Ian Tattersall | Contributors | Inference

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Ian Tattersall

Ian Tattersall is a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

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letter Tough Luck
In response to “The Siege of Paris”
[short_description] “Tough luck” were the final words of Richard Lewontin’s paper “The Evolution of Cognition,” reflecting his view that human cognitive function would never be atomized in a genetic context.
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Archaeology Decoding the Earliest Symbols [long_description] What are the enigmatic abstract symbols found alongside pictorial representations of animals in many Ice Age caves? Ian Tattersall reviews Genevieve von Petzinger’s The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols.
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Paleontology The Genus Homo [long_description] The history of the hominid family, like that of other mammals, means diversification, competition, and, sometimes, extinction. Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall explains why we need a phylogeny-based definition of the genus Homo that includes our species Homo sapiens, and why we don’t have one.

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