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Category: Anthropology

Why did humans’ brains surpass chimps’? An ancient virus might help explain it

Why did humans’ brains surpass chimps’? An ancient virus might help explain it

Science News reports: Viruses may be minuscule, but one could have influenced major differences between human and chimpanzee brains. Millions of years ago, a virus left DNA behind in an African ape’s genome, and the genetic material stuck around in modern day chimps. Those ghosts of infections past appear to influence genes involved in neuron development, which may help explain how human and chimp brains ended up so different, researchers report October 23 in Science Advances. Compared with the brains…

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Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age

Benjamin Taub writes: When an abstract-looking ivory artifact emerged from the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany in 2015, archaeologists didn’t know quite what to make of it. Previously, this same cave had yielded what may be the world’s oldest musical flutes, as well as one of humanity’s earliest pieces of figurative art, the iconic Venus of Hohle Fels. At first glance, this strange new discovery — a 20-centimeter rod perforated with four small holes — seemed comparatively unspectacular. But…

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New theory links storytelling, firelight and the rise of spoken language

New theory links storytelling, firelight and the rise of spoken language

ZME Science reports: The campfire may have done more than keep our ancestors warm. It may have helped turn ape-like communication into language. For hundreds of thousands of years, fire stretched the human day beyond sunset, gathering people into a flickering circle when hunting, gathering and other practical work had stopped. A new theory argues that this unusual social setting (no other creature could control fire) may have created the conditions for something radically different to emerge: sustained storytelling. The…

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Researchers identify traces of two ‘ghost’ ancestors in modern human DNA

Researchers identify traces of two ‘ghost’ ancestors in modern human DNA

CNN reports: Clues emerging from DNA could unlock the mystery of human ancestors that are missing from the fossil record yet present in the genes of people living today. Scientists found evidence years ago that our species, Homo sapiens, had interbred with now-extinct human relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. But some lineages have been difficult to identify, because — unlike Neanderthals and Denisovans, whose DNA has been recovered from prehistoric remains — they are essentially genetic “ghosts,” with no DNA…

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Humans have used fire far longer than anyone realized

Humans have used fire far longer than anyone realized

Science News reports: A cave in Africa seems to host the oldest known traces of humans using fire. Burnt remnants of animal bones hint that groups of Homo erectus used fires here as long as 1.8 million years ago. The site is known as Wonderwerk Cave. It’s in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The oldest previously known traces of our early relatives using fire also came from there. Those dated to about 1 million years ago. The new…

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Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

Ian Towle, CC BY By Ian Towle, Monash University Humanity’s family tree is long and tangled. Scientists sort our ancient relatives into three familiar groups: Homo, Australopithecus and Paranthropus. Each of these is a “genus”, the rank just above a species. (In Homo sapiens, Homo is the genus and sapiens is the species.) These names dominate how we talk about human origins. But new fossils, advances in genetic analysis, and more rigorous methods for figuring out who’s related to whom…

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Great apes were using touch to reassure and keep the peace six million years before humans evolved – new research

Great apes were using touch to reassure and keep the peace six million years before humans evolved – new research

Physical touch may be an important evolutionary tool to help manage social tension and keep the peace. Left: Jake Brooker/Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust; Right: Zanna Clay/Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary, CC BY-NC-ND By Jake Brooker, Utrecht University and Zanna Clay, Durham University During an eight-month-long research trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia, we studied consolation: the way bonobos and chimpanzees comfort each other after conflicts and distress. But early on, we kept noticing something that didn’t quite…

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Neanderthals in Western Europe were doing well right before they went extinct

Neanderthals in Western Europe were doing well right before they went extinct

UCLA: Neanderthals thrived across Europe and the Middle East for hundreds of thousands of years. They occupied vast distances, ranging from Europe through the Altai Mountains in Central Asia. They survived large variations in climate and the arrival of modern humans until around 40,000 years ago, when they died out. The exact factors that resulted in their disappearance remain unknown, with possible explanations including climate change, resource competition and interbreeding with anatomically modern humans. A new study published in Nature…

