Attention to the Unseen

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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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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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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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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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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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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Science reports: Three decades ago, most archaeologists were certain that people first arrived in the Americas no earlier than about 13,000 years ago. The evidence came from well-dated spearheads with characteristic fluted bases known as Clovis points, named for the city in New Mexico near the archaeological site where they were first identified in 1929. But the so-called “Clovis first” hypothesis appeared to crack for good in 1997, when a cadre of archaeologists visited a site called Monte Verde in…

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