Monthly Archives: July 2017

On Wednesday, a 16 year old boy who went missing from his home more than 40 years ago in Minnesota, has been identified by Chicago police as a victim of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. USA TODAY

This 1978 file photo shows serial killer John Wayne Gacy.(Photo: AP)

CHICAGO A St. Paul, Minn. teen who went missing more than 40 years ago has been identified as a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, authorities announced Wednesday.

DNA samplesfrom the remains of a body found in the crawl space of the notorious killer match those ofJames "Jimmie"Haakenson, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said. The sheriffsaid the 16-year-old boy who went missing in August 1976is one of seven victims of Gacy who authorities have long been seeking to identify.

Gacy tortured, assaulted and murdered 33 men and boys, many who he lured to his home by impersonating a police officer or promising them construction work. Most of the victims were found hidden in his homeon the city's Northwest Side after hewas caught in 1978.

"He was a young man who wanted to go out on his own to a bigger city," Dart said of Haakenson. "He was in touch with his mom...we believe hours before he was killed."

Authorities for years have struggled to identify several of Gacy's victims, who were killed long before the advent of DNA testing.

Haakenson's mother, who died in 2005, had visited the sheriff's department in 1979 to inquire about whether her son, who was known as Jimmie, might beone of Gacy's unidentified victims. She had last heard from him on Aug. 5, 1976, after he had called to tell her he had gone to Chicago.

She did not have dental records, limiting the detectives' abilities at the timeto ascertain if her son's body was among the unidentified remains,Dart said.

In 2011, Dart, whose jurisdiction includes Chicago, announced that he was reopening the investigation into the deaths of eight unidentified victims of Gacy who were found stuffed in the crawl space of his home or elsewhere on his property.

The sheriff asked family members whose missing loved ones fit the profile of Gacy's victims to contact his detectives, and asked many to submit DNA samples.

The identity of one of the original eight unidentified victims, 19-year-old William George Bundy, was confirmed through DNA testing in late 2011, just months after Dart launched the Gacy inquiry, but the sheriff's officehad no more positive hits until now.

Gacy inquiry helps sheriff identify 1979 murder victim

Still, Dart persisted oncalling on families and friends of young men who went missing during the years Gacy preyed in the Chicago area to contact his office. His office has submitted DNA samples from the relatives of 57 missing men and boys whose loved ones went missing around the time Gacy was on his killing spree.

In March of this year, the sheriff's department was contacted by a nephew of Haakenson, who stumbled upon a Sheriff's Department web site that explained the effort to try to identify the missing. Soon after, Haakenson's brother and sister submitted DNA that the University of Northern Texas Center for Human Identification used to test against the unidentified victims remains.

"The nephew never met him but felt very compelled to find out about (what happened) to his uncle," Dart said.

DNA testing has helped authorities identify one of seven unidentified victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. James Haakenson was 16 when he went missing more than 40 years ago. His family members only learned this week he was one of the notorious serial killer's victims.(Photo: Cook County Sheriff's Department)

Dart said the Haakenson's corpse appeared to have been stacked in the crawl space of Gacy's homeunderneaththe body of Rick Johnston, a high school student who went missing after attending a concert in August 1976at the city's Aragon Ballroom. That was right around the same time Haakenson last had contact with his mother, Dart said.

A third body, one of six victims who have not yet been identified, was lying underneath Haakenson's remains, the sheriff said.

Gacy was executed in 1994.

Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondentAamer Madhani on Twitter:@AamerISmad

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DNA test confirms teen missing since 1976 was John Wayne Gacy victim - USA TODAY

Dogs have loved us for thousands of years, despite humanitys many flaws and foibles. New research suggests dogs were domesticated from wolves just oncethats all it might have taken for puppers and people to form an everlasting alliance.