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Human evolution was messy and gradual, not an abrupt revolution, archaeologist argues

Human evolution was messy and gradual, not an abrupt revolution, archaeologist argues

Krystal Kasal writes: It is generally accepted by archaeologists that modern humans originated in Africa and dispersed worldwide, while other hominins went extinct. Yet how and when Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa, and whether it was an abrupt event, is still debated. Even more uncertain is how and when humans went from being “archaic” to “modern.” In a recent study, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, archaeologist Huw S. Groucutt argues that the ideas of modernity and a “Human Revolution”…

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Ancient DNA reveals how natural selection shaped West Eurasians over 10,000 years

Ancient DNA reveals how natural selection shaped West Eurasians over 10,000 years

PsyPost reports: By analyzing the genetic material of thousands of ancient humans, researchers have mapped how natural selection influenced hundreds of physical and behavioral traits across West Eurasia over the past 10,000 years. The findings reveal that evolution continuously pushed specific genetic variations to become more or less common, affecting everything from blood type to disease risk. The study was published in Nature. Evolution is driven by multiple forces, but one of the most recognizable is directional selection. This happens…

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The tightrope of cooperation and competition

The tightrope of cooperation and competition

Jonathan R Goodman writes: Reading classic works in evolutionary biology is unlikely to make you optimistic about human nature. From Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871) onwards, there is a fundamental understanding among biologists that organisms, especially humans, evolved to maximise self-interest. We act to promote our own success or that of our family. Niceness, by contrast, is just a mirage, and morality more broadly is just an illusion. Sociobiology – the infamous movement of the second half of…

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Why one branch on the human family tree replaced all the others

Why one branch on the human family tree replaced all the others

Nick Longrich writes: On the western slope of Mount Carmel, in Israel, lies the cave of Es-Skhul. About 140,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, nomadic hunter-gatherers made camp here. The sea to the west had receded, exposing a broad plain covered with groves of live oak, almond and olive, meadows filled with asphodel and anemone. Herds of fallow deer, rhinoceros and aurochs roamed the plains. People hunted animals with stone-tipped spears, and foraged wild mustard and olives. And when…

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Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities 59,000 years ago, tooth suggests

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities 59,000 years ago, tooth suggests

The Guardian reports: Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities almost 60,000 years ago in what is the earliest known evidence of dental treatment. The single molar, which was unearthed in a cave in southern Siberia, features a deep hole that appears to have been created using a sharp, thin stone tool during the lifetime of the tooth’s owner. While the prospect of stone age root canal treatment may be excruciating to even contemplate, archaeologists say the discovery provides remarkable…

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These chimpanzees began the bloodiest ‘war’ on record. No one knows why

These chimpanzees began the bloodiest ‘war’ on record. No one knows why

Carl Zimmer reports: Since 1995, scientists have tracked a huge group of chimpanzees living in the forests of Uganda. The sustained research, featured in the 2023 documentary “Chimp Empire,” has led to profound insights about our closest living relatives and, by extension, our own ancestors. In one line of research, the scientists studied deep bonds among male chimpanzees in the Ngogo group, named for a hill in the Kibale National Park where they live. The males spend years hunting together…

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Why ‘Man the Hunter’ continues to die and return

Why ‘Man the Hunter’ continues to die and return

Vivek V Venkataraman writes: The most iconic image of human evolution comes not from science, but from cinema. In the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), apes shuffle across a desolate, windswept plain, scrounging for meagre pickings. One is mauled by a leopard. Then a large black monolith appears, whipping the apes into a frenzy and bestowing upon them a new form of intelligence. As Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra swells, one ape takes up a…

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When Attenborough was welcomed by the mountain gorillas

When Attenborough was welcomed by the mountain gorillas

  David Sillito writes: It is the most memorable moment of Sir David Attenborough’s broadcasting career. A short sequence of his encounter with a group of playful mountain gorillas in a forest clearing in Rwanda. “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know,” he tells the camera, as a female gorilla observes him from just a few feet away. The footage for his 1979 Life on Earth series…

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