Ideas on human origins evolve at anthropology gathering
Gibbons, A.
Science 276(5312): 535
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 9148414 Document Number: 475187
At the 66th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and associated groups, recently held in St. Louis, researchers presented new genetic and fossil findings marking critical milestones in long-running debates on such topics as the ancestors of apes, the origins of modern man, and the evolution of the menopause. A new theory proposed by Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and others suggests that some modern human genes are derived from ancestors in Asia, rather than Africa. At the Paleoanthropology Society meeting, meanwhile, University of Utah anthropologist Kristen Hawkes and colleagues presented a paper, based on a study of African hunter-gatherers, that suggests that women survive long after the menopause in order to help take care of their grandchildren.