Brian Villmoare

• Professor (Assistant) at University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The phylogeny of the early African hominins has long been confounded by contrasting interpretations of midfacial structure. In particular, the anterior pillar, an externally prominent bony column running vertically alongside the nasal aperture, has been identified as a homology of South African species Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecu...

The propensity of humans and non-human animals to discount future returns for short-term benefits is well established. This contrasts with the ability of organisms to unfold complex developmental sequences over months or years efficiently. Research has focused on various descriptive and predictive parameters of ‘temporal discounting’ in behavior, a...

Smith and Smith and Wood proposed that the human fossil record offers special challenges for causal hypotheses because “unique” adaptations resist the comparative method. We challenge their notions of “uniqueness” and offer a refutation of the idea that there is something epistemologically special about human prehistoric data. Although paleontologi...

The propensity of humans and non-human animals to discount future returns for short-term benefits is well established. This contrasts with the ability of organisms to unfold complex developmental sequences over months or years. Research has focused on various descriptive and predictive parameters of ‘temporal discounting’ in behavior, and researche...

Big History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. This book provides a deep, causal view of the forces that have shaped the universe, the earth, and humanity. Starting with the Big Bang and the formation of the earth, it traces the evolutionary history of the worl...

The final chapter discusses the long-term prospects for the Earth, including demographic changes that are likely to have important long-term implications for humanity, such as the overall decrease in the birth rate, the trends towards increasing literacy, and the importance of educating and empowering women as a factor in the economic progression o...

Although largely accepted in animal biology, sociobiology has proven to be a controversial model for explaining human behavior. Nowadays sometimes termed ‘behavioral ecology’, the application of biological models to human behavior has the potential to explain a wide array of human instincts and actions. This chapter reviews the models for such puta...

Big History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. This book provides a deep, causal view of the forces that have shaped the universe, the earth, and humanity. Starting with the Big Bang and the formation of the earth, it traces the evolutionary history of the worl...

The Cambrian Explosion is one of the most fascinating periods in Earth’s prehistory, as here we first find animals in the fossil record. With the discovery of the Burgess Shale, we can get a sense of the enormous diversity in animals evolving in a relatively short time, as the appearance of complex multicellular organisms provided evolution with an...

After the Neolithic transition, arguably the most important economic shift was the industrial revolution. Prior to the industrial revolution, for the previous 10,000 years, the world relied (almost) exclusively on small-scale agriculture or pastoralism for economic production. The industrial revolution, starting largely with the development of the...

Our genus is characterized by a unique dependence on technology, which is first seen in the mid-Pleistocene and becomes more sophisticated through time. The trend towards increasing encephalization appears to accelerate once tools have been acquired, coincident with a focus on meat-eating. This chapter reviews later Pleistocene species, including t...

This chapter provides a broad overview of primate diversity and evolution, as well as a relatively detailed accounting of early human evolution. It presents a summary of the major anatomical and behavioral differences between apes and humans and the adaptations involved. Humans diverged from the apes between 6 million and 8 million years ago and we...

This chapter is a broad outline of the timeline of the Big Bang and the formation of the universe and solar system. It discusses the relationship between energy and matter, and how elements are formed from simpler elements due to the application of energy and gravity. This chapter emphasizes the large scales of time and space, and also how energy a...

The two major questions posed by this chapter are: What is life and how do we define and identify it? How did life originate? It discusses different definitions of life and the role of entropy as a constraint. It discusses some forms that may or may not meet differing definitions of life (e.g. prions, viruses). The various hypotheses, studies, and...

No review of human evolution can afford to ignore the ‘race’ issue, as it has played a central role in history and politics, especially in the United States. Although most people equate ‘race’ with skin color, this chapter explains the fact that skin color is an adaptive cline. It also reviews other elements of anatomical variation, demonstrating t...

Big History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. This book provides a deep, causal view of the forces that have shaped the universe, the earth, and humanity. Starting with the Big Bang and the formation of the earth, it traces the evolutionary history of the worl...

Chaos and complexity are related concepts that help explain patterns in nature, and the inherent limitations we face in trying to interpret them. This chapter is a relatively straightforward examination of these two fields, but it applies them specifically to the biological sciences, demonstrating the constraints on prediction and inference in biol...

