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This suggests that humans and Neanderthals interbred about 50,000 years earlier than previously thought. The implications are staggering considering humans left Africa to settle Europe and Asia about 65,000 years ago. How was this possible? Researchers suggest that this gene flow comes from modern humans who left Africa even earlier -- maybe the very first wave.
The smaller humans who lived on the Flores Island in Indonesia until 12,000 years ago were not Homo sapiens but a different species, a new study confirms.
The Easter Island is one of the biggest mysteries in human history. How people got there and where they came from, how they built the huge moai statues and why, and what brought their demise are still unsolved questions. But at leas for the latter, we may be getting a bit closer to the truth. The previously […]
It all started when archaeologists working in Germany made a surprising discovery, uncovering the bodies of children and of one adult man who was buried, strangely, standing upright. The cemetery was dated to 8,500 years, being one of the oldest – if not the oldest – ever found on the continent. The cemetery dates from the […]
New models show that 2 million years ago, early humans couldn’t have survived on a diet based on nuts and other hard foods. In 2012, a study garnered international attention when it claimed that early human ancestors survived on a diet of hard foods mixed in with tree bark, fruit, leaves and other plant products. But […]
Augmenting the simple bow and arrow marked a significant shift in human cognitive abilities.
War may have emerged even before humans settled down.
According to an English-Portuguese duo, the origin of some of the most beloved stories may go back much further than we thought.
Volcanic eruptions have fascinated and frightened people for millennia, and many have tried to describe them in different ways. Whether it was through paintings, text or documentaries, we’ve all seen volcanoes described in one way or another. But for people 30,000 years ago, that was a much more difficult challenge. Now, researchers believe they have […]
A new paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examines women's efforts to guard their mates from sexual competition -- especially other ovulating females.
Archaeologists working in the arctic have found evidence that ancient humans made it to the arctic some 45,000 years ago.
More than twice the age of the Stonehenge, the Shigir Idol has been recently dated to 11,000 years ago, which makes it the oldest wooden object in existence by far. The idol is also covered with some drawings which may actually be a written language that no one understands.
Partial femur bones found in the renowned Red Deer Cave seems to show that other species of humans overlapped with our own species during the ice age.
Recent fossils unearthed in the Chinese province of Daoxian come to unravel the story of humanity’s spread as we know it today. The find consists of 47 teeth, belonging to modern humans, but what’s really important is their age – they have been dated to 80,000 years ago. This number doesn’t fit with the “Out of Africa” migration theory, holding that humans originate and have spread from the horn of the continent all around the world. The theory as we know it can’t explain human presence in the area for another 20,000 years.
The complete genetic code book of a person who lived 4,500 years ago in Ethiopia was completed by US researchers. Although much older genomes have been sequenced, like those of 38,000 year-old Neanderthals, samples from African forefathers have proven difficult to sequence as the DNA is often destroyed by accelerated decay, driven by tropical conditions. As such, this is the first time a complete genome retrieval was performed from an ancient human in Africa. In this light, the findings are very important: they suggest even older DNA could be retrieved - maybe even millions of years back to the age of other species of the homo genus.
The human inovation process is more of a slow, steady climb than a sum of great leaps, a new University of Reading study shows. Our minds tend to innovate by adding small improvements through trial and error report the scientists, who studied one of the most important cultural events in human history - the migration of the Bantu-speaking farmers in Africa some 5,000 years ago. Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University, led the study.
A daring team of researchers squeezed themselves through a long vertical chute and descended some 40 meters beneath the surface. It was here inside the Rising Star cave, located in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa, that the researchers discovered one of the most important collection of hominins in the world - 1,500 bone fragments belonging to 15 skeletons. The remains clearly belonged to a human ancestor, and the team involved claims we're talking, in fact, about a totally new hominin.
Basques - an ethnic group from modern day Spain - were thought to be direct descendants of hunter-gatherers who had managed to remain isolated during the initial wave of migration of early farmers in Western Europe. A comprehensive genetic analysis performed by scientists at Uppsala University suggests the Basques are more related to early farmers than hunter gatherers. Instead, what likely happens is that these early farmers kept to themselves and resisted breeding with later migratory waves.
A new study shows that evolution's burden is distinctly visible on our shoulders - literally. Our shoulders are surprisingly similar to those of orangutans, as opposed to those of our closest relatives, chimp. This may have an important significance on our evolution.
