The first European came from Asia?

The first hominin of Europe

The earliest hominin occupation of Europe is one of the most debated topics in palaeoanthropology. However, the purportedly oldest of the Early Pleistocene sites in Eurasia lack precise age control and contain stone tools rather than human fossil remains^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. Here we report the discovery of a human mandible associated with an assemblage of Mode 1 lithic tools and faunal remains bearing traces of hominin processing, in stratigraphic level TE9 at the site of the Sima del Elefante, Atapuerca, Spain^{6, 7, 8}. Level TE9 has been dated to the Early Pleistocene (approximately 1.2–1.1 Myr), based on a combination of palaeomagnetism, cosmogenic nuclides and biostratigraphy. The Sima del Elefante site thus emerges as the oldest, most accurately dated record of human occupation in Europe, to our knowledge. The study of the human mandible suggests that the first settlement of Western Europe could be related to an early demographic expansion out of Africa. The new evidence, with previous findings in other Atapuerca sites (level TD6 from Gran Dolina^{9, 10, 11, 12, 13}), also suggests that a speciation event occurred in this extreme area of the Eurasian continent during the Early Pleistocene, initiating the hominin lineage represented by the TE9 and TD6 hominins.

Nature 452, 465-469 (27 March 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06815; Received 15 October 2007; Accepted 4 February 2008

Orrorin tugenensis Femoral Morphology and the Evolution of Hominin Bipedalism -- Richmond and Jungers 319 (5870): 1662 -- Science

Orrorin tugenensis Femoral Morphology and the Evolution of Hominin Bipedalism -- Richmond and Jungers 319 (5870): 1662 -- Science

Bipedalism is a key human adaptation and a defining feature of the hominin clade. Fossil femora discovered in Kenya and attributed to Orrorin tugenensis, at 6 million years ago, purportedly provide the earliest postcranial evidence of hominin bipedalism, but their functional and phylogenetic affinities are controversial. We show that the O. tugenensis femur differs from those of apes and Homo and most strongly resembles those of Australopithecus and Paranthropus, indicating that O. tugenensis was bipedal but is not more closely related to Homo than to Australopithecus. Femoral morphology indicates that O. tugenensis shared distinctive hip biomechanics with australopiths, suggesting that this complex evolved early in human evolution and persisted for almost 4 million years until modifications of the hip appeared in the late Pliocene in early Homo

Generating vocal output with TaDA

What would be the first vocal gestures of hominids? The inspiration could be the vocalizations of apes, but, for now, something even simpler will do.

The idea is to use simple vowel gestures possibly with nasalization and lip rounding. Lip rounding is particularly attractive as it is a visible speech gesture that can be mimicked easily.

A (very simple) perceptual model of vowel perception will need to be adopted, so the agents can form a vowel space and start to get preferences. Maybe deBoer's model or something similar?

Implementation of gestural score generation starts today, as I am more familiar with the parameters. Output from TaDA to HLSyn without the Graphical User interface (GUI) exists only for coupling graphs, not gestural scores. That is the part which needs most of the code adaptation.

Good news is that we will be able to start simulating BP patterns real soon, as it is quite easy to implement gestural scores directly.

Broca's area in chimps?

Taglialatela JP, Russell JL, Schaeffer JA, Hopkins WD. 2008. Communicative signaling activates 'Broca's' homolog in chimpanzees. Curr Biol 18:1-6. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.01.049

Broca’s area, a cerebral cortical area located in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the human brain, has been identified as one of several critical regions associated with the motor planning and execution of language. Anatomically, Broca’s area is most often larger in the left hemisphere, and functional imaging studies in humans indicate significant left-lateralized patterns of activation during language-related tasks [1–3]. If, and to what extent, nonhuman primates, particularly chimpanzees, possess a homologous region that is involved in the production of their own communicative signals remains unknown. Here, we show that portions of the IFG as well as other cortical and subcortical regions in chimpanzees are active during the production of communicative signals. These findings are the first to provide direct evidence of the neuroanatomical structures associated with the production of communicative behaviors in chimpanzees. Significant activation in the left IFG in conjunction with other cortical and subcortical brain areas during the production of communicative signals in chimpanzees suggests that the neurological substrates underlying language production in the human brain may have been present in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

but in the conclusion:

Although these data indicate that the left IFG is involved in the production of communicative signals in chimpanzees, cytoarchitectonically, it is not clear what cell types fully comprise this region [36]. Therefore, it is not possible to determine whether or not the neuronal metabolic activity reported in this study corresponds to an area within the chimpanzee IFG that contains Brodmann’s area 44/45 cells—those cells that comprise Broca’s area in humans.

Too bad. I guess one has to manage to convince a chimp to get inside an MRI scanner and do a communicative task. Let's not forget that a chimp has the strength of six athletes.