Out of Africa and into an archaic human melting pot
University of AdelaideGenetic analysis has revealed that the ancestors of modern humans interbred with at least five different archaic human groups as they moved out of Africa and across Eurasia.
Genetic analysis has revealed that the ancestors of modern humans interbred with at least five different archaic human groups as they moved out of Africa and across Eurasia.
Crickette Sanz, associate professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2019 Ai’s Scarf Award, otherwise known as the Women-in-Primatology Award. The honor was announced in Kyoto, Japan, in advance of World Chimpanzee Day July 14, a celebration of “our closest cousin in the animal kingdom.
An analysis of a 160,000-year-old archaic human molar fossil discovered in China offers the first morphological evidence of interbreeding between archaic humans and Homo sapiens in Asia.
New analysis of the fossilized skull of an Upper Paleolithic man suggests that he died a violent death, according to a study published July 3, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by an international team from Greece, Romania and Germany led by the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany
For nine years running, Carolina professor Jodi Magness has led a team of research specialists and students to the ancient village of Huqoq in Israel's Lower Galilee
A surprise discovery in a Crimean cave suggests that early Europeans lived alongside some of the largest ever known birds, according to new research published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
E. Jerry Vardaman was the first to lead an excavation of the ancient site of Machaerus—the place in modern-day Jordan near the Dead Sea where John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded by Herod Antipas. The excavation was in 1968 when Vardaman was affiliated with Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, before joining Mississippi State in 1972 as a professor of religion and the Cobb Institute’s first director. Some of the palace’s treasures uncovered by the archaeologist only now are being rediscovered with the help of passionate scholars and the late professor’s family.
The Woodstock Music Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer, and new archaeological research from Binghamton University, State University of New York shows that the iconic event took on a life of its own.
Human screams convey a level of individual identity that may help explain their evolutionary origins, finds a study by scientists at Emory University.
Strange ring-shaped objects in a Bronze Age hillfort site represent a unique form of cereal-based product, according to a study published June 5, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE
Imagine for just a moment that your kettle could speak? What would it say? How would it feel? More importantly, what on earth would you ask it?
New research from Dr. John Kantner, a University of North Florida professor specializing in anthropological archaeology, suggests that pottery making wasn’t a primarily female activity in ancient Puebloan society, as had long been assumed based on historical evidence that women produced pottery for each household.
A new archaeological site discovered by an international team of researchers working in Ethiopia shows the origin of stone tool production dates back more than 2.58 million years. Previously, the oldest evidence for systematic stone tool production and use was 2.58 to 2.55 million years ago.
New research published today in the journal Antiquity reveals that ancient faeces from the prehistoric village of Çatalhöyük have provided
How food production entered sub-Saharan Africa some 5,000 years ago and the ways in which herding and farming spread through the continent in ancient times has been a topic of archaeological debate. Now an international scientific team is unlocking some of those mysteries.
A collaborative study led by archaeologists, geneticists and museum curators is providing answers to previously unsolved questions about life in sub-Saharan Africa thousands of years ago.
What kind of beer did the Pharaohs drink? In ancient times, beer was an important ingredient in people's daily diet. Great powers were attributed to beer in the ancient world
Anthropologists discovered a tool made out of high-quality translucent jadeite with an intact rosewood handle at a site where the ancient Maya processed salt in Belize.
Which came first, the pigs or the pioneers? In Barbados, that has been a historical mystery ever since the first English colonists arrived on the island in 1627 to encounter what they thought was a herd of wild European pigs.
Chimps’ ability to work out how to excavate underground food with tools may indicate how ancient hominins did likewise
The first humans who settled in Scandinavia more than 10,000 years ago left their DNA behind in ancient chewing gums
A Florida State University professor’s research suggests a theory by famed economist Thomas Piketty on present-day wealth inequality actually explains a lot about how smaller-scale societies in the prehistoric Mediterranean developed.
