different hominid shared the earth with our kind in the not so distant past

Founder Mutations; Becoming Human; by Dennis Drayna; 8 Page(s)

A special class of genetic mutations that often cause human disease is enabling scientists to trace the migration and growth of specific human populations over thousands of years
DENNIS DRAYNA received his bachelor's degree from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1975 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1981. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Utah and then spent 14 years in the biotechnology industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he identified a number of different human genes involved in cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. In 1996 he joined the National Institutes of Health, where he currently serves as a section chief in the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. His primary research interests are the genetics of human communication disorders, work that has taken him to eight different countries on four continents in pursuit of families with these disorders. In his spare time he enjoys technical rock and ice climbing in equally far-flung places.

How We Came to Be Human; Becoming Human; by Ian Tattersall; 8 Page(s)

The acquisition of language and the capacity for symbolic art may lie at the very heart of the extraordinary cognitive abilities that set us apart from the rest of creation
IAN TATTERSALL is a curator in the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This article is excerpted from The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human (Harcourt, 2002). His other books include Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness (Harcourt Brace, 1998), The Last Neanderthal: The Rise, Success and Mysterious Extinction of Our Closest Human Relatives (Westview, 1999, revised), Extinct Humans, with Jeffrey Schwartz (Westview, 2000), and Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

The Morning of the Modern Mind; Becoming Human; by Kate Wong; 10 Page(s)

Controversial discoveries suggest that the roots of our vaunted intellect run far deeper than is commonly believed
KATE WONG is a senior editor at Scientific American, covering paleontology, archaeology and life sciences. She is co-author of Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins (Harmony Books, 2009).

The Emergence of Intelligence; Becoming Human; by William H. Calvin; 8 Page(s)

Language, foresight and other hallmarks of intelligence are very likely connected through an underlying facility that plans rapid, novel movements
WILLIAM H. CALVIN is a neurobiologist at the University of Washington. He studied physics at Northwestern University but made the transition to neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Washington in 1966. Calvin is also the author of several books on science for the general public. His literary efforts include The Throwing Madonna, The River That Flows Uphill, Conversations with Neil's Brain, A Brain for All Seasons, A Brief History of the Mind, and Almost Us. See www.williamcalvin.com