A beautifully preserved skull fragment belonging to the earliest baboon species was found in a South African cave. The site in Malapa has constantly offered archaeologists and anthropologists plenty of work, since it was populated by various hominid species across millions of years. In fact, it is here that scientists discovered a distinct hominid species, Australopithecus sediba, for the first time. Apart from the ancient baboon, no other non-hominid animal was found in the cave.
Anthropologists have discovered the oldest known fossil of a bone resembling that of humans; the 1.85 million year old bone is the oldest evidence of a ‘modern’ hand and suggests that ancient humans may have been much larger than previously thought. A key feature that distinguishes humans from other species is the ability to create and use […]
Researchers have found that just like babies, bonobos exhibit a type of communication in which they use the same sound with different intonations to say different things. They use these high pitch "peeps" to express their emotions.
A half a million year old human tooth was discovered in France in a place called Tautavel, one of Europe's most important prehistoric caves. Anthropologists hailed the discovery as an extremely important one, with chief researcher Tony Chevalier calling it a "major discovery".
Who, where and when "invented" farming? A new study pushes back the advent of farming by a couple of thousand years.
A team of archaeologists working in Denmark have made a puzzling discovery: they found nearly 2,000 spectacular gold spirals dating from the Bronze age. The reason why they were made, especially in such a large number, is a mystery and the trove baffled scientists. The spirals are made from pure gold, hammered down to just 0.1 millimeters […]
The first humans to reach the Americas came from Siberia in a single group some 23,000 years ago, at the height of the last Ice Age, says the new study. On their way to Alaska, they hanged around in the northern regions for a few thousands of years before moving deeper into North and South America.
Duke University researchers made micro CT scans of the skull of ancient monkey and found its brain, though tiny by modern standards, was far more complex than previously thought. The fossils, discovered in Kenya in 1997, belong to a monkey ancestor who lived some 15 million years ago.
A pair of anthropologists compared the anatomical features o bonobos to those of homo sapiens and other apes to infer any clues that might help us understand how we evolved to look the way we do.
Archaic homo sapiens left Africa, the wellspring of humanity, some 60,000 years ago migrating North, via a route passing through what is known today as Egypt, rather than South, through the Arabian Peninsula, as previously proposed. The findings were reported by an international team of researchers which used novel techniques to produce whole-genome sequences from 225 people from modern Egypt and Ethiopia (six modern Northeast African populations). This is far from the last word, but the picture the researchers paint seems to be consistent with other evidence, such as early human-made tools and human fossils found on the proposed route (Israel), and is in better agreement with what we already know about the genetic mixture of all non-Africans with Neanderthals.
Anthropologists have uncovered a 430,000 year old homo skull with fatal wounds that represents the earliest identified murder case in human history.
In 1974, anthropologists found a 40% complete skeleton of a female which they identified as a pre-human species; they called her Lucy. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago, she is classified as a hominin, and she is without a doubt one of the most important findings in history. Now, scientists have found […]
Our bones are much lighter and weaker than those of our Paleolithic ancestors (11,000 to 33,000 years ago), but it's not our spoiled modern day lifestyle that's to blame. Instead, a new study which closely compared homo sapiens bones, both ancient and modern, found that the most significant changes occurred once the paradigm shift from hunter-gatherer to agriculture took place, some 10,000 years ago. Humans started forming permanent settlements, worked the land and tended to flocks. Consequently, the lifestyle became more sedentary.
Sexual equality might be the mark of a civilized society, but it's definitely not a new thing. In fact, there's much we can learn from our so-called primitive forefathers and foremothers, who likely lived in closely bonded communities where sexes shared equal influence and contributions, according to a study published by a team at University College London. The researchers investigated modern hunter-gatherer communities, one in Congo and the other in the Philippines, then constructed a computer model. Their model showed when only one sex had influence over how the group migrated for food or who lived with whom, the close community crumbled and did not reflect what was actually happening in reality. The researchers believe sexual segregation and male dominance in most cultures appeared following the advent of agriculture, as more resources became available.
