Scott's Neanderthal variants: 309. I'm in the 92nd percentile of 23&me customers. (Down from 96th percentile when I first signed in, so they've had a lot of cavemen sign up or something.)

And this was it — the thing that sold me on 23andMe: the chance to determine one’s degree of Neanderthal-ness. Without any consideration of all the possible consequences of submitting one’s DNA to a global database, I ordered two kits, grinning and convinced that my husband’s result would show a statistically significant and above average number of Neanderthal variants in his genome. Since Father’s Day was only a month away, I decided I’d giftwrap the kits upon arrival too. I’d kill two birds with one stone.

When I hit the Confirm Order button on 23andMe’s site, the possibility of any additional genetic discoveries beyond Tomer’s Neanderthal-ness didn’t even occur to me. My brain was seated at the kitchen table, staring at an unused fork, thinking only of how hairy my husband was and that my father-in-law had recently grown even hairier in his senior years — small gray bushes now sprung from his ears and nostrils. I counted hairs. I equated higher hair counts with higher degrees of Neanderthal-ness. And worse, I worried my husband was destined to suffer future hearing loss, just as his father does, and I wondered if these auditory challenges could be blamed on something neurological or on those furry, sound-absorbing, hair-stuffed ears.

I waited patiently and quietly for the kits to arrive, but my curiosity about everything related to genetics expanded in the meantime. I wanted so much to share my excitement with Tomer; admittedly, I also walked around filled with a kind of juvenile yet sadistic glee, and whenever Tomer licked his fingers or spoke with his mouth full of steak, I thought to myself What a Neanderthal!

One slide Dr. Novembre has folded into his recent talks depicts a group of white nationalists chugging milk at a 2017 gathering to draw attention to a genetic trait known to be more common in white people than others — the ability to digest lactose as adults. It also shows a social media post from an account called “Enter The Milk Zone” with a map lifted from a scientific journal article on the trait’s evolutionary history.

In most of the world, the article explains, the gene that allows for the digestion of lactose switches off after childhood. But with the arrival of the first cattle herders in Europe some 5,000 years ago, a chance mutation that left it turned on provided enough of a nutritional leg up that nearly all of those who survived eventually carried it. In the post, the link is accompanied by a snippet of hate speech urging individuals of African ancestry to leave America. “If you can’t drink milk,” it says in part, “you have to go back.”

In an inconvenient truth for white supremacists, a similar bit of evolution turns out to have occurred among cattle breeders in East Africa. Scientists need to be more aware of the racial lens through which some of their basic findings are being filtered, Dr. Novembre says, and do a better job at pointing out how they can be twisted.

Perhaps then we shouldn’t brag about our large brains, but marvel at the more compact brain we have inherited from ancestors who likely had to work together to survive. Our world faces real problems, and these problems are not going to be solved by one guy with a self-reported large brain. And Trump should consider if he really wants to be included among the large-brained crowd. In 1871, Edward Rulloff’s brain was weighed at Cornell University where it is still on display. Scientists declared it one of the largest ever recorded.

Rulloff was a serial killer.

(...) Days ago, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen defended the policy of child separation, stating that “We operate according to some of the highest standards in the country. We provide food, medical, education, and all needs that the child requests” (emphasis added). However, these needs are insufficient, and the one obvious need that will not be met anytime soon is reunification with their parents. Few could deny that parental-child separation inflicts suffering. A year ago, when rumors of the separation policy were leaked, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement against it, noting that it would cause additional pain for children:

“Pediatricians work to keep families together in times of strife because we know that in any time of anxiety and stress, children need to be with their parents, family members and caregivers. Children are not just little adults and they need loved ones to comfort and reassure them.

Federal authorities must exercise caution to ensure that the emotional and physical stress children experience as they seek refuge in the United States is not exacerbated by the additional trauma of being separated from their siblings, parents or other relatives and caregivers. Proposals to separate children from their families as a tool of law enforcement to deter immigration are harsh and counterproductive. We urge policymakers to always be mindful that these are vulnerable, scared children.”

There is some evidence that these traumatic experiences can have long-term effects. Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professor at the University of Southern California, described his own experience as a 4-year-old child who was separated from his family at the end of the Vietnam War. Nguyen wrote that “Memory for me begins here, howling with fear and pain as I was taken from my mother, too young to understand that I would be returned to her in a few months.” He added that: 

“Being separated from my parents hurt enough for me to remember it vividly more than 40 years later. I can easily imagine the kind of damage a prolonged removal, under much more adverse circumstances, would do to a child. Or to a parent, since I am now the father of a 4-year-old myself. I say I can imagine it, but the pain of losing my son is actually unimaginable.”

Like Nguyen, I don’t think I can fully comprehend how hard it would be to have a child taken from me. On an emotional level, I think the closest word to describe how I would feel would probably be “anguish” for my child’s pain, and probably anger toward the people who caused it. On an intellectual level, I think most of us would probably feel this way, and I think I know why. Forgive me, but I cannot help but to view all of this at least partly from the perspective of a biological anthropologist.

Perhaps this is going back one step too far, but I think it’s important to remember that some of the hallmarks of being human are (1) our obligatory sociality, and (2) the intensity of the parent-child bond. Connections are essential, as none of us is an island. For example, large epidemiological studies show that strong social relationships are a better predictor of longevity among the elderly than whether one is obese or exercises regularly (Holt-Lunstad et al. 2010). Similar patterns have also been found in baboons, where females who had stronger and more stable social bonds lived longer (Silk et al. 2010).

