{"id":25214,"date":"2025-04-02T21:32:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T21:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25214"},"modified":"2025-04-02T22:27:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T22:27:55","slug":"ralph-holloway-anthropologist-who-studied-brains-evolution-dies-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25214","title":{"rendered":"Ralph Holloway, Anthropologist Who Studied Brain\u2019s Evolution, Dies at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It wasn\u2019t the size of human brains that distinguished people from apes, he theorized, but the way they were organized. He found a creative way to prove it.<\/p>\n

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Ralph Holloway, an anthropologist who pioneered the idea that changes in brain structure, and not just size, were critical in the evolution of humans, died on March 12 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.<\/p>\n

His death was announced by Columbia University\u2019s anthropology department, where he taught for nearly 50 years.<\/p>\n

Mr. Holloway\u2019s contrarian idea was that it wasn\u2019t necessarily the big brains of humans that distinguished them from apes or primitive ancestors. Rather, it was the way human brains were organized.<\/p>\n

Brains from several million years ago don\u2019t exist. But Dr. Holloway\u2019s singular focus on casts of the interiors of skull fossils, which he usually made out of latex, allowed him to override this hurdle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He \u201ccompulsively collected\u201d information from these casts, he wrote<\/a> in a 2008 paper. Crucially, they offered a representation of the brain\u2019s exterior edges, which allowed scientists to get a sense of the brain\u2019s structure.<\/p>\n

Using a so-called endocast<\/a>, Dr. Holloway was able to establish conclusively, for instance, that a famous and controversial two-million-year-old hominid fossil skull from a South Africa limestone quarry, known as the Taung child, belonged to one of mankind\u2019s distant ancestors.<\/p>\n

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It wasn\u2019t the size of human brains that distinguished people from apes, he theorized, but the way they were organized. He found a creative way to prove it.Ralph Holloway, an anthropologist who pioneered the idea that changes in brain structure, and not just size, were critical in the evolution of humans, died on March 12 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.His death was announced by Columbia University\u2019s anthropology department, where he taught for nearly 50 years.Mr. Holloway\u2019s contrarian idea was that it wasn\u2019t necessarily the big brains of humans that distinguished them from apes or primitive ancestors. Rather, it was the way human brains were organized.Brains from several million years ago don\u2019t exist. But Dr. Holloway\u2019s singular focus on casts of the interiors of skull fossils, which he usually made out of latex, allowed him to override this hurdle.He \u201ccompulsively collected\u201d information from these casts, he wrote in a 2008 paper. Crucially, they offered a representation of the brain\u2019s exterior edges, which allowed scientists to get a sense of the brain\u2019s structure.Using a so-called endocast, Dr. Holloway was able to establish conclusively, for instance, that a famous and controversial two-million-year-old hominid fossil skull from a South Africa limestone quarry, known as the Taung child, belonged to one of mankind\u2019s distant ancestors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25216,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25214"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25217,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25214\/revisions\/25217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}