In most cultures, men are typically regarded as handy and it’s usually up to them to do the handy work – it’s quite a stereotype actually, but I think it’s among the few that really stick; but a new study reveals that women may actually be much more well suited for that job. Female chips […]
Homo is the genus of hominids that includes modern humans, as well as other species closely related to them… I mean us. The genus is estimated to be about 2.3 to 2.4 million years old and it features several species (though it’s still not clear how many). Here are the modern (<0.6 million years) Homo species […]
Recent archaeological and anthropological research showed that Neanderthals weren't the mindless brutes we once thought they were - they were smart, organized, they had their own speech and interbred with early humans. Now, a new study has found evidence that 130,000 years ago, Neanderthals also designed elaborate jewelry, a degree of sophistication never seen before for that time.
A study conducted on 2000 year old tooth enamel found that ancient farmers traveled to the grassy plains southern Africa to develop herding away from the dangerous tsetse fly.
A broken jaw unearthed in Ethiopia pushes back the origin of the homo linage – of which homo sapiens sapiens are the only surviving members – by 400,000 years. The finding might prove important in explaining how our ancestors diverged from more apelike relatives, like Australopithecus, to big brained beings, filling a blank spot two […]
A partial skull fragment found in Kenya seems to indicate that early humans were much more diverse than previously thought. The 22,000-year-old skull clearly belongs to a human species, but is unlike anything else previously discovered.
An ancient skull found in Israel indicates that early Homo sapiens likely interbred with Neanderthals 50,000 years ago. The female skull is the first skeletal evidence to support the idea that Neandertals and moderns mated. The finding is published in the journal Nature. The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) are closely related to modern humans, differing in DNA by only 0.12%. Genetic […]
Aboriginals around what is today Melbourne have been telling a story for thousands of generations – a tale of waters rising after the ice age. Without using written languages, they passed it down orally, generation to generation, with surprising accuracy. Now, a new study concluded that the story is actually really accurate, despite being passed […]
After analyzing key hand bone fragments from fossil records, a team of anthropologists conclude that pre-homo human ancestral species, such as Australopithecus africanus, used a hand posture very similar to that of modern humans. Considering fossil tools used for scrubbing off meat as old as 3.3 million years have been found, it may just be that our early ancestors weren't all that different from good ol' superior homo sapiens sapiens. Well, as far as hands go at least.
People from the Americas may have been making their way to the Easter Island way before Dutch commander Jakob Roggeveen arrived in 1722, according to new genomic evidence; this new evidence showed that the isolated Rapanui people shared a strong connection with Native American populations hundreds of years earlier. This evidence shows that early Americans undertook the […]
Roman gladiators – some of the most feared warriors in history were mostly vegetarian, a new anthropological study has shown. Gladiators fought to entertain audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations; they fought each other, wild animals, and convicted criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked not only their social standing, but also […]
Following the genome sequence of the oldest modern human remains outside of Africa using the most refined DNA analysis to data, scientists believe they arrived at a more price time frame when humans and Neanderthals first interbred – sometimes between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. The findings also suggest modern humans arrived in northern Eurasia substantially earlier […]
Chimps, our closest relatives, can pass down knowledge and skills, like using a new tool for instance, and establish cultural communities, according to a recently study published in PLOS Biology. Communicating and passing down skills, inventions and knowledge is considering a pre-requisite to what we commonly refer to as human culture, and the findings suggest that […]
A breakthrough finding in Armenia where thousands of ancient cutting tools were found beautifully preserved casts doubt on a currently prevailing hypothesis that these were solely invented in Africa. The tools discovered are between 325,000 and 335,000 years old. The age suggests the ancient paleolithic cultures of the time that inhabited the region independently developed the […]
Early modern human populations were culturally diverse and sometimes exchanged tools helped by river networks in a then savanna rich Sahara, according to the biggest ever comparative study of stone tools dating to between 130,000 and 75,000 years ago. At least fourdistinct populations, each relatively isolated from each other, have been identified as possessing distinct cultural practices.
The Aboriginal Martu people have been hunting kangaroos and sand monitor lizards for over 2,000 years. During this time, the natives have not only lived sustainably, but also became unwilling conservationists helping kangaroo populations grow by sparking wild fires that help them catch lizards, a study by researchers at University of Utah found. In other remote areas […]
In 2004, anthropologists and archaeologists working in Indonesia uncovered what was named “the biggest anthropological finding for 100 years” – fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores were uncovered, appearing to be a new species: Homo floresiensis. But now, new research challenges that find, claiming that the uncovered skeletons were in fact just an […]