The study, which was published online yesterday in Nature Communications, analyzed the genomes of two ancient German doggosone 7,000 years-old and the other 4,700 years-old. The researchers compared their dog DNA data to the genome of a 4,800 year old dog from Ireland that other scientists had studied in 2016, and to modern dog genomes. In that study, published last year in Science, researchers put forth a dual origin idea that dogs were domesticated from wolves on two separate occasions, in Europe and Asia. But in this recent study, researchers wrote their ancient doggos predominantly share[d] ancestry with modern European dogs. In other words, there might have actually been a single origin, although the precise location where dogs were first domesticated is still somewhat of a mystery.

We came to the conclusion that our data consisting of prehistoric three Neolithic genomes and DNA from thousands of modern dogs from across the world supported only a single domestication event from a group of wolves somewhere in Eurasia sometime between 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, co-author Krishna Veeramah, an assistant professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, told Gizmodo. In addition, most of the dogs people keep as pets today are likely genetically the descendants of the dogs that lived amongst the first European farmers 7,000 years ago, and perhaps even as far back as 14,000 years ago when people were still practicing a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Dogs were the first animal to be domesticated by humans. Anyone who owns a cat can tell you that felines were definitely domesticated long afterward. While this new study wont end the argument over how many times dogs were domesticated, it does offer a compelling, simple solution.

One the face of it you might think, why is it important that there was one, two, three or even four domestication events? Veeramah explained. But if youre trying to find out how and why it occurs, whether it was one or more is important. Humans and wolves have likely lived in the same region for maybe 40,000 years. So if the process of domestication only occurred once, this tells us it was likely very hard to do.

Humanity is constantly evolving, and has reinvented and embarrassed itself so many ways over the course of thousands of years. But in this ever-shifting nebula of chaos we call life, at least one thing remains true: the dogs are good.

[Nature]

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DNA Testing Suggests Dogs Needed No Convincing to Befriend Humans - Gizmodo

Men's Health

Apparently, Most of Your DNA is Garbage Men's Health Anyone have somewhat fond memories of that day in high school biology when you got to re-create DNA using marshmallows and toothpicks? Whether or not you can remember the names of the different parts (or even that DNA actually stands for ...

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Apparently, Most of Your DNA is Garbage - Men's Health

Chronicle Staff and News Services

Photo: Frank Wiese, Associated Press

Rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in 1996.

Rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in 1996.

Dr. Phil is making lots and lots of money.

Dr. Phil is making lots and lots of money.

Saucy dealings; Madonnas DNA not for sale; Dr. Phils big money

Number of the day

$4.2 billion

Thats how much U.S. spice maker McCormick & Co. paid for the food business of Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of such items as Frenchs mustard and Franks RedHot sauce. The combined group is expected to have annual sales of around $5 billion. In an unrelated condiment development, Heinz recognized National Hot Dog Day and the reluctance of Chicagoans to put ketchup on a hot dog by offering Chicago Dog Sauce in a limited-edition bottle. It looks an awful lot like, uh, ketchup.

No, you cant buy Madonnas DNA

A New York judge has stopped an impending auction of Madonnas personal items, including a love letter from ex-boyfriend Tupac Shakur, a pair of worn panties and a hairbrush containing her hair. The Material Girl sought an emergency court order saying she was shocked at the planned online auction by Gotta Have It Collectibles, and said a former friend is behind the sale. Its outrageous and grossly offensive her DNA could be auctioned, she said.

But Dr. Phil could

have won the bidding

Speaking of wealthy entertainers, Forbes has come out with its annual list of the worlds top-earning TV personalities. Phil McGraw leads the list with $79 million, followed, in order, by Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld, Gordon Ramsay and Ryan Seacrest. The earnings include income from additional activities such as producing, non-TV performances, endorsements and merchandising.

Compiled from staff and news services. See more items and links at http://www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techchronicle

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Saucy dealings; Madonna's DNA not for sale; Dr. Phil's big money - SFGate

L&HH star Kirk Frost is hoping he can save his marriage with Rasheeda by waiting as long as possible to reveal his DNA results for Jasmine Washingtons baby. Get the EXCLUSIVE details here!

