23,000-Year-Old Footprints In White Sands

The History of Race and Racism In The Study of Evolution

IN THE NEWS:

Last month, the journal Science published an article that made popular headlines. For example, it was featured prominently in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The headline news was that newly discovered evidence proved human existence in America some 10,000 years earlier than previously believed by the scientific community.

To better understand the context of this discovery, and to better understand anthropology, its history and its racial controversies, we spoke with Mr. Jonathan Marks, a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Professor Marks is the recipient of many awards and honors — which are enumerated on his academic homepage. And here are a few examples of his many publications: The Alternative Introduction to Biological Anthropology, a 2018 book; Is Science Racist?, a 2017 book; and Tales of the ex-Apes: How We Think about Human Evolution, a 2015 book.

Click this link to listen to my podcast conversation with him, which is also available on Apple and Spotify, and on ThePeel.news homepage.

IN THE PAST:

IN THE PAST:

When you get a moment, stop by a mirror and study your forehead, chin and canine teeth. Hopefully, you won’t discover anything abnormal — not more than the usual stuff anyway! In addition to bipedalism, they are some of the physical features that define us — Homo sapiens.

Have you ever wondered why Africa? Why did humanity branch off from apes in Africa, and not… say India or China? This question may seem a bit off-topic. But it’s not. I wanted to know how and when humans came to America? And what they looked like? Although admittedly I asked the latter question out of sheer curiosity (as I had no basis for believing that Native Americans may have looked anything different than they do now), it turned out that I was onto something. As Professor Marks explained, early Native Americans were more skeletally diverse than modern Native Americans.

An example of this diversity was demonstrated in the famous 1990s case (well, at least famous among scientists) of the…