For the last 5,000 years humans have been steadily transitioning to state/kingdom power structures. This chapter explains the demographic and political causes of the transition to institutional power, most frequently vested in lineages, and the ways in which institutional religions have supported institutional power in states and kingdoms. Personal...

This chapter introduces the idea of Earth’s timeline and the six major epochs. The principle of radiometric dating is introduced here, to provide the absolute age of the earth and other geological features. This chapter also provides a brief outline of geological principles, and especially emphasizes the importance of plate tectonics and continenta...

The transition from a foraging lifestyle to structured political systems is one of the most momentous changes in the history of our species. This chapter reviews the various parameters that changed as a result of the transition to agriculture, including health, wealth, and power structures. There are a considerable number of debates over this trans...

Evolution is responsible for all biological diversity on earth, so it is critical that the students understand precisely what evolution is and how we know that evolution is a fact. In this chapter the four causes of evolutionary change in populations are reviewed in some detail, relying partially on the lessons on genetics in Chapter 5. It particul...

Big History seeks to retell the human story in light of scientific advances by such methods as radiocarbon dating and genetic analysis. This book provides a deep, causal view of the forces that have shaped the universe, the earth, and humanity. Starting with the Big Bang and the formation of the earth, it traces the evolutionary history of the worl...

The Cambrian unleashed the forces of evolution, giving rise to new anatomical adaptations that still form parts of modern animal anatomy. The evolution of the mandible, hyoid cartilage, cricoid cartilage, and styloid ligament from the gill arches of a hagfish-like ancestor is one of the most consequential adaptations. In this time period we also se...

Modernity started with Darwin and probably reached its philosophical peak with Einstein. The appearance of modernity is associated with the rise of science as a dominant source of philosophical authority, and worldwide recognition of the rights of citizens, particularly women (the vote, birth control, etc.). For the first time, the orientation of p...

Understanding economics is critical to understanding the history of humanity, from hunter-gatherers to today. Economics is the study of decision-making and how humans make decisions. Without understanding economics we cannot understand the trajectory of history over the last 10,000 years. This chapter reviews basic economic principles, and how econ...

This chapter introduces some of the broader ideas and themes of the book, especially the importance of the scientific method as a route to understanding the material universe. It contrasts the scientific perspective with the perspectives in other academic and non-academic disciplines (e.g. the historical, religious, and moral perspectives on human...

This chapter discusses the ways in which natural selection has acted on the animal and primate brain, demonstrating that the human brain is better at some tasks, whereas other animals are better at certain others (e.g. special memory and chimpanzees). Human brains are the results of selection for very specific tasks, largely relating to social info...

Religion is universal across human societies and this chapter reviews the earliest evidence of spiritual belief from the fossil and archaeological record. Religions have very specific roles in societies, depending on the complexity and institutional structures of the society, and this chapter explores the ways these roles have shifted over the cour...

This chapter provides an outline of Mendelian and molecular genetics, with a particular emphasis on how DNA provides evidence of a single origin for all living things. It discusses the role of genetics in serial homology, and how that demonstrates genetic relatedness among vertebrates especially, and it shows how homologous HOX genes provide the he...

Plants are the Earth’s primary producers of oxygen, organic compounds, and easily convertible energy. The appearance of photosynthesis in chloroplast-bearing cyanobacteria set the stage for all later life, and is responsible for the oxygenation of the planet. This event is easily apparent in the geological record in the form of rust layers. Dense l...

The invention of money was one of the major factor that allowed governments, corporations, and individuals to consolidate power. This chapter reviews the history of money and its various forms. The globalized economy depends on the free flow of money, and trade is an enormous source of wealth and power. Trading economies have proven to be stronger...

The use of multiple observations near noon with a traditional sextant to determine a fix is common among celestial navigators. A recent invention is the fixed-angle ‘Bris sextant’ that comes with advantages, but imposes constraints due to its invariant nature. We propose a method by which both longitude and latitude can be fixed using only two sigh...

Australopiths, a group of hominins from the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa, are characterized by derived traits in their crania hypothesized to strengthen the facial skeleton against feeding loads and increase the efficiency of bite force production. The crania of robust australopiths are further thought to be stronger and more efficient than those of...

Sexual dimorphism can be one of the most important indicators of social behavior in fossil species, but the effects of time averaging, geographic variation, and differential preservation can complicate attempts to determine this measure from preserved skeletal anatomy. Here we present an alternative, using footprints from near Ileret, Kenya, to ass...