Is he the father?! Kirk Frost, 48, is fighting for his marriage with wife Rasheeda, 35,and is not ready to hand over his DNA results that will claim if he is or isnt the father to Jasmine Washingtons baby. Kirk is burying his head in the sand and hiding from the inevitable, a source EXCLUSIVELY told HollywoodLife.com. Right now hes so wrapped up in trying to get Rasheeda back, the last thing he wants to do is confirm to her and the world that he had a baby by another woman. Hes putting off handing over the results as long as he can. Its not clear how long Kirk is planning on avoiding the issue but hes going to have to face it someday. It doesnt make any sense because theres no way to run from this forever, but Kirk doesnt seem to think thats the case, the source continued. Hes got this crazy idea that he can still find a way to dodge this bullet and save his marriage. Hes living in total denial but thats where his head is at. See Kirks shocking text messages during his alleged affair with Jasmine here!

Kirk married Rasheeda back in 1999 and the couple have two children together. News of his possible infidelity came as a shock to many when Jasmine filed court papers in Jan. 2017 demanding he pay child support. The paternity test was soon requested and everyones been on edge just waiting to see if Kirk really is the father of Kannon Mekhi Washington who was born in 2016. Rasheeda was understandably heartbroken when she found out about her husbands relationship with Jasmine and the possibility that the baby might be his just increases the pain. However, she has admitted on L&HH that if the baby is Kirks she would allow it to get to know her family. Now, thats selfless!

Despite Rasheedas patience with Kirk up to this point, the way things ended on the most recent finale of the show proves that it may not continue to be all sunshine and roses for the couple. The highly anticipated DNA results never happened and it leads many to speculate that Kirk and his past will continue to haunt him until it ultimately ends his bond with Rasheeda. It looks like only time will tell with this situation but we hope the answers come soon!

HollywoodLifers, what do you think about Kirk holding back on the DNA results? Tell us here!

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To Jasmine As Long As He Can: Terrified OfRasheeda's Reaction - Hollywood Life

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins recapped her 150 days in space during the second day of the International Space Station (ISS) R&D 2017 Conference.

Rubins, the first person to sequence DNA on the ISS by culturing beating heart cells, took part in the session on July 18 at the annual conference held in Washington D.C.

DNA sequencing identifies an organisms blueprintthe process used to determine the precise order of the four chemical building blocks in a single DNA strand. Scientists use it to advance research, including identifying the genes responsible for certain genetic diseases through the blueprints.

Rubins used a hand-held, USB-powered DNA sequencerthe MinIONto determine the DNA sequencing for a mouse, bacteria and a virus. The goal of the experiment was to show that DNA sequencing is possible in space, which could lead to the potential to enable the identification of microorganisms, monitor changes in microbes and humans in response to spaceflight, as well as aid in the detection of DNA-based life elsewhere in the universe.

Rubins investigated where human skin cells were induced to become stem cells, enabling them to differentiate into any type of cell. The research team forced stem cells to grow into human heart cells and cultured aboard the space station for one month.

During her time in space, Rubins gained a cult following and has been dubbed #AstroKate by internet commenters. Rubins earned a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University and was selected in 2009 for the 20th NASA astronaut class after she helped develop the first smallpox infection model for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Joining Rubins for the Revolutionizing Science from Ground to Orbit session was Dr. Arun Sharma, from Harvard Medical School and Sarah Wallace, Ph.D., from NASA to discuss in a discussion on their ground-based experience with respect to space-based research design decisions, preparations and expectations.

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'AstroKate,' the First to Perform DNA Sequencing in Space, Speaks at ISS Conference - R & D Magazine

After carefully dissecting out the muscles of a disembodied arm, biologist David Carrier and his team tied fishing lines from each isolated tendon to a guitar tuner knob, allowing the researchers to move the fingers around like ghastly marionettes. Using this setup, they could measure the varying strain on the bones when the hand was arranged in different positions and slammed into a padded dumbbell weight. Each limb took a week to prepare, but Carrier, who is head of the Evolutionary Biomechanics Lab at the University of Utah, wanted to get the study right. He had a point to provethat humankind has evolved for violence.

