Anthropology News

Dec 10, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have unearthed 400,000-year-old heated sediments and fire-cracked flint handaxes alongside two fragments of pyrite — a mineral used in later periods to strike sparks with flint — at Barnham, Suffolk, the United Kingdom. The discovery shows humans were making fire around 350,000 years earlier than previously known. An artist’s impression of fire at Barnham around 400,000 years ago. Image credit: Craig Williams / The Trustees...

Dec 9, 2025 by News Staff

Homo floresiensis abandoned Liang Bua — a cave this small-bodied human species had occupied for around 140,000 years — during severe drought...

Nov 28, 2025 by News Staff

In 2009, paleoanthropologists found eight bones from the foot of an ancient human ancestor in 3.4-million-year-old sediments at the paleontological site...

Nov 19, 2025 by News Staff

Kissing occurs in most living large apes, and likely also occurred in Neanderthals, first evolving in the ancestor to this group 21.5-16.9 million years...

Nov 11, 2025 by News Staff

University of Edinburgh scientist Hannah Long and colleagues show how a region of Neanderthal DNA is better at activating a jaw-forming gene than the human...

Nov 4, 2025 by Natali Anderson

Archaeologists have discovered Oldowan stone tools in three distinct archaeological horizons, spanning approximately 300,000 years (2.75 to 2.44 million...

Nov 3, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

The Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine contains key Middle to Upper Paleolithic transitional archaeological sites, including the site of Starosele, where archaeologists...

Oct 21, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have unearthed and examined a hominin partial skeleton that includes hand and foot bones unambiguously associated with skull elements...

Oct 20, 2025 by News Staff

Several hominids — Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus, early Homo sp., Gigantopithecus blacki, Pongo sp., Papio sp., Homo neanderthalensis,...

Oct 20, 2025 by News Staff

In new research, paleoanthropologists from the United States and Canada analyzed the morphology of a hominin talus (large bone in the ankle that joins...

Oct 7, 2025 by News Staff

The transport of Rapa Nui’s (Easter Island) monumental moai statues has been debated for over a century. Based on a systematic analysis of 962 moai,...

Oct 7, 2025 by News Staff

The culture that thrived at Teotihuacan in the Classic period has a unique place in Mesoamerican history. Today, it is held as an emblem of the Mexican...

Sep 25, 2025 by News Staff

Diverse forms of Homo, including Homo longi, coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene. Whether these fossil humans represent different species is debated....

Sep 15, 2025 by News Staff

The second half of the first millennium CE in Central and Eastern Europe was accompanied by fundamental cultural and political transformations. This period...

Aug 27, 2025 by News Staff

The pelvis is often called the keystone of upright locomotion. More than any other part of our lower body, it has been radically altered over millions...

Aug 25, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists from Tel Aviv University, the Université de Liège and France’s Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle say they have found a combination...

Aug 21, 2025 by News Staff

Thousands of years ago, ancient Homo sapiens undertook a treacherous journey, crossing hundreds of km of ice over the Bering Strait to the unknown world...

Aug 13, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

New hominin fossils recovered from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area in the Afar region of Ethiopia suggest the presence of early Homo at 2.78 and...

Aug 12, 2025 by News Staff

The Neanderthal variant in AMPD1 decreases its enzymatic activity by 25% in lab-produced proteins and by up to 80% in the muscles of genetically engineered...

Aug 7, 2025 by News Staff

The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated...