World distribution of the recent Microcephalin allele. The prevalence is indicated in black and the letter 'D' refers to the 'derived' or recent allele(Evans et al., 2005) Almost a decade ago, there was much interest in a finding that a gene involved in brain growth, Microcephalin, continued to evolve after modern humans had begun to... Read More

Drinking from the wrong chalice? By his mid-40s, Michael Jackson had skin like parchment. The end of 2010 is drawing nigh, and the time has come to review my predictions from last year. Brain growth genes Back in 2005, it was found that human populations vary considerably at two genes, ASPM and microcephalin, that control... Read More

Linda Vigilant – Was she in on the Big Secret? Was the rhino? The HBD blogosphere has been rife with speculation about the reconstruction of the Neanderthal genome. John Hawks, Razib Khan, and Steve Sailer felt that something big was in the offing. Above all, this something would resurrect the multiregional model of human origins.... Read More

According to the online magazine Seed, “a growing number of scientists argue that human culture itself has become the foremost agent of biological change.” Much of this change has been surprisingly recent: I thought I was on top of the literature, but this was new to me. It’s even more proof that human evolution did... Read More