The 2015 paper that resulted from Carriers research showed that a buttressed fist, one with the thumb closed against the index and middle fingers, provides asafer way to hit someonewith force. Given that none of our primate cousins have the ability to make such a fist, Carrier and his co-authors propose that our hand proportions may have evolved specifically to turn our hands into more effective weapons. The research is just the latest in a string of studies Carrier has conducted to define a suite of distinguishing characteristics that are consistent with the idea that were specialized, at some level, for aggressive behavior. Through experiments with live fighters as well as with cadaver arms, he and his colleagues have reimagined our faces,hands, andupright postureas attributes that evolved to help us fight one another.

Carriers conclusions have proven contentious: Critics argue that just because a buttressed fist protects the hand during a punch doesnt mean the hand evolved that way for this specific reason any more than the human nose evolved to hold up glasses. But peoples discomfort with Carriers hypothesis goes beyond this critique. The work is sensitive because it tackles a controversial question: Are humans biologically designed for violence, or are violence and war cultural phenomena?

While many biological anthropologists have, like Carrier, arrived at the former conclusion, albeit for different reasons, cultural anthropologists tend to argue for the latter. A major take-away from the anthropological literature is that humans have thepotential, which is different from thetendency, to be violent, says Alisse Waterston, president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and a cultural anthropologist at the City University of New York who studies violence. But ever since the 17th-century thinker Thomas Hobbes famously described the lives of humans in their natural condition prior to the development of civil society as nasty, brutish, and short, there have been scholars such as Carrier who suggest that violence has molded our speciesthat its been etched into our bodies and minds.

Theories can encompass both biological and cultural viewpoints, of course, but in this debate, the conflict between the different perspectives has at times verged on the intensity of one of Carriers fistfights. The debate is nuanced, and it cuts right to the heart of humanitys perception of itselfas well as our collective desire for world peace.

The idea of a biological imperative for violence achieved prominence in the 1970s with the emergence of a new discipline: sociobiology. While the concept of violence being intrinsic to human nature had been around since Hobbes time, sociobiologists (and later evolutionary psychologists) specifically argued that behaviors, not just physical characteristics, can be shaped by natural selection. This meant that common behaviors like violence could be genetically determined.

The debate cuts right to the heart of humanitys perception of itselfas well as our collective desire for world peace.

At the heart of the popularization of this idea stands Napoleon Chagnon, sometimes called Americas most controversial anthropologist. Chagnon caused an uproar in 1968 when he published observations of the Yanomami people of Venezuela and Brazil, describing them as a fierce people who were in a state of chronic warfare. He asserted that Yanomami men who kill have more wives and therefore father more children: evidence of selection for violence in action. This represented a wild divergence from the anthropological consensus. Anthropologists criticized virtually every aspect of Chagnons work, from his methods to his conclusions. But for sociobiologists, this was a prime example that supported their theories.

Around the same time, David Adams, a neurophysiologist and psychologist at Wesleyan University, was inspired to investigate thebrain mechanisms underlying aggression. He spent decades studying how different parts of the brain reacted when engaged in aggression. By using electrical stimulation of specific brain regions and through creating various lesions in mammalian brains, he sought to understand the origins of different antagonistic behaviors. But Adams found the public response to his work over the top: The mass media would take [our work] and interpret it like wed found the basis for war, he says. Tired of the way his results were being interpreted by both the media and the public, Adams eventually switched gears entirely.

In 1986, Adams gathered a group of 20 scientists, including biologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists, to issue what became known as theSeville Statement on Violence. It declared, among other things, that it is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature. The statement, later adopted by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations that promotes international collaboration and peace, was an effort to shake off the biological pessimism that had taken hold and make it clear that peace is a realistic goal. The press, however, was not so enthralled by Adams new tack. This is not interesting for us, one major news network responded when he asked if they would cover the Seville statement, he recalls. But when you do find the gene for war, call us back.

