Anthropology News

Papua New Guinea was likely a stepping stone for human migration from Asia to Australia. Bergstroem et al performed genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping on 381 individuals from 85 language groups in Papua New Guinea and found a sharp divide originating 10,000 to 20,000 years ago between lowland and highland groups and a lack of non-New Guinean admixture in the latter. This photo shows drummers and dancers from each village on the beach of Port Moresby, the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. Image credit: Steve Jurvetson / CC BY 2.0.

New Study Reveals Remarkable Genetic Diversity among Papuan New Guinean Peoples

Sep 19, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has analyzed genome-wide data of 381 individuals from 85 language groups...

The Trachilos footprints were discovered by Dr. Gerard Gierlinski, a paleontologist at the Polish Geological Institute, by chance when he was on holiday on Crete in 2002. Dr. Gierlinski identified the footprints as those of a mammal. In 2010, he returned to the site together with Dr. Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, a Polish paleontologist at Uppsala University, to study the footprints in detail. Together they came to the conclusion that the footprints were made by hominins. Image credit: Andrzej Boczarowski.

5.6-Million-Year-Old Hominin-Like Footprints in Crete Challenge Theories of Human Evolution

Sep 1, 2017 by News Staff

Researchers have found late Miocene footprints — which show hominin-like characteristics — near the village of Trachilos, west of Kissamos,...

Artist’s reconstruction of an Asian caveman. Image credit: Peter Schouten.

Anatomically Modern Humans Arrived in Southeast Asia Far Earlier than Previously Thought

Aug 14, 2017 by News Staff

New excavations of a cave site in western Sumatra called Lida Ajer indicate modern humans reached Southeast Asia between 73,000 to 63,000 years ago —...

Cro-Magnon artists painting woolly mammoths by Charles R. Knight.

Europe’s Early Homo sapiens Ate Mammoth Meat and Plants

Aug 9, 2017 by News Staff

Plants and the meat of mammoths, red deer and horses were a major part of the diet of anatomically modern humans who lived in what is now Crimea, Ukraine,...

Enigmatic Archaic Human Relative Interbred with Ancestors of Modern Africans, Study Suggests

Jul 24, 2017 by News Staff

A mysterious hominin species mated with the ancestors of modern-day Sub-Saharan Africans, according to an analysis of modern human genomes published this...

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 Didn’t Cause Ecological Disaster on Their Island, New Research Finds

Jul 12, 2017 by News Staff

New research provides evidence contrary to the widely-held belief that the prehistoric population of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) caused an ecological disaster...

Neanderthals used toothpicks likely made of bones or stems of grass. Image credit: Abel Grau, CSIC Communication.

Paleoanthropologists Find Evidence of Neanderthal Dentistry

Jun 30, 2017 by News Staff

University of Kansas Professor David Frayer and co-authors have discovered multiple toothpick grooves on teeth of a Neanderthal individual who lived 130,000...

New Fossil Finds Push Back Origins of Homo sapiens by 115,000 Years

Jun 8, 2017 by News Staff

The fossilized remains of at least five individuals discovered at the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco have been dated at 315,000 years,...

The Dead Sea, Israel. Image credit: David Shankbone / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Oldest Evidence of Humans’ Impact on Geological Processes Found in Israel

Jun 5, 2017 by News Staff

What is being reported as the earliest indication of humans’ impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems has been found in the Dead Sea, Israel —...

Graecopithecus freybergi lived 7.2 million years ago in the dust-laden savannah of the Athens Basin. This view from Graecopithecus freybergi’s place of discovery, Pyrgos Vassilissis, to the southeast over the plain of Athens and under a reddish cloud of Sahara dust; in the background: Mount Hymettos and Mount Lykabettos. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

Graecopithecus freybergi: Oldest Hominin Lived in Europe, not Africa

May 24, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of paleoanthropologists, led by Professor Madelaine Böhme of the University of Tübingen, Germany, has analyzed 7.2 million-year-old...

A reconstruction of Homo naledi’s head by paleoartist John Gurche, who spent some 700 hours recreating the head from bone scans. The find was announced by the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society and the South African National Research Foundation and published in the journal eLife. Image credit: John Gurche / Mark Thiessen / National Geographic.

Homo naledi Walked Earth More Recently than Thought

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

Dating of Homo naledi fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system, South Africa, shows that they were deposited between about 335,000...

A Homo naledi skull, ‘Neo.’ Image credit: Hawks et al, doi: 10.7554/eLife.24232.

South African Cave System Yields Yet More Fossils of Homo naledi

May 9, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of paleoanthropologists announced today in the journal eLife the discovery of a second chamber in the Rising Star cave system, located...

Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. Image credit: Alex Demin / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA Uncovered in Caves without Skeletal Remains

Apr 28, 2017 by News Staff

New research led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) shows that Pleistocene cave sediments represent a rich source of ancient...

First Humans Arrived in North America 116,000 Years Earlier than Thought: Evidence from Cerutti Mastodon Site

Apr 27, 2017 by News Staff

Researchers digging at the Cerutti Mastodon site, an archaeological site from the early late Pleistocene epoch near San Diego, California, found animal...

According to Argue et al, Homo floresiensis is a long-surviving relict of an early hominin lineage and an unknown migration out of Africa, and not a recent derivative of either Homo erectus or Homo sapiens. This image is an artist’s impression of Homo floresiensis. Image credit: Katrina Kenny.

Homo floresiensis Likely Evolved from Primitive Ancestor in Africa, Researchers Say

Apr 23, 2017 by News Staff

An Australian National University-led team of researchers has found that Homo floresiensis — a dwarfed human species that lived until about 50,000...

A study by John Lindo et al reveals 10,000 years of genetic continuity in northwest North America. Image credit: Julie McMahon.

Ancient DNA Reveals Genetic Continuity between Early Holocene, Modern Populations in Northwest North America

Apr 5, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new analysis of nuclear DNA from ancient individuals, many of today’s indigenous peoples living in southern Alaska and coastal British...

The western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). Image credit: Max Pixel.

‘Social Brain Hypothesis’ Challenged: Brain Size in Primates is Predicted by Diet

Mar 28, 2017 by News Staff

Primate brain size is predicted by diet, indicates new research from New York University. The findings, just reported in the journal Nature Ecology and...

Tsimane village from the water. Image credit: Hillard Kaplan et al.

Bolivian Tsimane People Have World’s Healthiest Arteries, Study Says

Mar 20, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new study published in The Lancet, the Tsimane (pronounced chee-MAH-nay) — an indigenous people of lowland Bolivia — have the...

Temperature and humidity of ancestral environment are linked to differences in nostril width across human populations. Image credit: Paul Topinard.

Study: Climate Shaped Human Nose

Mar 17, 2017 by News Staff

Humans inherit their nose shape from their parents, but ultimately, the shape of someone’s nose and that of their parents was formed by a long process...