Based on morphologically undiagnostic human remains from the southern Balkans and central Europe, it has been argued that the Bachokirian and Ranisian…

Ribcage reconstructions of fossil Homo sapiens reveal both slender and stocky forms, suggesting a climate-driven variability that challenges the notion of a universally gracile Bauplan in modern…

The timing and mechanisms underlying the gradual replacement of Neanderthal populations by Homo sapiens groups have elicited heated debate for deca...

This study explores the mobility and raw material circulation of Neanderthals at the El Castillo cave, located in the northern part of the Iberian Pen…

This commentary on Growth Rates and Life Histories in Twenty-Two Small-Scale Societies overviews the original publication and its contributions, and reviews advances in the field of human growth and ...

Estimated costs and benefits of participation in an extreme ritual in Mauritius - Volume 7

Julian Huxley is remembered as the author of his landmark 1942 Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. Nowadays, however, he is criticized for having reduced biology to the selection of genes. Some have nevertheless suggested that Huxley’s biological views were more expansive—including rather than excluding issues regarding development or environment. In this paper, using hitherto unexamined sources, I show that Huxley’s developmental understanding of animal characters was rooted in his education at Oxford in the early 20th century. From embryologically and physiologically trained Oxford teachers, he learned to see characters as things that could not be predicted from the cell’s physico-chemical properties. Characters arose anew through dynamic interactions between parts. Huxley and his teachers labeled these as “epigenetic” processes that integrated multiple cross-pollinating causes such as heredity and development. After briefly exploring Huxley’s understanding of character development, I show how we can get to grips with Huxley’s biological views by exploring the context of his education at Oxford from 1906 to 1909. I then show how Huxley received and used these ideas, before I illustrate how they played an important role in his academic and socio-political work.