Episode 30

The Human Family Shrub: Part 2

Anna heads further up the family tree (as Amber lags behind, gasping), and introduces us to our Australopith and Paranthropus relatives. You can always rely on us for our australo-pithiness: Anna gives us the scoop on Lucy's new neighbor Selam and tells us about why babies have such grabby little hands, while Amber grapples with the prospect of a world before people and realizes she might have met an extinct hominin at a party once.

To learn (and see!) more, check out:

Human Evolution Timeline Interactive (Smithsonian Institution)

Human Fossils (Smithsonian Institution)

Australopithecus africanus (Smithsonian Institution)

Paranthropus aethiopicus (Smithsonian Institution)

Paranthropus boisei (Smithsonian Institution)

Paranthropus robustus (Smithsonian Institution)

Who is Lucy the Australopithecus? Five facts you probably didn't know about oldest hominin ever discovered (The Independent)

Newborn Reflexes (University of Rochester Medical Center)

Palmar grasp reflex experiment from 1932 (YouTube)

Darwinism in the Nursery (Southland Times)

Infantile Atavism: Being Some Further Notes on Darwinism in the Nursery (British Medical Journal)

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.