The Seville statement by no means ended the academic debate. Since its release, various prominent researchers have continued to advance biological arguments for our innate tendency towards violence, in contradiction of both the statement and the views of many cultural anthropologists. In 1996, Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist and primatologist at Harvard University, published his popular bookDemonic Males, co-authored with science writer Dale Peterson, that argued we are the dazed survivors of a continuous 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression. Central to this proposition is the idea that men, or demonic males, have been selected for violence because it confers advantages on them. Wrangham argued that murderous attacks by groups of male chimpanzees on smaller groups increased their dominance over neighboring communities, improving their access to food and female mates. Perhaps, like chimpanzees, ancestral men fought to establish dominance by killing rivals from other groups, thus securing greater reproductive success. InWranghams view, such behavior selected for males who are endowed with a certain desire for violence when the conditions are right: the experience of a victory thrill, an enjoyment of the chase, a tendency for easy dehumanization (or dechimpization).

I think the growing evidence about innate propensities for violence have shown [the Seville statement] rather clearly to be simplistic and exaggerated at best, says Wrangham.

Akey proponent of this biological view is psychologist Steven Pinker, another Harvard researcher whose writing, particularly his 2011 bookThe Better Angels of Our Nature, has significantly shaped the conversation about human violence in recent years. In his 2002 bookThe Blank Slate, Pinker wrote, When we look at human bodies and brains, we find more direct signs of design for aggression, explaining that men in particular bear the marks of an evolutionary history of violent male-male competition. Onewidely quoted estimateby Pinker places the death rate resulting from lethal violence in nonstate societies, based on archaeological evidence, at a shocking 15 percent of the population.

Physical indicators, such as those studied by Carrier, can be viewed as evidence that selection for violence-enabling features has taken place. Carrier sees signs of design for aggression everywhere on the human body: In a recent paper, co-authored with biologistChristopher CunninghamfromSwansea University,he suggests thatour foot postureis an adaptation for fighting performance. He has even proposed, as part of his fist-fighting hypothesis, that the morerobust facial featuresof men (as opposed to women) evolved to withstand a punch.

I really dont think its debatable that aggression has shaped human evolution, agrees Aaron Sell, an evolutionary psychologist at Griffith University in Australia, who has explored the combat design of human males. Sell hascompiled a listof 26 gender differences, ranging from greater upper body strength to larger sweat capacity, thatsuggest adaptation for fightingin human males. It is a very incomplete list though, he adds.

Many anthropologists remain unconvinced by those who suggest that there is an evolutionary advantage in violence and a deep biological explanation for conflict. Theyre just barking up the wrong tree, says Douglas Fry, an anthropologist who specializes in the study of war and peace at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.We are well designed to prevent ourselves getting into lethal conflicts and to avoid the actual physical confrontation, he argues, describing the idea that we are innately predisposed to violence as a cultural belief that is just plain wrong.

David Carrier is an excellent biomechanist who conducts careful and clever experiments, says Caley Orr, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Hes probably right when he talks about the biomechanicalconsequencesof some of the anatomy, but that is different from resolving what the evolutionary selective pressures were that shaped it in the first place.

Polly Wiessner, an Arizona State University anthropologist whostudies warfare and peacemakingin the Enga of highland Papua New Guinea as well as social networks for risk reduction in the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert, points out another potential problem with Carriers logic: I dont know of anyone [in traditional societies] who fistfights; people wrestle, she explains, adding that if they really want to do someone in, people in such societies simply use weapons. If punching is uncommon in these societies, its reasonable to assume this type of combat wasnt a key factor in our evolution.

More broadly, if violence and warfare are not ubiquitous throughout traditional societies, this would suggest that these human behaviors are not innate, but rather arise from culture. Fry hasextensively examinedboth archaeological and contemporary evidence, and has documented over70 societies that dont make warat all, from the Martu of Australia, who have no words for feud or warfare, to the Semai of Malaysia, who simply flee into the forest when faced with conflict. He also argues that there is very little archaeological evidence for group conflicts in our distant past, suggesting war only became common as larger, sedentary civilizations emerged around 12,000 years agothe opposite of Pinkers conclusions.

Chimpanzees might just be ultra-violent outliers.

