Browsed by
Category: Anthropology

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

The origin of modern humans cannot be traced to any one single point of time or place

The origin of modern humans cannot be traced to any one single point of time or place

Science Alert reports: Homo sapiens today look very different from our evolutionary origins, the microbes wriggling about in the primordial mud. But our emergence as a distinct species cannot, based on the current evidence, be conclusively traced to a single location at any single point in time. In fact, according to a team of scientists, who have conducted a thorough review of our current understanding of human ancestry, there may never even have been such a time. Instead, the earliest…

Read More Read More

Not all early human societies were small scale egalitarian bands

Not all early human societies were small scale egalitarian bands

Manvir Singh writes: The Harvard Kalahari Project propelled the !Kung into anthropological stardom. By 1976, researchers on the team had published more than 100 academic articles, on topics as varied as infant care, trance healing, and blood pressure. The research sparked more interest, which drew in more anthropologists, which produced more research. In a video for the Annual Review of Anthropology in 2012, DeVore speculated that there was no culture ‘outside the West that has as much fine-grained data on…

Read More Read More

In ice age Siberia, a meeting of carnivores may have given us dogs

In ice age Siberia, a meeting of carnivores may have given us dogs

The New York Times reports: Twenty-three thousand years ago, in the cold of the last ice age, some humans found a place where the climate was marginally better: Siberia. While many people associate the region that is now in Russia with forbidding cold today, climate data as well as archaeological and DNA evidence show that this was where horses, mammoths and other prey animals found enough to eat, which attracted humans and other carnivores. Hemmed in by worse conditions, the…

Read More Read More

What do we know about the lives of Neanderthal women?

What do we know about the lives of Neanderthal women?

Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes: The first Neanderthal face to emerge from time’s sarcophagus was a woman’s. As the social and liberal revolutions of 1848 began convulsing Europe, quarry workers’ rough hands pulled her from the great Rock of Gibraltar. Calcite mantling her skull meant that, at first, she seemed more a hunk of stone than a once warm-blooded being, and obscured her decidedly odd anatomy – massive eyes, heavy brow ridges and a low, long cranium. While monarchies fell and…

Read More Read More

What new science techniques tell us about ancient women warriors

What new science techniques tell us about ancient women warriors

Annalee Newitz writes: Though it’s remarkable that the United States finally is about to have a female vice president, let’s stop calling it an unprecedented achievement. As some recent archaeological studies suggest, women have been leaders, warriors and hunters for thousands of years. This new scholarship is challenging long-held beliefs about so-called natural gender roles in ancient history, inviting us to reconsider how we think about women’s work today. In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a…

Read More Read More

Could Covid-19 have wiped out the Neandertals?

Could Covid-19 have wiped out the Neandertals?

John Hewitt writes: Everybody loves Neandertals, those big-brained brutes we supposedly outcompeted and ultimately replaced using our sharp tongues and quick, delicate minds. But did we really, though? Is it mathematically possible that we could yet be them, and they us? By the same token, could not the impossibly singular Mitochondrial Eve, her contemporary Y-chromosome Adam, and even the “Out of Africa” hypothesis simply be convenient fictions paleogeneticists tell each other at conferences to give their largely arbitrary haplotype designations…

Read More Read More

How civilization broke our brains

How civilization broke our brains

Derek Thompson writes: Several months ago, I got into a long discussion with a colleague about the origins of the “Sunday scaries,” the flood of anxiety that many of us feel as the weekend is winding down and the workweek approaches. He said that the culprit was clear, and pointed to late-stage capitalism’s corrosive blend of performance stress and job insecurity. But capitalism also exists Monday through Saturday, so why should Sunday be so uniquely anxiety-inducing? The deeper cause, I…

Read More Read More

Is anyone on Earth not an immigrant?

Is anyone on Earth not an immigrant?

