Anthropology News

Ancient DNA Study Tells Story of East Africa’s First Herders and Farmers

Prehistoric rock paintings in Manda Guéli Cave in the Ennedi Mountains, Chad, Central Africa. Image credit: David Stanley / CC BY 2.0.
May 30, 2019 by News Staff

How food production entered sub-Saharan Africa some 5,000 years ago and the ways in which herding and farming spread through the continent in ancient times has long been a topic of archaeological debate. Now a study led by Stony Brook University, Saint Louis University and Harvard Medical School scientists is providing some answers to these questions. Prehistoric rock paintings in Manda Guéli Cave in the Ennedi Mountains, Chad, Central Africa. Image...

read more...
Scholz’s star flew through the Oort Cloud 70,000 years ago. Image credit: José A. Peñas / SINC.

Did Nearby Supernovae Induce Hominins to Walk on Two Legs?

May 30, 2019 by News Staff

Between 8 and 2 million years ago, cosmic-ray energy from one or more nearby supernovae reached Earth and pummeled the planet’s atmosphere, initiating...

Early farmers. Image credit: sjs.org / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Pleistocene Humans Had Several Possible Routes of Dispersal across Asia, New Study Shows

May 29, 2019 by News Staff

New research demonstrates that Asian regions such as the Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountains could have periodically acted as corridors and routes for...

Anatomically modern humans cooked and ate plant starches, such as those from tubers and rhizomes, as early as 120,000 years ago.

Early Modern Humans Cooked and Ate Starchy Food

May 23, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has found numerous fragments of charred starch plant tissues in 120,000-year-old hearths at the archaeological site...

Sima de los Huesos hominins lived in what is now Spain about 400,000 years ago. Image credit: © Kennis & Kennis / Madrid Scientific Films.

Study: Last Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans Lived 800,000 Years Ago

May 16, 2019 by News Staff

A new study that analyzed dental evolutionary rates in early Neanderthals from Sima de los Huesos, a cave site in Atapuerca Mountains, Spain, found that...

Denisovans were probably dark-skinned, unlike the pale Neandertals. The picture shows a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Mauro Cutrona.

160,000-Year-Old Denisovan Jawbone Discovered in Tibetan Cave

May 2, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

In 1980, a Buddhist monk found the right half a fossilized hominin jawbone in Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau, Xiahe, China. An analysis of...

Denisovans were probably dark-skinned, unlike the pale Neandertals. The picture shows a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Mauro Cutrona.

Two Independent Denisovan Lineages Contributed to Modern Papuan Genomes: Study

Apr 12, 2019 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the journal Cell, modern Papuans carry hundreds of gene variants from two Denisovan lineages — distinct from...

An archaic hominin. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

Homo luzonensis: New Species of Ancient Human Discovered

Apr 11, 2019 by News Staff

An early human species with a unique mix of primitive (that is, Australopithecus-like) and derived (that is, Homo sapiens-like) morphological features...

Depiction of the Jarijari (Nyeri Nyeri) people near Merbein engaged in recreational activities, including a type of Aboriginal football, by William Blandowski & Gustav Mützel, 1857.

Hepatitis B DNA Helps Trace History and Movement of First Australians

Mar 21, 2019 by News Staff

It’s widely accepted that continental Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, was settled very early in human history. But...

Paleolithic edge-to-edge bite (top) and a modern overbite/overjet bite (bottom) and how ‘f’ sounds are produced in a biomechanical model. Image credit: Timea Bodogan / Scott Moisik.

Post-Neolithic Diet-Induced Dental Changes Led to Introduction of ‘F’ and ‘V’ Sounds

Mar 18, 2019 by News Staff

A class of speech sounds that is now present in nearly half of the world’s languages — labiodentals, produced by positioning the lower lip against...

A reconstruction of a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthals Had Fully Upright Posture: Study

Feb 27, 2019 by News Staff

19th and early 20th century postural reconstructions of Neanderthals, and particularly the extensive one of the partial skeleton of an elderly male Neanderthal...

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Denisovans and Neanderthals Lived in Denisova Cave for Thousands of Years

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Two groups of archaic humans — Neanderthals and their enigmatic cousins, Denisovans — occupied Denisova Cave in the Altai region of Siberia...

Newborns have innate skills needed to pick out words. Image credit: Cheryl Holt.

Study: Newborn Babies Have Innate Skills to Pick Out Individual Words

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Humans are born with operational language processing and memory capacities and can use at least two types of cues to segment otherwise continuous speech,...

Neanderthals consumed plants, too. Image credit: University of Utah via kued.org.

Neanderthals Produced Wooden Spears Advanced Enough to Kill at Distance

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers from University College London and Nordic Sport (UK) Limited examined the...

Easter Island, known as Rapa Nui to its earliest inhabitants, is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. Image credit: Yerson Retamal.

Easter Islanders Built Their Monuments Close to Coastal Freshwater Sources, Researchers Say

Jan 11, 2019 by News Staff

Ancient inhabitants of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) built their famous statues (moai) and megalithic platforms (ahu) that supported them near the island’s...

Forensic facial reconstruction of another Australopithecus species - A. afarensis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Little Foot Fossil Sheds New Light on Hominin Brain Evolution

Dec 21, 2018 by News Staff

The first detailed comparative description of the external neuroanatomy of the 3.67-million-year-old Australopithecus prometheus fossil known as the Little...

A stone tool from Ain Boucherit, Algeria. Image credit: Sahnouni et al, doi: 10.1126/science.aau0008.

2.4-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools, Cutmarked Bones Found in Algeria

Nov 30, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists has uncovered 2.4-million-year-old stone artifacts and cutmarked bones at the archaeological...

Neanderthals are commonly thought to have relied on dangerous close range hunting techniques, using non-projectile weapons like the thrusting spears depicted here; this hunting approach is thought to have brought them into violent contact with large mammals, resulting in high levels of injury especially to the head and neck when compared to modern humans; Beier et al found similar head injury levels in both Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic humans, casting doubt on this hypothesis. Image credit: Gleiver Prieto.

Neanderthals, Upper Paleolithic Humans Had Similarly Harsh Lives: Study

Nov 15, 2018 by News Staff

Neanderthals had just as many head trauma injuries as Upper Paleolithic humans, according to new research from the University of Tübingen, Germany. Neanderthals...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

250,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Teeth Reveal Evidence of Lead Poisoning

Nov 8, 2018 by News Staff

Two teeth from Neanderthal children who lived 250,000 years ago in what is today France contain evidence of repeated exposure to high levels of lead, a...

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Researchers Create 3D Model of Neanderthal Rib Cage

Oct 31, 2018 by News Staff

Our close evolutionary cousins may have had a subtle, but somewhat different breathing mechanism compared to anatomically modern humans, according to a...

© 2011-2025. Sci.News. All Rights Reserved. | Back to top