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Category: Anthropology

How Neanderthal language differed from modern human – they probably didn’t use metaphors

How Neanderthal language differed from modern human – they probably didn’t use metaphors

Neanderthal skull (foreground) contrasted with that of a modern human from the Palaeolithic. Petr Student By Steven Mithen, University of Reading The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) fascinate researchers and the general public alike. They remain central to debates about the nature of the genus Homo (the broad biological classification that humans and their relatives fall into). Neanderthals are also vital for understanding the uniqueness or otherwise of our species, Homo sapiens. We shared an ancestor with the Neanderthals around 600,000 years…

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‘More Neanderthal than human’: How your health may depend on DNA from our long-lost ancestors

‘More Neanderthal than human’: How your health may depend on DNA from our long-lost ancestors

Live Science reports: The group had traveled for thousands of miles, crossing Africa and the Middle East until finally reaching the dimly lit forests of the new continent. They were long-vanished members of our modern human tribe, and among the first Homo sapiens to enter Europe. There, these people would likely have encountered their distant cousins: Neanderthals. These small bands of modern-human relatives had hooded brows, large heads and squat bodies, and they had spent epochs acclimating to Europe’s colder…

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Why did our ancestors make startling art in dark firelit caves?

Why did our ancestors make startling art in dark firelit caves?

Izzy Wisher writes: Charcoal drawings of stags, elegantly rendered in fluid lines, emerge under my torchlight as we squeeze through a tiny hidden entrance to a small chamber deep within Las Chimeneas cave in northern Spain. The chamber has space for just a couple of people, and certainly not standing, so we crouch on the cave floor and stare in awe at the depictions. Despite their remarkable freshness, they were drawn nearly 18,000 years ago. We sit in silence for…

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How the story of human evolution continues to branch out

How the story of human evolution continues to branch out

Razib Khan writes: Over the last 20 years, genomics, ancient DNA, and paleoanthropology have joined forces to completely overhaul our understanding of the origin of our species. The true diversity and complexity of human evolution over the last few hundred millennia surpasses even the most unhinged imaginings we might have hazarded just a short generation ago. But greater clarity has left us with a messier and less elegant narrative. Our species’ status, it turns out, is “complicated.” In the year…

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Remembering Frans de Waal and the origins of war

Remembering Frans de Waal and the origins of war

  John Horgan writes: I was scrolling through Twitter last night when I came across an RIP for primatologist Frans de Waal. The news caught me off guard. How could de Waal be dead? He was just out there promoting Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, the latest of his 16 popular books. But a release from Emory University, de Waal’s long-time academic home, confirmed that he succumbed to stomach cancer on March 14. I interviewed de Waal…

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Stone tools that are 1.4 million years old mark the migration of ancient humans in Europe

Stone tools that are 1.4 million years old mark the migration of ancient humans in Europe

Discover magazine reports: Researchers have spent years grappling with the uncertain details of archaic humans’ first entry into Europe, but stone tools created about 1.4 million years ago may offer important insight. The tools were discovered at the Korolevo archaeological site near Ukraine’s border with Romania, and have now considered the oldest known artifacts in Europe made by ancient humans. A team of archaeologists recently dated the tools and published their findings in Nature, delivering progress on critical questions about…

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Why hunter-gatherers value their mobility

Why hunter-gatherers value their mobility

Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias writes: New research among hunter-gatherer societies is revealing that the social networks these populations create through mobility might be larger than ever expected. These networks, defined by movement, may also be responsible for the emergence of some characteristics thought to set humans apart from our closest nonhuman primate relatives. The movement of hunter-gatherers may explain the emergence of complex, cumulative culture and our ability to maintain high levels of genetic diversity, even when population sizes drop to very,…

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The first Europeans reached Ukraine 1.4 million years ago – new research

The first Europeans reached Ukraine 1.4 million years ago – new research

Remains of the castle in Korolevo, close to the site. Катерина Байдужа/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA By John Jansen, Czech Academy of Sciences During warm periods in Earth’s history, known as interglacials, glaciers the size of continents pulled back to reveal new landscapes. These were new worlds for early humans to explore and exploit, and 1.4 million years ago this was Europe: a Terra nullius unoccupied by humans. Long before it emerged as the epicentre of global colonialism, Europe was itself…