Micro-CT scanning of a tiny snake-like fossil discovered in Scotland has shed new light on the elusive creature,
Researchers from the University of Oxford have traced the origin of a pre-historic eruption that blanketed the Mediterranean region in ash 29,000 years ago
St. Mary’s College of Maryland President Tuajuanda C. Jordan presented the 2019 President’s Trailblazer Award on Thursday, April 18, to Julia A. King, professor of anthropology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Archaeological excavation has, historically, operated in a very hierarchical structure, according to archaeologist Allison Mickel
A team of researchers, including a University of La Verne anthropologist, has developed a new methodology for investigating anemia and other diseases after studying a Portuguese skeletal collection dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries.
Across the globe in a variety of societies, royal women found ways to advance the issues they cared about and advocate for the people important to them as detailed in a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Research.
Imagine a future technology that would provide instant access to the world's knowledge and artificial intelligence, simply by thinking about a specific topic or question. Communications, education, work, and the world as we know it would be transformed.
ASU Bioarchaeologist sworn to secrecy after bone examination reveals Casimir Pulaski might have been a woman
In the 1950s and early '60s, with the Cold War at its peak, the United States flew U2 spy planes across Europe, the Middle East, and central eastern Asia, taking images of interesting military targets. Though the missions typically connected Point A to Point B, say an air field and an important city
The reason that humans shifted away from hunting and gathering, and to agriculture -- a much more labor-intensive process -- has always been a riddle. It is only more confusing because the shift happened independently in about a dozen areas across the globe.
An ancient group of people made ritual offerings to supernatural deities near the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, about 500 years earlier than the Incas, according to an international team of researchers. The team's findings suggest that organized religion emerged much earlier in the region than previously thought.
The increase in cesarean sections is on the verge of a global epidemic. Though the World Health Organization recommends an optimal C-section rate of 10-15 percent, the United States' C-section rate is more than 30 percent.
The ~125 million-year-old Early Cretaceous fossil beds of Los Hoyas, Spain have long been known for producing thousands of petrified fish and reptiles (Fig. 1). However, one special fossil stands unique and is one of the rarest of fossils -- a nearly complete skeleton of a hatchling bird.
The work, published in Nature, confirms a dispersal of Homo sapiens from southern to eastern Africa immediately preceded the out-of-Africa migration
An international team led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Spain has conducted the largest-ever study of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal), spanning 8,000 years. Analyses suggest the Iberian Y chromosome was almost completely replaced between 4,000 and 4,500 years ago. Findings provide the first opportunity to compare ancient Iberian genomic information to historical records.
Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of the earliest large-scale celebrations in Britain – with people and animals travelling hundreds of miles for prehistoric feasting rituals.
The teeth of a new fossil monkey, unearthed in the badlands of northwest Kenya, help fill a 6-million-year void in Old World monkey evolution, according to a study by U.S. and Kenyan scientists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists are rethinking a major milestone in animal evolution, after gaining fresh insights into how life on Earth diversified millions of years ago.
Shorter intervals between primate births are associated with higher mortality rates in offspring, finds a new study of macaque monkeys. The results are consistent with previous research on human birth intervals, suggesting that this is a pattern of evolutionary origin.
A Tulane University professor’s research into the world’s largest mass sacrifice of children and llamas in northern Peru is being published in one of the world’s top scientific journals.
PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University archaeologists have discovered the oldest tattooing artifact in western North America.
The oldest distinguishing feature between humans and our ape cousins is our ability to walk on two legs – a trait known as bipedalism. Among mammals, only humans and our ancestors perform this atypical balancing act. New research led by a Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine professor of anatomy provides evidence for greater reliance on terrestrial bipedalism by a human ancestor than previously suggested in the ancient fossil record.
The largest sacrifice of its kind known from the Americas was associated with heavy rainfall and flooding
The Indigenous Peoples of British Columbia have been harvesting shellfish from specially-constructed clam gardens for at least 3500 years, according to a study released February 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE
High-tech radar and laser scans have uncovered a hidden military traverse underneath the infamous Alcatraz penitentiary, according to research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
A new study shows climate change may have contributed to the decline of Cahokia, a famed prehistoric city near present-day St. Louis. And it involves ancient human poop.
Chimpanzees have a more elaborate and diversified material culture than any other nonhuman primate.