Kelly Slivka writes: Human beings tend to be fascinated with their beginnings. Origin stories are found across cultures, religions, ethnicities and nationalities — and they are all deeply important. These stories tell people where they come from, how they fit in and how everyone fits together. One of these stories, of course, is the story of human genes, and it’s a story anyone with human DNA shares. As scientists find more ancient human DNA, sample more modern DNA and develop…

Read More Read More

Cahokian culture spread across eastern North America 1,000 years ago in an early example of diaspora

Cahokian culture spread across eastern North America 1,000 years ago in an early example of diaspora

Cahokia’s mound-building culture flourished a millennium ago near modern-day St. Louis. JByard/iStock via Getty Images Plus By Jayur Mehta, Florida State University An expansive city flourished almost a thousand years ago in the bottomlands of the Mississippi River across the water from where St. Louis, Missouri stands today. It was one of the greatest pre-Columbian cities constructed north of the Aztec city of Tenochititlan, at present-day Mexico City. The people who lived in this now largely forgotten city were part…

Read More Read More

Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented bone tools at least 800,000 years ago

Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented bone tools at least 800,000 years ago

Science News reports: A type of bone tool generally thought to have been invented by Stone Age humans got its start among hominids that lived hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens evolved, a new study concludes. A set of 52 previously excavated but little-studied animal bones from East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge includes the world’s oldest known barbed bone point, an implement probably crafted by now-extinct Homo erectus at least 800,000 years ago, researchers say. Made from a piece…

Read More Read More

Turbulent environment set the stage for leaps in human evolution and technology 320,000 years ago

Turbulent environment set the stage for leaps in human evolution and technology 320,000 years ago

Drilling 139 meters down to volcanic rock provided scientists with a million-year environmental record. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian By Richard Potts, Smithsonian Institution People thrive all across the globe, at every temperature, altitude and landscape. How did human beings become so successful at adapting to whatever environment we wind up in? Human origins researchers like me are interested in how this quintessential human trait, adaptability, evolved. At a site in Kenya, my colleagues and I have been working on this…

Read More Read More

To uncover the habits of ancient humans, scientists are studying modern sports stars

To uncover the habits of ancient humans, scientists are studying modern sports stars

Bridget Alex writes: Archaeologist Annemieke Milks planned to test the ballistic properties of some of the world’s oldest spears. Crafted by Neanderthals 300,000 years ago, the wooden artifacts measure about 7 feet long and resemble oversized broomsticks with sharpened tips. When discovered in the 1990s at a site in Schöningen, Germany, they rested alongside the butchered remains of 35 horses. Apparently, Neanderthals, armed with the spears, had some very successful hunts. But just how fast and far could these ancient…

Read More Read More

If language started with hand gestures, why did it later become vocal?

If language started with hand gestures, why did it later become vocal?

Kensy Cooperrider writes: Some say language evolved by firelight, with our ancestors sharing stories deep into the night. Others suggest it began as baby talk, or as imitations of animal calls, or as gasps of surprise. Charles Darwin proposed that language started with snippets of song; Noam Chomsky thought it was just an accident, the result of a freak genetic mutation. Proposals about the origins of language abound. And it’s no wonder: language is a marvel, our most distinctive capacity….

Read More Read More

How the first Americans made their way from Siberia to Patagonia

How the first Americans made their way from Siberia to Patagonia

Gillen D’Arcy Wood writes: In the summer of 1977, on a field trip in northern Patagonia, the American archaeologist Tom Dillehay made a stunning discovery. Digging by a creek in a nondescript scrubland called Monte Verde, in southern Chile, he came upon the remains of an ancient camp. A full excavation uncovered the trace wooden foundations of no fewer than 12 huts, plus one larger structure designed for tool manufacture and perhaps as an infirmary. In the large hut, Dillehay…

Read More Read More

Art, adornment and sophisticated hunting technologies flourished not only in prehistoric Europe but across the globe

Art, adornment and sophisticated hunting technologies flourished not only in prehistoric Europe but across the globe

Gaia Vince writes: In 1868, workmen near the hamlet of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in southwestern France opened up a rock shelter and found animal bones, flints and, most intriguingly, human skulls. Work on the road was paused while a geologist, Louis Lartet, was called to excavate the site. What he discovered would transform our understanding of the origins of humanity. Lartet unearthed the partial skeletons of four adults and an infant at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter, as well as perforated shells…

Read More Read More