Network theory is increasingly being used to study morphological modularity and integration. Anatomical network analysis (AnNA) is a framework for quantitatively characterizing the topological organization of anatomical structures and providing an operational way to compare structural integration and modularity. Here we apply AnNA for the first tim...

The history of the discovery of early fossils attributed to the genus Homo has been contentious, with scholars disagreeing over the generic assignment of fossils proposed as members of our genus. In this manuscript I review the history of discovery and debate over early Homo and evaluate the various taxonomic hypotheses for the genus. To get a sens...

Bipedalism is a defining feature of the human lineage. Despite evidence that walking on two feet dates back 6-7 Ma, reconstructing hominin gait evolution is complicated by a sparse fossil record and challenges in inferring biomechanical patterns from isolated and fragmentary bones. Similarly, patterns of social behavior that distinguish modern huma...

Although the transition from Australopithecus to Homo is usually thought of as a momentous transformation, the fossil record bearing on the origin and earliest evolution of Homo is virtually undocumented. As a result, the poles of the transition are frequently attached to taxa (e.g. A. afarensis, at ca 3.0 Ma versus H. habilis or H. erectus, at ca...

Reconstructing hominin paleoecology is critical for understanding our ancestors’ diets, social organizations and interactions with other animals. Most paleoecological models lack fine-scale resolution due to fossil hominin scarcity and the time-averaged accumulation of faunal assemblages. Here we present data from 481 fossil tracks from northwester...

Gorillas living in western central Africa (Gorilla gorilla) are morphologically and genetically distinguishable from those living in eastern central Africa (Gorilla beringei). Genomic analyses show eastern gorillas experienced a significant reduction in population size during the Pleistocene subsequent to geographical isolation from their western c...

Hawks et al. argue that our analysis of Australopithecus sediba mandibles is flawed and that specimen LD 350-1 cannot be distinguished from this, or any other, Australopithecus species. Our reexamination of the evidence confirms that LD 350-1 falls outside of the pattern that A. sediba shares with Australopithecus and thus is reasonably assigned to...

The Ledi-Geraru research area forms part the Lower Awash Valley (Afar, Ethiopia), a region with abundant sedimentary deposits which have yielded some of the most emblematic hominin fossil discoveries in the history of paleoanthropology. Ledi-Geraru is localized north of Hadar and Dikika, and west of Gona. A series of surveys carried out since 2002...

Modularity and complexity go hand in hand in the evolution of the skull of primates. Because analyses of these two parameters often use different approaches, we do not know yet how modularity evolves within, or as a consequence of, an also-evolving complex organization. Here we use a novel network theory-based approach (Anatomical Network Analysis)...

The zygomatic region and lateral orbital wall are important structural components of the primate craniofacial skeleton, providing attachment for muscles, housing and protecting the eye, and resisting and transmitting forces incurred during feeding and fighting. The design of this region must therefore meet the needs of a number of different functio...

Our understanding of the origin of the genus Homo has been hampered by a limited fossil record in eastern Africa between 2.0 and 3.0 million years ago (Ma). Here we report the discovery of a partial hominin mandible with teeth from the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, Ethiopia, that establishes the presence of Homo at 2.80-2.75 Ma. T...

It is well known that there is a strong relationship among the environment, selection, and extinction, but the underlying role of genetics and genetic constraints in contributing to extinction is less appreciated. Integration of characters may enhance survivability for species, providing that selective pressure is parallel with the patterns of morp...

Modularity is a key mechanism bridging development and evolution and is fundamental to evolvability. Herein, we investigate modularity of the Vertebrate jaw with the aim of understanding mechanisms of its morphological evolution. Conservation of the basic structural bauplan of Vertebrate jaws led to a Hinge and Caps model, in which polarity in the...

Clades with taxa that have multiple locomotor adaptations represent a direct way to test the relationship between adaptation and integration. If integration is influenced by functional requirements, integration should be most apparent where selection is strongest and less evident where selection has been relaxed. If integration is primarily regulat...

This paper proposes a statistical test of the single-species hypothesis using non-metric characters as a complement to statistical tests using more traditional metric characters. The sample examined is that of Asian and African Homo erectus. The paleoanthropological community is divided on the taxonomic distinction of these fossils, with workers ar...