Juan Enriquez : Will our kids be a different species?

http://www.ted.com

Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now? At TEDxSummit, Juan Enriquez sweeps across time and space to bring us to the present moment -- and shows how technology is revealing evidence that suggests rapid evolution may be under way.

Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

The Journey of Man is a documentary that talks about our evolution, our recent history, and how we came to be to the way we are today. It looks at the Y chromosome, that's passed down from male to male, and tracks the marker mutations to map our ancestors' journey. It's how we conquered the Earth in just the last 59,000 years.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=130F35BB9A9FAD46

Guns Germs and Steel 3 of 3

So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group of people – Europeans – endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of their rivals around the world. Guns, germs and steel allowed Europeans to colonize vast tracts of the globe – but what happened when this all-conquering package arrived in Africa, the birthplace of humanity?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3449100874735282191

Guns Germs and Steel 2 of 3

On November 15th 1532, 168 Spanish conquistadors arrive in the holy city of Cajamarca, at the heart of the Inca Empire, in Peru. They are exhausted, outnumbered and terrified – ahead of them are camped 80,000 Inca troops and the entourage of the Emperor himself. Yet, within just 24 hours, more than 7,000 Inca warriors lie slaughtered; the Emperor languishes in chains; and the victorious Europeans begin a reign of colonial terror which will sweep through the entire American continent.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6846344734969027300

Guns Germs and Steel 1 of 3

Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4008293090480628280

Learning Morality from Monkeys

Frans de Waal is director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and a professor of psychology at Emory University. His current research includes food-sharing, social reciprocity, and conflict-resolution in primates as well as the origins of morality and justice in human society. De Waal draws on his own work with primates to illustrate the evolution of morality.

The Age of Empathy Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society

Are we our brothers’ keepers? Do we have an instinct for compassion? Or are we, as is often assumed, only on earth to serve our own survival and interest? In this thought-provoking book, the acclaimed author of Our Inner Ape explores how empathy comes naturally to humans and other animals.

Drawing from fieldwork and laboratory research on chimpanzees, bonobos, and capuchins—as well as on dolphins and elephants—de Waal shows us that many animals are predisposed to take care of one another, come to one another’s aid, and, in some cases, take life-saving action. De Waal argues that human biology similarly offers a giant helping hand to those striving for a just society, and that every human is destined to be humane. Written in layman’s prose with a wealth of anecdotes, wry humor, and incisive intelligence, THE AGE OF EMPATHY is essential reading for our embattled times.

Frans de Waal is a psychology professor at Emory University with a Ph.D. in biology. He is the author of many books, including Chimpanzee Politics and Our Inner Ape. The director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, de Waal was ranked among the World’s 100 Most Influential People of 2007 by Time.

1/5 The Day We Learned To Think [BBC Horizon]

2/5 The Day We Learned To Think [BBC Horizon]

3/5 The Day We Learned To Think [BBC Horizon]

4/5 The Day We Learned To Think [BBC Horizon]

5/5 The Day We Learned To Think [BBC Horizon]

Understanding of humans' earliest past often comes from studying fossils. They tell us much of what we know about the people who lived before us. There is one thing fossils cannot tell us; at what point did we stop living day-to-day and start to think symbolically, to represent ideas about our environment and how we could change it? At a dig in South Africa the discovery of a small piece of ochre pigment, 70,000 years old, has raised some very interesting questions.

Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged in Africa roughly 100,000 years ago. We know from fossil evidence that Homo sapiens replaced other hominids around them and moved out of Africa into Asia and the Middle East, reaching Europe 40,000 years ago.

Prof Richard Klein believes art is a landmark in human evolution. Unquestionable art that's widespread and common suggests you're dealing with people just like us. No other animals, after all, are able to define a painting as anything other than a collection of colours and shapes. This ability is unique to humans.

Other scientists agree. They believe art defines humans as behaviourally modern, and its beginning must coincide with the ability to speak and use language. If someone has the imagination to devise a shared way to describe their environment using art then it seems inconceivable that they could not possess language and speech. The search for the moment our ancestors became behaviourally just like us is also the hunt for the first evidence of art.
BBC - Horizon - The Day We Learned To Think