Attention to the Unseen

Jennifer Raff writes: The debate over how people first arrived in the Western Hemisphere continues to roil archaeology in the United States – and to capture public attention. Today, the scientific community is contending with significant amounts of new genetic and archaeological data, and it can be overwhelming and even contradictory. These data are coming from new archaeological excavations but also from the application of newly developed tools to re-analyse prior sites and artefacts. They’re coming from newly sequenced genomes…

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Derek R. Audette/Shutterstock By Irene Gallego Romero, The University of Melbourne and Davide Vespasiani, The University of Melbourne An encounter with a mysterious and extinct human relative – the Denisovans – has left a mark on the immune traits of modern Papuans, in particular those living on New Guinea Island. This is a new discovery we describe in a study published in PLoS Genetics today. It further suggests that our modern human diversity didn’t just evolve – some parts of…

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The Guardian reports: If you thought Neanderthals survived on a diet of foraged berries and uncooked animal flesh, think again. Charred remnants of what appears to be the world’s oldest cooked meal ever found have been unearthed in a cave complex in northern Iraq, prompting speculation that Neanderthals may have been foodies. “Our findings are the first real indication of complex cooking – and thus of food culture – among Neanderthals,” said Chris Hunt, a professor of cultural paleoecology at…

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Chelms Varthoumlien / Unsplash By Yassine Souilmi, University of Adelaide; Christian Huber, Penn State, and Ray Tobler, Australian National University Humans may be just as vulnerable to environmental change as other animals, according to our new research analysing genetic data from more than a thousand people who lived across Europe and Asia over the past 45,000 years. We found traces of more than 50 “hard sweeps” in which a rare genetic variant rapidly swept through a population – most likely…

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Science Alert reports: Paleolithic cuisine was anything but lean and green, according to a study on the diets of our Pleistocene ancestors. For a good 2 million years, Homo sapiens and their ancestors ditched the salad and dined heavily on meat, putting them at the top of the food chain. It’s not quite the balanced diet of berries, grains, and steak we might picture when we think of ‘paleo’ food. But according to a study last year by anthropologists from…

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The Guardian reports: Modern humans lived alongside Neanderthals for more than 1,000 years in Europe, according to research that suggests the two species may have imitated each other’s jewellery and stone tools. Previously, it was known that humans and their ancient relatives existed at the same time on the European continent for more than 6,000 years and that the two species interbred on several occasions. But the extent of their interactions remains the focus of scientific investigation. The latest paper…

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The Observer reports: It is a dispute that has taken a long time to reach boiling point. Seven million years after an apelike creature – since nicknamed Toumaï – traversed the landscape of modern Chad, its means of mobility has triggered a dispute among fossil experts. Some claim this was the oldest member of the human lineage. Others that it was just an old ape. The row, kindled by a paper in Nature, last week led scientists to denounce opponents…

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