Inquiry: AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN The answer depends-and doesn't-on which humans you ask. "There has been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we've built with the same body and brain." -Stephen Jay Gould I was surprised when I read these words from one of the 20th century's leading thinkers on evolutionary theory.

Shermer is the executive director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the The Skeptics Society's Distinguished Science Lecture Series, and an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University.