Anthropology News

Archaeologists Unearth 115,000-Year-Old Bone Tools in China

Retoucher from the early hominin Lingjing site, China; white brackets indicate the areas where impact scars are present. Scale bars - 1 cm. Image credit: Doyon et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194318.
Mar 19, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international team of researchers led by Université de Montréal’s Dr. Luc Doyon has found seven bone soft hammers at the early hominin Lingjing site in Xuchang county of Henan province, China. These 115,000-year-old tools represent the first instance of the use of bone as raw material to modify stone tools found at an East Asian early Late Pleistocene site. Retoucher from the early hominin Lingjing site, China; white brackets indicate the areas...

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The first evidence of human life in the Olorgesailie Basin comes from about 1.2 million years ago. For hundreds of the thousands of years, people living there made and used large stone-cutting tools called handaxes (left). According to three new studies, early humans in East Africa had -- by about 320,000 years ago -- begun using color pigments and manufacturing more sophisticated tools (right) than those of the Early Stone Age handaxes, tens of thousands of years earlier than previous evidence has shown in eastern Africa. The sophisticated tools (right) were carefully crafted and more specialized than the large, all-purpose handaxes (left). Many were points designed to be attached to a shaft and potentially used as projectile weapons, while others were shaped as scrapers or awls. Image credit: Human Origins Program, Smithsonian.

320,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Push Back Origins of Human Innovation

Mar 16, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of anthropologists has discovered that early humans in East Africa had — by about 320,000 years ago — begun trading with...

Hunter-gatherers. Image credit: T.P.S. Dave.

Humans Interbred with Denisovans Twice in History, Researchers Discover

Mar 16, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Washington and Princeton University has found that the genomes of two groups of modern humans with Denisovan...

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal. Image credit: Neanderthal Museum.

Neanderthal Healthcare Was Widespread and Effective, Research Reveals

Mar 13, 2018 by News Staff

Our ancient cousins, Neanderthals have an unwarranted image as brutish and uncaring, but new research has revealed just how knowledgeable and effective...

La Pasiega Cave, section C, cave wall with paintings: the ladder shape composed of red horizontal and vertical lines (center left) dates to older than 64,000 years and was made by Neanderthals. Image credit: P. Saura.

Iberian Peninsula’s Earliest Cave Paintings Were Made by Neanderthals: Study

Feb 23, 2018 by News Staff

A new study shows that paintings in three cave sites on the Iberian Peninsula — a red linear motif in Cave of La Pasiega, a hand stencil in Maltravieso...

Cheddar Man’s facial reconstruction. Image credit: University College London / Natural History Museum, London / Tom Barnes / Channel 4.

Cheddar Man’s Face Revealed

Feb 20, 2018 by News Staff

Cheddar Man — a hunter-gatherer who lived 10,000 years ago — had blue eyes, dark colored curly hair and ‘dark to black’ skin pigmentation,...

Oldest Modern-Human Fossil Outside Africa Found in Israel

Jan 26, 2018 by News Staff

An upper jawbone complete with teeth found at a site called Misliya Cave, part of a complex of prehistoric caves along the western slopes of Mount Carmel...

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.

Study: Easter Island Had Supportive and Inclusive Community

Jan 8, 2018 by News Staff

An analysis of so-called pukao — colossal stone hats of monumental statues (moai) on Easter Island — provides evidence contrary to the widely...

A scientific illustration of the Upward Sun River camp in what is now Interior Alaska. Image credit: Eric S. Carlson / Ben A. Potter.

Ancient Beringians: 11,500-Year-Old Genome Reveals Previously Unknown Native American Population

Jan 4, 2018 by News Staff

Genetic analysis of DNA from a female infant found at the Upward Sun River archaeological site in Alaska has revealed a previously unknown Native American...

Prehistoric Central European women’s manual labor was tougher than rowing in today’s boat crews.

Study: Prehistoric Women Were Stronger Than Today’s Female Athletes

Nov 29, 2017 by News Staff

Prehistoric women that lived in Central Europe during the first 5,500 years of farming had stronger upper arms than living female rowing champions, according...

Guanches. Image credit: Gran Enciclopedia Virtual de las Islas Canarias.

Ancient DNA Study Confirms North African Origin of Guanches

Oct 27, 2017 by News Staff

The aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands, commonly known as Guanches, were genetically most similar to modern North African Berbers, according...

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

Despite Deafness, Missing Forearm and Limp, This Neanderthal Lived into His Forties

Oct 24, 2017 by News Staff

An older adult male Neanderthal from the Late Pleistocene, who had suffered multiple injuries, became deaf and must have relied on social support from...

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

Humans Migrated Out of Africa to Escape Drying Climate, New Study Says

Oct 17, 2017 by News Staff

Ancient humans left Africa to escape a drying climate, about 60,000 years ago — a finding that contradicts previous suggestions that humens were...

Easter Island is located some 3,512 km from Chile’s west coast and its nearest inhabited neighbor, Pitcairn Island, located some 2,075 km to the west. For reasons still unknown early Rapa Nui people began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock. Image credit: Marlene Hanssen.

Study: Easter Island May Have Had Population of 17,500 in Its Heyday

Sep 21, 2017 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution examines the relationship between agricultural potential and population on Easter...

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...

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