This makes sense, as nearly all primate species are group-living and intensely social. The neurobiologist Matt Lieberman argued that we are “wired to connect” socially because this carried evolutionary benefits that enhanced our ancestors’ chances for survival, and that this goes deep into our primate and mammalian heritage. However, there are also costs to being so heavily invested in others, such as the potential for loneliness, isolation, neglect, ostracization, bullying, rejection, and loss. Furthermore, social pain is real, and it overlaps neurologically with physical pain:

“Throughout our lives, we are destined to experience different forms of social rejection and loss… Such breakups often feel unbearable, and they can dramatically alter how we view ourselves and our lives for a long time after. Our Faustian evolutionary bargain allows us humans to develop slowly out of the womb, to adapt to specific cultures and environments, and to grow the most encephalized brains on the planet. But it requires us to pay for it with the possibility of pain, real pain, every time we connect with another human being who has the power to leave us or withhold love. Evolution made its bet that suffering was an acceptable price to pay for all the rewards of being human.” (...)

(...) So, territoriality, from an evolutionary standpoint, is about competing for and securing resources essential for our survival and reproduction. This explains much of our negativity against immigrants, who we may think covet or threaten our possessions and privileges, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. (This is not to mention that many of our common social and economic resources—public schools, housing subsidies, welfare benefits—are supported by money from taxpayers. Our fairness instinct makes us vigilant against free-riders.)

 

(...)

 

The endowment effect explains why we feel we own our society with the culture we are accustomed to, generically known as the American way of life. Such invisible “ownership” makes us inclined to reject other cultural values and practices—dresses, languages, rituals, religious practices—by claiming they are odd, unacceptable, or in conflict with our value system. In contrast, we tend to be more willing to accept people with similar cultural backgrounds. This explains why American society is so much more willing to accept European immigrants. Racial bias aside, the endowment effect also plays a major role. (...)

(...) Along with an almost complete rhinoceros skeleton, showing clear signs of having been butchered, the team unearthed 57 stone tools.

These stone artefacts consist of 49 sharp-edge flakes, six cores (flaked stones used as the source material for the flakes) and two possible hammer stones. Several of the rhino bones had cut marks and the left and right humerus bones showed signs of being hit with hammer stones, possibly to gain access to the marrow.

Other fossils found at the site included stegodon (a relative of the elephant), Philippine brown deer, freshwater turtle and monitor lizard remains.

The fossils and stone tools were found in a clay bed dated to between 777,000 and 631,000 years ago. This conclusion was reached by combining several dating methods (including Electron Spin Resonance, argon dating and uranium series dating), confirming that the butchering of the rhino took place around 700,000 years ago.

The find radically changes our understanding of hominin colonisation of the Philippines; the earliest evidence of hominins in the area prior to this research was a small foot bone found in nearby Callao Cave and dated to 67,000 years ago.

It also calls for a rethink of how early hominins (all human species closely related to or directly ancestral to modern humans) spread throughout the islands of South East Asia. The paper's authors argue that the find suggests the dispersal of premodern hominins through the region took place several times, and that the Philippines may have played a central role. (...)

Science denialism can seem intractable, and studies on the topic are seldom encouraging. For example, research out of Yale Law School suggests that when people form their opinions on contentious topics such as climate change or evolution, political or religious values trump knowledge of the concept.

A study published in March in BioScience begs to differ, at least when it comes to evolution. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and their colleagues measured participants' knowledge of evolutionary theory, as well as their acceptance of evolution as fact. They found a significant link between understanding the fine points of the theory and believing in it, regardless of religious or political identity.

Unlike earlier research that involved only high school or college students, the demographics of the 1,100 subjects in the new study better approximated those of the overall U.S. population. The researchers also used more nuanced language in their questions to distinguish between subjects' intellectual grasp of evolution and their personal feelings toward it. It remains unclear whether science education leads directly to increased acceptance of evolution, but the Penn study supports this possibility.

A couple of weeks ago, at a speech before a friendly audience, President Donald Trump likened immigrants to poisonous snakes. To biologist and behavioral scientist Robert Sapolsky, it was a revolting but revealing remark.

"That's a textbook dehumanization of 'them,' he said. "If you get to the point where citing 'thems' causes your followers to activate neurons in the insular cortex—the part of the brain that responds to viscerally disgusting things—you've finished most of your to-do list for your genocide."

That sort of sharply stated, science-based analysis has made Sapolsky a popular and influential writer and thinker. A MacArthur fellow, he is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, and the author of several books, including the 2017 best-seller Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.

Sapolsky has spent much of his career in Kenya, studying baboons (among other primates), and he uses that knowledge to put human behavior into a broader perspective. In a recent telephone interview, he discussed the biological basis of our current political fault lines. (...)

We do our worst when we're surrounded by a lot of people who agree with us. For example, devout religious belief is not a predictor of extremism. Devout religious observance isn't either. But devout religious observance in a group setting is. Studies show that support for terrorism in majority Muslim countries is unrelated to how often you pray, or how devout you are about food prohibitions. But it is related to how often you pray in a mosque. The same is also true of right-wing Jewish extremists in Israel. When sacred values are re-affirmed in groups—that's when things get scary. (...)