Browsed by
Category: Anthropology

Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ skull in China may add species to human family tree

Discovery of ‘Dragon Man’ skull in China may add species to human family tree

The New York Times reports: Scientists on Friday announced that a massive fossilized skull that is at least 140,000 years old is a new species of ancient human, a finding that could potentially change prevailing views of how — and even where — our species, Homo sapiens, evolved. The skull belonged to a mature male who had a huge brain, massive brow ridges, deep set eyes and a bulbous nose. It had remained hidden in an abandoned well for 85…

Read More Read More

It looks like the real paleo diet often included lots of grains

It looks like the real paleo diet often included lots of grains

Nature reports: On a clear day, the view from the ruins of Göbekli Tepe stretches across southern Turkey all the way to the Syrian border some 50 kilometres away. At 11,600 years old, this mountaintop archaeological site has been described as the world’s oldest temple — so ancient, in fact, that its T-shaped pillars and circular enclosures pre-date pottery in the Middle East. The people who built these monumental structures were living just before a major transition in human history:…

Read More Read More

For most of human history, equality was the norm

For most of human history, equality was the norm

Kim Sterelny writes: Most of us live in social worlds that are profoundly unequal, where small elites have vastly more power and wealth than everyone else. Very few of the have-nots find this congenial. As experimental economists have shown, we tend to enter social situations prepared to take a chance and cooperate in collective activities. But if others take more than their share, we resent being played for a sucker. We live in unequal worlds, and few of us are…

Read More Read More

How did Neanderthals and other ancient humans learn to count?

How did Neanderthals and other ancient humans learn to count?

Nature reports: Some 60,000 years ago, in what is now western France, a Neanderthal picked up a chunk of hyena femur and a stone tool and began to work. When the task was complete, the bone bore nine notches that were strikingly similar and approximately parallel, as if they were meant to signify something. Francesco d’Errico, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux, France, has an idea about the marks. He has examined many ancient carved artefacts during his career,…

Read More Read More

Neanderthals carb loaded, helping grow their big brains

Neanderthals carb loaded, helping grow their big brains

Science reports: Here’s another blow to the popular image of Neanderthals as brutish meat eaters: A new study of bacteria collected from Neanderthal teeth shows that our close cousins ate so many roots, nuts, or other starchy foods that they dramatically altered the type of bacteria in their mouths. The finding suggests our ancestors had adapted to eating lots of starch by at least 600,000 years ago—about the same time as they needed more sugars to fuel a big expansion…

Read More Read More

Tools and voyages suggest Homo erectus invented language

Tools and voyages suggest Homo erectus invented language

Daniel Everett writes: What is the greatest human technological innovation? Fire? The wheel? Penicillin? Clothes? Google? None of these come close. As you read this, you are using the winning technology. The greatest tool in the world is language. Without it there would be no culture, no literature, no science, no history, no commercial enterprise or industry. The genus Homo rules the Earth because it possesses language. But how and when did we build this kingdom of speech? And who…

Read More Read More

Is music what makes us human?

Is music what makes us human?

Kevin Berger writes: In the past two years, the debate over whether music is universal, or even whether that debate has merit, has raged like a battle of the bands among scientists. The stage has expanded from musicology to evolutionary biology to cultural anthropology. This summer, in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, more than 100 scholars sound off on evolution and universality of music. I love the din. The academic discord gives way to a symphony of insights into…

Read More Read More

One incredible ocean crossing may have made human evolution possible

One incredible ocean crossing may have made human evolution possible

Yasni/Shutterstock By Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath Humans evolved in Africa, along with chimpanzees, gorillas and monkeys. But primates themselves appear to have evolved elsewhere – likely in Asia – before colonising Africa. At the time, around 50 million years ago, Africa was an island isolated from the rest of the world by ocean – so how did primates get there? A land bridge is the obvious explanation, but the geological evidence currently argues against it. Instead, we’re left…

