Although the times when Homo sapiens reached Australia are under revision, the latest data suggests that they arrived between 45,000 and 60,000 years ago—about the time that our species left Africa for parts east. And although changes in water levels made it easier to get to Australia by water then now humans still had to […]
Welcome to Thursday, October 2, 2025, and Yom Kippur, which occupies all day and ends at sundown (it began at sunset yesterday). Considered the holiest day of the year by religious Jews, it’s the Day of Atonement, marked by fasting, praying, and confessing. There is no work for the very observant: no turning on ovens […]
We’ve all learned that The Lancet, once a respectable journal, has gone full-on “progressive,” denying the sex binary, adopting a comprehensive Left progressive position, blaming rich white countries for all the health problems of poorer countries, and advocating gender-activist language, as it did in its widely-criticized cover below. Much of this was done under the […]
As everyone knows, I adhere to the gametic definition of sex, in which individuals are classified as male or female (or, as in hermaphroditic plants, both sexes in one individual) based on whether their bodies are set up to produce small, mobile gametes (the “males”) or large, immobile gametes (the “females”). I’ve explained why I […]
Once again we have a conflict between science and the unevidenced claims of superstition. This time it’s from Australia. Some of the “Willandra lakes fossils” from New South Wales, which include the famous “Lake Mungo remains” (three sets of hominin fossils that are the oldest ones known from Australia), have been or are scheduled to […]
Highly speculative, but I found this of interest: This article explores the hypothesis that modern East Asian populations inherited and maintained extensive psychosocial adaptations to arctic environments from ancestral Ancient Northern East Asian populations, which inhabited arctic and subarctic Northeast Eurasia around the Last Glacial Maximum period of the Late Pleistocene, prior to back migrating southwards into East Asia in […]
Here’s Richard Dawkins ostensibly discussing his new book (The Genetic Book of the Dead) with Steve Pinker, but of course you can’t confine a discussion between these two to a single book. Even from the beginning it ranges widely, in which Pinker discusses not only the epiphany that The Selfish Gene gave him, but levels […]
I suggest, Men and women tend to think alike in societies where there is Close-knit interdependence, religosity and authoritarianism, or Shared cultural production and mixed gendered offline socialising. Gendered ideological polarisation appears encouraged by: Feminised public culture Economic resentment Social media filter bubbles Cultural entrepreneurs. Here is the full piece, currently the best piece on […]
I occasionally get questions like this one: “What do you consider the most convincing evidence for evolution?” My answer is usually “the fossil record combined with dating methods,” but I often add that “the evidence from biogeography is so convincing that I’ve never seen a creationist even try to rebut it.” (You can see some […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments