Feature Channels: Archaeology and Anthropology

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Professors recognized for distinguished achievements in original research

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An international research team's analysis of DNA sequences suggests the Native American founding population that migrated from Siberia consisted of approximately 250 people.

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Silvisaurus condrayi has made a return to the KU Natural History Museum in a new, more complete form, accompanied by an interactive display that includes stunning depictions of the dinosaur and its environs.

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A new study of guenon monkeys in Gombe National Park is the first to provide genetic evidence of ongoing mating between two distinct species. These monkeys have successfully been producing hybrid offspring for hundreds maybe even thousands of years. Prior studies have suggested that their different physical characteristics keeps them from interbreeding. So, if their faces don’t match, they shouldn’t be mating, right? Wrong, according to this latest evidence.

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A close examination of 3.6 million year old hominin footprints discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania suggests our ancestors evolved the hallmark trait of extended leg, human-like bipedalism substantially earlier than previously thought.

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Scientists have long wondered why the physical traits of Neanderthals, the ancestors of modern humans, differ greatly from today’s man. In particular, researchers have deliberated the factors that necessitated early man’s forward-projecting face and oversized nose. As published in the April 4 edition of The Royal Proceedings Society B, an international research team led by a professor at the University of New England in Australia, with the aid of an anatomy and fluid dynamics expert at NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University (NYITCOM at A-State), may have the answer.

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An archeological dig in Italy reveals that prehistoric humans made it through a major natural disaster by cooperating with each other – and that's a lesson for our future.

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DHS S&T recently used advanced DNA sequencing to determine the identity of a 4,000-year-old mummy head found in 1915, when American explorers entered an ancient tomb cut in the parched limestone cliffs of the eastern bank of the Nile River, 155 miles south of Cairo.

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Genetic archaeologist David Reich discusses how DNA retrieved from inch-long bone in the skull has accelerated our understanding of ancient humans.

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A Missouri University of Science and Technology historian is telling the seemingly forgotten story of America’s first female Egyptologist.

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An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Asier Gomez-Olivencia of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam, has provided new insights on one of the most famous Neandertal skeletons, discovered over 100 years ago: La Ferrassie 1.

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New study at the University of Haifa reveals the first archeological evidence of the role played by pigeons in Byzantine agriculture in the Negev: improving and fertilizing soil in vineyards and orchards

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Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have cracked the evolutionary mystery of why chimpanzees and gorillas walk on their knuckles: The short explanation is that these African apes climb trees and they are mobile on the ground.

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Humans not only survived a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago, they flourished during the resulting climate change that occurred, a new study by UNLV geoscientist Eugene Smith and colleagues found.

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When the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History reopens in its new home about a year from now, visitors to the evolution gallery will come face to face with a life-size, hyperrealistic sculptural reconstruction of an extinct human relative that roamed southern Africa 2 million years ago.

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Morrill Professor Thomas Leslie, the Pickard Chilton Professor in Architecture at Iowa State University and internationally renowned expert on architectural history and practice, has been named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

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Scientists have found the first major evidence that Neanderthals made cave paintings, indicating they may have had an artistic sense similar to our own.

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The idea of binding and reshaping a baby’s head may make today’s parents cringe, but for families in the Andes between 1100-1450, cranial modification was all the rage.

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Fueled by advances in analyzing DNA from the bones of ancient humans, scientists have dramatically expanded the number of samples studied – revealing vast and surprising migrations and genetic mixing of populations in our prehistoric past.

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Modern humans have brains that are more than three times larger than our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Scientists don't agree on when and how this dramatic increase took place, but new analysis of 94 hominin fossils shows that average brain size increased gradually and consistently over the past three million years.

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For nearly 20 years at Geneseo, associate professor of anthropology Barbara Welker has kept her phone nearby; she has to be ready to spring into action.

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A virus may have influenced the evolution of multicellular life. University of Iowa biologist Albert Erives found a virus family that has a similar set of genes as eukaryotes, placing giant viruses in the evolutionary journey of most plants, insects, and animals.

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Technology that allows for digital deforestation has uncovered thousands of new Maya structures previously undetected beneath smothering vegetation. Ithaca College anthropologist Thomas Garrison is featured in a new National Geographic documentary.

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University of Washington researchers reconstructed prehistoric projectiles and points from ancient sites in what is now Alaska and studied the qualities that would make for a lethal hunting weapon. By examining and testing different projectile points, the team has come to a new understanding about the technological choices people made in ancient times.

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A large international research team, led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University and including Rolf Quam from Binghamton University, State University of New York, has discovered the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa. The finding suggests that modern humans left the continent at least 50,000 years earlier than previously thought.

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Could baboons and other mammals worldwide soon need pedometers? Not likely, but a new study to be published in Science reveals that on average, mammals move distances two to three times shorter in human-modified landscapes than they do in the wild.

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Texas A&M conservators have revealed new details about two cannons used during the Texas Revolution’s 1836 Battle of the Alamo. The Rio Grande Cannon and Spanish Cannon returned home to the Alamo in San Antonio on Monday after almost four months at Texas A&M University’s Conservation Laboratory on the RELLIS Education and Research Campus in Bryan.