As for our primate cousins, according to primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University, theirbehavior has been cherry-pickedto suit a more violent narrative for humanity. While chimp behavior may well shed light on human male tendencies for violence, de Waal points out that the other two of our three closest relatives, bonobos and gorillas, are less violent than us. In even the most peaceful human societies, of course, violence in one form or another is not totally unknown, and the same is true of these peaceful apes. Nevertheless, it is plausible that instead of descending from chimp-like ancestors, we come from a lineage of relatively peaceful, female-dominated apes, like bonobos. Chimpanzees might just be ultra-violent outliers.

That our evolutionary success is based largely on our ability to be violentthats just wrong, says biological anthropologist Agustn Fuentes,who is chair of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. The sum total of data we have from the genetics to the behavioral to the fossil to the archaeological suggests that is not the case.

Scholars and researchers on both sides of the debate want their work applied to achieve more peaceful societies, and most agree that humans are capable of both great acts of violence and great acts of kindness. Yet from Chagnon onward, there has been a palpable degree of tension between those who hold opposing viewpoints. In anopen letter to de Waalin 2005, University of Groningen anthropologist Johan van der Dennen complained of feeling shouted down by the peace and harmony mafia.

At issue is the fact that for some a biological explanation suggests that violence is unavoidable. If we accept that violence is inherent, says Fuentes, we start to accept unpleasant behavior as inevitable and indeed natural in ourselves and those around us. The old adage that violence begets violence is true, says AAA President Waterston. A society that adopts and is adapted to violence tends to reproduce it, locating and leveraging the resources to do so.

John Horgan, science journalist and author ofThe End of War, has been conductinginformal surveys with studentsfor years, and he reports that over 90 percent of respondents think we will never stop fighting wars. And when Adamsandothers conducted their own studies on student attitudes, they observed a worrying effect: There was anegative correlationbetween the belief that violence was innate and peace activism. Even among those students whowereactively campaigning for peace, 29 percent reported that they had previously been put off by a pessimistic view that humans are intrinsically violent. Adams predicts that the level of apathy would be higher among those who abstained from activism altogether: If you think that war is inevitable, why oppose it? he says.

Such fatalistic attitudes are particularly worrying when held by those in power: They can be used to justify military budgets, and not seek alternative solutions, argues de Waal. Even Nobel Peace Prizewinning former U.S. President Barack Obama seems to believe that violence is bred into humanity: War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man, he said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. With Obamas entire tenure spent leading a nation at waralbeit war that he inherited from his predecessorHorganhas wonderedif the former presidents personal belief in the deep-roots theory of war might have prevented him from more actively seeking peace.

But Obama, like Hobbes and Pinker, has also argued that society is equipped to fight the supposed biological imperative for violence: We have increasingly created codes of law and philosophies to limit violent acts, thanks to our capacity for empathy and reason. InTheBetter Angels of Our Nature, Pinker elegantly charts what he sees as a decline in violence, from the frightening 15 percent of violent deaths in nonstate societies down to 3 percent of deaths attributed to war, genocide, and other human-made disasters in the 20th centurya period that includes two world wars.

Waterston, exasperated by the tired assumption that violence is rooted in human nature, explains that for her the question should simply be about what circumstances are required for there to be less violence. Yet those seeking biological explanations see themselves as getting to the core of the issue in order to answer this question. Carrier offers an analogy to alcoholism: If you have a predisposition to drinking excessively, you must recognize those tendencies, and the reasons behind them, in order to fight them. We want to prevent violence in the future, says Carrier, but were not going to get there if we keep making the same mistakes over and over again because we are in denial about who we are. Chimpanzee research, for example, demonstrates how balanced power between groups tends to limit violence. The same is clearly true of humans, Wrangham notes. Probing that simple formula, with all its complexities, seems to me a very worthwhile endeavor.

There may be disagreement about how to get there, but all involved are trying to attain the same end goal. An evolutionary analysis does not purport to condemn humans to violence, explains Wrangham. What it does achieve is a more precise understanding of the conditions that favor the highly unusual circumstance of peace.

This article is reproduced with permission fromwww.sapiens.org.The article wasfirst publishedon July 12, 2017.

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Nasty, Brutish and Short: Are Humans DNA-Wired to Kill? - Scientific American