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Category: Anthropology

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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Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Science News reports: Humans regularly cooperate and share resources with other, unrelated humans in different social groups, often without any immediate, reciprocated benefits. The phenomenon has been considered unique to our species. But some bonobos appear to share this social trait, a study finds. This type of cooperation is thought to underpin human civilization. So bonobos’ ability to bond and cooperate with groups of nonrelatives across group boundaries, even when there’s no immediate payoff, may provide some insight into the…

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A new human species? Mystery surrounds 300,000-year-old fossil

A new human species? Mystery surrounds 300,000-year-old fossil

Nature reports: A fossilized jawbone discovered in a cave in eastern China bears a curious mix of ancient and modern features, according to a detailed analysis that compares it with dozens of other human specimens. The finding, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, indicates that the 300,000-year-old bone could have belonged to an as-yet undescribed species of archaic human. Scientists excavating a cave called Hualongdong, located in Anhui province in eastern China, have unearthed remains of 16 individuals that…

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Archaeologists in Zambia discover oldest wooden structure in the world, dating to 476,000 years ago

Archaeologists in Zambia discover oldest wooden structure in the world, dating to 476,000 years ago

Live Science reports: Archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence yet of a wooden structure crafted by the hands of a human ancestor. Two tree trunks, notched like Lincoln Logs, were preserved at the bottom of the Kalambo River in Zambia. If the logs’ estimated 476,000-year-old age is correct, it means that woodworking might predate the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, and highlights the intelligence of our hominin ancestors. Archaeologists unearthed the logs at Kalambo Falls, on Lake Tanganyika…

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What humans can learn from Neanderthals

What humans can learn from Neanderthals

Michael Segalov writes: “We might not know much about Neanderthals,” [says Ludovic Slimak], “but through what they created, we can see something incredible. When you take Home Sapien tools made of flint, spanning tens of thousands of years, in different parts of the world, they’re always the same. Standardised. It can’t be cultural.” There was likely little contact between these different settlements. “There’s something innate within the behaviour of Homo Sapiens – within our behaviour – to act and think…

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It’s reassuring to think humans are evolution’s ultimate destination – but research shows we may be an accident

It’s reassuring to think humans are evolution’s ultimate destination – but research shows we may be an accident

The Cambrian explosion, about 530 million years ago, was when most of the major groups of animals first appear in the fossil record. canbedone/Shutterstock By Matthew Wills, University of Bath and Marcello Ruta, University of Lincoln Depending upon how you do the counting, there are around 9 million species on Earth, from the simplest single-celled organisms to humans. It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ours are the inevitable consequence of evolution, as if evolution had a…

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New analysis suggests human ancestors nearly died out

New analysis suggests human ancestors nearly died out

Ars Technica reports: Multiple lines of evidence indicate that modern humans evolved within the last 200,000 years and spread out of Africa starting about 60,000 years ago. Before that, however, the details get a bit complicated. We’re still arguing about which ancestral population might have given rise to our lineage. Somewhere about 600,000 years ago, that lineage split off Neanderthals and Denisovans, and both of those lineages later interbred with modern humans after some of them left Africa. Figuring out…

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Human and ape ancestors arose in Europe, not in Africa, controversial study claims

Human and ape ancestors arose in Europe, not in Africa, controversial study claims

Live Science reports: An ape fossil found in Turkey may controversially suggest that the ancestors of African apes and humans first evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa, a research team says in a new study. The proposal breaks with the conventional view that hominines — the group that includes humans, the African apes (chimps, bonobos and gorillas) and their fossil ancestors — originated exclusively in Africa. However, the discovery of several hominine fossils in Europe and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey)…

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As men told hunting stories, women hunted

As men told hunting stories, women hunted

The New York Times reports: It’s often viewed as a given: Men hunted, women gathered. After all, the anthropological reasoning went, men were naturally more aggressive, whereas the slower pace of gathering was ideal for women, who were mainly focused on caretaking. “It’s not something I questioned,” said Sophia Chilczuk, a recent graduate of Seattle Pacific University, where she studied applied human biology. “And I think the majority of the public has that assumption.” At times, the notion has proved…

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When did humans first occupy the Americas? Ask the sloth bones

When did humans first occupy the Americas? Ask the sloth bones

The New York Times reports: Of all the long-running disputes in archaeology, few roil scholars more than the question of when humans arrived in the Americas. For much of the past century, the reigning theory was that in or around 11,500 years ago big-game hunters from Asia trudged to North America across a land bridge spanning the Bering Strait, hung a right through a corridor between glaciers and, in less than a millennium, reached the tip of South America. Over…

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