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Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises

Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises

Science reports: South Asia is home to one of the most diverse assemblages of people in the world. A mélange of different ethnic identities, languages, religions, castes, and customs makes up the 1.5 billion humans who live here. Now, scientists have revealed the most detailed look yet of how this population took shape. In the largest ever modern whole-genome analysis from South Asia—published as a preprint last month on bioRxiv—researchers reveal new details about the origin of India’s Iranian ancestry…

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Stone tool discovery challenges ‘revolution’ theory of human evolution

Stone tool discovery challenges ‘revolution’ theory of human evolution

Discover magazine reports: Using tools seems like second nature for humans today, but our prehistoric ancestors didn’t acquire this practical skill set overnight. The timeline of stone tool development by humans has been rearranged by new research, shaking up traditional views about the evolution of ancient human ingenuity. The study, published in Nature Communications, suggests that humans went through a period of gradual cultural change after they started moving throughout Eurasia 50,000 years to 40,000 years ago. This new perspective…

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Scientists discover stunning evidence of multiple lost prehistoric societies

Scientists discover stunning evidence of multiple lost prehistoric societies

Vice reports: Your choice in jewelry can say a lot about you: That you follow a particular religion, graduated with an engineering degree, or you’re just a fan of the latest viral aesthetic. Now, new research shows that jewelry was just as important for distinguishing different cultures in ancient Europe as it is for signaling your allegiance to a particular group today. The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, reveals the existence of nine distinct groups that were lost to…

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45,000-year-old bones unearthed in cave are oldest modern-human remains in Central Europe

45,000-year-old bones unearthed in cave are oldest modern-human remains in Central Europe

Live Science reports: Modern humans crossed the Alps into chilly Northern Europe about 45,000 years ago, meaning they may have coexisted with Neanderthals in Europe for thousands of years longer than experts previously thought, according to new research. The discovery — of 13 bone fragments belonging to Homo sapiens who occupied a cave in Germany between about 44,000 and 47,500 years ago — catalogs the oldest known H. sapiens remains from Central and Northwest Europe, the researchers said. The finding…

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What was it like to grow up in the last ice age?

What was it like to grow up in the last ice age?

April Nowell writes: The sun rises on the Palaeolithic, 14,000 years ago, and the glacial ice that once blanketed Europe continues its slow retreat. In the daylight, a family begins making its way toward a cave at the foot of a mountain near the Ligurian Sea, in northern Italy. They’re wandering across a steppe covered in short, dry grasses and pine trees. Ahead, the cave’s entrance is surrounded by a kaleidoscope of wildflowers: prickly pink thistles, red-brown mugworts, and purple…

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Apes remember friends they haven’t seen for decades

Apes remember friends they haven’t seen for decades

  Johns Hopkins University reports: Apes recognize photos of groupmates they haven’t seen for more than 25 years and respond even more enthusiastically to pictures of their friends, a new study finds. The work, which demonstrates the longest-lasting social memory ever documented outside of humans and underscores how human culture evolved from the common ancestors we share with apes, our closest relatives, was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Chimpanzees and bonobos recognize individuals…

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People hunting, not the climate, found to have caused the decline of the giant mammals

People hunting, not the climate, found to have caused the decline of the giant mammals

Phys.org reports: For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation. About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga…

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A glimpse of the world’s heart

A glimpse of the world’s heart

Nick Hunt writes: I am standing on the beach in Santa Marta, a small port city on Colombia’s humid Caribbean coast. Around me, brightly dressed families are eating ice cream and grilled meat. Venezuelan refugees beg for coins, and shredded plastic bags are snagged in the cactuses. Offshore, cargo vessels idle on blue-grey waves, perhaps heading east towards the Atlantic, or west to Panama and the Pacific. The industrial port bristles with cranes and gantries. Looking inland, my view is…

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