Paleoanthropology News

Reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. Image credit: Kinez Riza / Atelier Elisabeth Daynes, Sangiran Museum.

Flores Pygmies Show No Genetic Link to Mysterious Homo floresiensis

Aug 3, 2018 by News Staff

Modern pygmies living in a village near the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, where fossils of the dwarfed human species Homo floresiensis...

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

Neanderthals Could Start Fires with Mineral Pyrite and Stone Tools

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

New research published in the journal Scientific Reports provides clear evidence that Neanderthals made fire by striking a piece of pyrite, the yellow...

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

Southeast Asians Derive Ancestry from Four Ancient Populations

Jul 13, 2018 by News Staff

Modern-day Southeast Asian populations are the result of mixing among four ancient populations, including multiple waves of genetic material from more...

The 2.12-million-year-old stone artifact at the Shangchen site, China. Image credit: Zhaoyu Zhu.

2.1-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools Unearthed in China

Jul 12, 2018 by News Staff

Archaeologists working in the southern Chinese Loess Plateau have unearthed stone tools crafted at least 2.1 million years ago by early humans. The discovery,...

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

Neanderthals Hunted Fallow Deer Using Close-Range Thrusting Spears: Study

Jul 6, 2018 by Enrico de Lazaro

In a study published June 25 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international team of researchers reports lesions observed on two fallow...

Female Australopithecus afarensis with a child. Image credit: Concavenator / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Juvenile Australopithecus Climbed Trees, 3.32-Million-Year-Old Foot Fossil Shows

Jul 5, 2018 by News Staff

A nearly complete foot of Australopithecus afarensis, a hominid species that lived between 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago, from Ethiopia has several ape-like...

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

4-Million-Year-Old Skull of Australopithecus Shows Similarities to That of Modern Humans

Jun 27, 2018 by News Staff

An Australopithecus partial cranium found in the Jacovec Cavern of the Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa, one of the richest early hominin fossil localities...

Lipson et al identify at least three major waves of human migration into Southeast Asia over the last 50,000 years.

Ancient DNA Study Reveals Prehistory of Southeast Asia

May 21, 2018 by News Staff

The first whole-genome analysis of ancient human DNA from Southeast Asia, defined as the area east of India and south of China, identifies at least three...

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 Had Small but Surprisingly Complex Brain

May 16, 2018 by News Staff

A species of extinct hominin called Homo naledi was discovered in 2013 in a remote cave chamber of the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. This species...

Selected artifacts from the Panga ya Saidi site: (a) Levallois core; (b) two backed lithic artifacts; (c) backed lithic artifact; (d-e) notched bones; (f) ocher crayon; (g) ostrich eggshell bead; (h) conus shell bead; (i) gastropod shell bead. Image credit: Shipton et al, doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04057-3.

Kenyan Cave Provides New Insights into Later Stone Age

May 10, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has discovered more than 30,000 artifacts at Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya, which is...

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

Archaic Hominins Arrived in Philippines as Early as 700,000 Years Ago

May 7, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has unearthed 57 stone tools and butchered animal bones at Kalinga in the Cagayan Valley of northern Luzon, the largest...

The engraved flint flake from the Kiik-Koba site, Crimea, Ukraine; the arrow indicates the point of impact. Scale bar - 1 cm. Image credit: Majkić et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195049.

Engraved Flint Flake Found in Ukraine May Demonstrate Neanderthal Symbolism

May 4, 2018 by News Staff

According to a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, a 35,000-year-old flint flake found at a Middle Paleolithic site in Crimea, Ukraine, was likely...

The Al Wusta-1 finger bone from Saudi Arabia. Image credit: Ian Cartwright.

90,000-Year-Old Finger Bone Found in Saudi Arabia Could Rewrite Human Migration History

Apr 11, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has discovered a fossilized human finger bone in the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia estimated to be about 90,000 years...

A Homo heidelbergensis, a Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon. Image credit: SINC / José Antonio Peñas.

Mobile Eyebrows Played Important Role in Human Survival, Research Suggests

Apr 10, 2018 by News Staff

New research published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution contributes to a long-running debate about why archaic hominins had gigantic brow...

Fluted Spear Points Prove Early Native Americans Liked to Travel

Apr 3, 2018 by News Staff

Analyses of numerous spear points with fluted edges found in northern Alaska and Yukon, and artifacts from further south in Canada, the Great Plains,...

Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Researchers Uncover Genetic History of Late Neanderthals

Mar 22, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has sequenced the genomes of five Neanderthals who lived around 47,000 to 39,000 years ago (that is, late Neanderthals),...

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.

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

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...

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...