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About 13 million years ago, a distant ancestor of modern apes and humans suffered an untimely death on the arid landscape of northern Kenya. Last year, a Rutgers scientist helped bring its tiny skull to light, filling in a huge gap in the evolutionary record. And on Saturday, members of the public are invited to come face-to-skull with that ancestor, known as “Alesi,” at the Rutgers Geology Museum’s 50th annual Open House event. The museum stands on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers University–New Brunswick. Admission is free.

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Tropical forests span a huge area, harbor a wide diversity of species, and are important to water and nutrient cycling. Researchers used high-tech tools to more precisely view where these cleared sites were and the lasting impact they had on the rainforest in the South American Amazon Basin.

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Scientists have sequenced the complete genome of an ancient strain of Hepatitis B, shedding new light on a pathogen that today kills nearly one million people every year. The findings, based on data extracted from the mummified remains of a small child buried in Naples, Italy, confirm the idea that HBV has existed in humans for centuries.

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 Using satellite imaging and drone reconnaissance, archaeologists from Washington University in St. Louis have discovered an ancient irrigation system that allowed a farming community in arid northwestern China to raise livestock and cultivate crops in one of the world’s driest desert climates.Lost for centuries in the barren foothills of China’s Tian Shan Mountains, the ancient farming community remains hidden in plain sight — appearing little more than an odd scattering of round boulders and sandy ruts when viewed from the ground.

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What is a pagan amulet against indigestion doing in a Byzantine church at Hippos? Did the processions of debauchery and drinking honoring the god of wine Dionysus continue during the Christian period? And did the goddess of good fortune Tyche still protect Hippos centuries after the disappearance of belief in the Greco-Roman gods? A new exhibition at the University of Haifa’s Hecht Museum summarizes 18 years of exploration in the ancient city of Hippos

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Analysis of giant stone hats found on Rapa Nui, Chile (Easter Island) provides evidence contrary to the widely held belief that the ancient civilization had a warrior culture. According to a new study conducted by a team of researchers, including a professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York, these stone hats suggest that the people of Rapa Nui were part of a supportive and inclusive community.

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Researchers at UCLA and the University of Wisconsin–Madison have confirmed that microscopic fossils discovered in a nearly 3.5 billion-year-old piece of rock in Western Australia are the oldest fossils ever found and indeed the earliest direct evidence of life on Earth.

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The Anthropocene epoch — the proposed name for this time of significant human effect on the planet and its systems — represents a new context in which to study literature. A new book of essays co-edited by a University of Washington English professor argues that literary studies, in turn, also can help us better understand the Anthropocene.

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Researchers at the University of Notre Dame studying violence found the larger the population of a society, the smaller its war group size, proportionally — which means fewer casualties in a conflict.

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Weizmann Institute and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen identify new dates for a 15,000-year-old site in Jordan, challenging some prevailing assumptions about the beginnings of permanent settlements

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Who is she, this little mummy girl? Northwestern University scientists and students are working to unravel some of her mysteries, including how her body was prepared 1,900 years ago in Egypt, what items she may have been buried with, the quality of her bones and what material is present in her brain cavity. As part of a comprehensive scientific investigation, the mummy traveled from Evanston to Argonne National Laboratory on Nov. 27 for an all-day X-ray scattering experiment. It was the first study of its kind performed on a human mummy.

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First domesticated 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, wheat and barley took vastly different routes to China, with barley switching from a winter to both a winter and summer crop during a thousand-year detour along the southern Tibetan Plateau, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis,

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Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

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An historian from Queen’s is launching a new biography on John Owen, advisor to Oliver Cromwell and one of the most important religious leaders in the Puritan Revolution.

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The two teeth are from small, rat-like creatures that lived 145 million years ago in the shadow of the dinosaurs. They are the earliest undisputed fossils of mammals belonging to the line that led to human beings.

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Human teeth hold vital information about Vitamin D deficiency, a serious but often hidden condition that can now be identified by a simple dental X-ray, McMaster anthropologists Lori D’Ortenzio and Megan Brickley have found.

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Mark Golitko, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, worked with colleagues from the Field Museum in Chicago and institutes in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea to study the Aitape skull and the area it was found in.

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An older Neandertal from about 50,000 years ago, who had suffered multiple injuries and other degenerations, became deaf and must have relied on the help of others to avoid prey and survive well into his 40s, indicates a new analysis published Oct. 20 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

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CIPRES, for CyberInfrastructure for Phylogenetic RESearch, is a web-based portal or “gateway” launched at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego that allows researchers to explore evolutionary connections among species using supercomputers provided by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) XSEDE (eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) project.

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In the Middle Ages, did contracting leprosy necessarily increase a person's chances of dying? Yes, says a new paper. But it's complicated.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and collaborators discovered a new kind of glycan (sugar chain) that survives even in a 4 million-year-old animal fossil from Kenya, under conditions where ancient DNA does not. While ancient hominin fossils are not yet available for glycan analysis, this proof-of-concept study, published September 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sets the stage for unprecedented explorations of human origins and diet.

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A team of researchers including Marina Alberti of the University of Washington has devised a new classification scheme for the evolutionary stages of worlds based on "non-equilibrium thermodynamics" — a planet's energy flow being out of synch, as the presence of life could cause.