Read More Read More

How bipedalism led humans down a strange evolutionary path

How bipedalism led humans down a strange evolutionary path

Riley Black writes: No other animal moves the way we do. That’s awfully strange. Even among other two-legged species, none amble about with a straight back and a gait that, technically, is just a form of controlled falling. Our bipedalism doesn’t just set us apart, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva posits; it’s what makes us human. There’s no shortage of books that propose this or that feature — tool use or self-awareness, for example — as the very definition of humankind. But much of our supposed…

Read More Read More

Modern humanlike brains may have emerged about 1.7 million years ago

Modern humanlike brains may have emerged about 1.7 million years ago

Science News reports: Even after ancient humans took their first steps out of Africa, they still unexpectedly may have possessed brains more like those of great apes than modern humans, a new study suggests. For decades, scientists had thought modern humanlike organization of brain structures evolved soon after the human lineage Homo arose roughly 2.8 million years ago. But an analysis of fossilized human skulls that retain imprints of the brains they once held now suggests such brain development occurred…

Read More Read More

Ancient human migration into Europe revealed via genome analysis

Ancient human migration into Europe revealed via genome analysis

AFP reports: Genetic sequencing of human remains dating back 45,000 years has revealed a previously unknown migration into Europe and showed intermixing with Neanderthals in that period was more common than previously thought. The research is based on analysis of several ancient human remains – including a whole tooth and bone fragments – found in a cave in Bulgaria last year. Genetic sequencing found the remains came from individuals who were more closely linked to present-day populations in east Asia…

Read More Read More

Two bonobos adopted infants outside their group, marking a first for great apes

Two bonobos adopted infants outside their group, marking a first for great apes

Science News reports: Attentive parenting appears across the animal world, but adoption is rarer, especially when youngsters taken in aren’t kin. Now researchers have witnessed bonobos adopting infants from outside of their own communities. Two females, each from a different bonobo group, in the Luo Scientific Reserve in Congo took charge of orphans — grooming them, carrying them and providing food for at least a year. Two instances of adopted outsiders are known in other nonhuman primates, but this is…

Read More Read More

How scientific taxonomy constructed the myth of race

How scientific taxonomy constructed the myth of race

By Brittany Kenyon-Flatt, SAPIENS As a graduate assistant in biological anthropology at the University at Buffalo, I was tasked with curating the primate skeletal collection. The collection of skeletons—taken from cadavers studied during a primate anatomy class—had been neglected for a few years. Most of the specimens had lost their labels. So, when I began re-cataloguing the collection in 2016, I ran into trouble. I knew that the skeletons were from three different species of macaques, but I didn’t know…

Read More Read More

Neanderthals helped create early human art, researcher says

Neanderthals helped create early human art, researcher says

The Guardian reports: When Neanderthals, Denisovans and homo sapiens met one another 50,000 years ago, these archaic and modern humans not only interbred during the thousands of years in which they overlapped, but they exchanged ideas that led to a surge in creativity, according to a leading academic. Tom Higham, a professor of archaeological science at the University of Oxford, argues that their exchange explains “a proliferation of objects in the archaeological record”, such as perforated teeth and shell pendants,…

Read More Read More

What fueled humans’ big brains? Controversial paper proposes new hypothesis

What fueled humans’ big brains? Controversial paper proposes new hypothesis

Stephanie Pappas writes: Over the course of the Pleistocene epoch, between 2.6 million years ago and 11,700 years ago, the brains of humans and their relatives grew. Now, scientists from Tel Aviv University have a new hypothesis as to why: As the largest animals on the landscape disappeared, the scientists propose, human brains had to grow to enable the hunting of smaller, swifter prey. This hypothesis argues that early humans specialized in taking down the largest animals, such as elephants,…

Read More Read More

Evolution: lab-grown ‘mini brains’ suggest one mutation might have rewired the human mind

Evolution: lab-grown ‘mini brains’ suggest one mutation might have rewired the human mind

The brains of humans are subtly different from those of Neanderthals. Petr Student/Shutterstock By Itzia Ferrer, Lund University and Per Brattås, Lund University How we humans became what we are today is a question that scientists have been trying to answer for a long time. How did we evolve such advanced cognitive abilities, giving rise to complex language, poetry and rocket science? In what way is the modern human brain different from those of our closest evolutionary relatives, such as…

Read More Read More