Tag: Prehistory

DNA from elusive human relatives the Denisovans has left a curious mark on modern people in New Guinea

DNA from elusive human relatives the Denisovans has left a curious mark on modern people in New Guinea

by | Oct 7, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
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 it we got from other, extinct human groups.

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World’s earliest evidence of a successful surgical amputation found in 31,000-year-old grave in Borneo

World’s earliest evidence of a successful surgical amputation found in 31,000-year-old grave in Borneo

by | Jul 30, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Modern medicine seems to advance with time thanks to research breakthroughs. Hence it’s often thought that further into the past, only simpler medical practices existed. The medical expertise of foraging communities such as hunter-gatherers has been thought to be rudimentary and unchanging. It’s been argued that shifts towards settled agricultural life within the past 10,000 years were what created new health problems and advances in medical culture; this includes surgery.

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Neanderthals were no brutes – research reveals they may have been precision workers

Neanderthals were no brutes – research reveals they may have been precision workers

by | Apr 29, 2024 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Neanderthals were until quite recently often seen as simple-minded savages – powerful hunters with a short attention span. But in the last few years, scientists have realised that they were a lot more refined than previously thought – capable of caring for the vulnerable, burying their dead and even adorning themselves with feathers and beads.

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Ancient DNA reveals the earliest evidence of the last massive human migration to Western Europe

Ancient DNA reveals the earliest evidence of the last massive human migration to Western Europe

by | Apr 10, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes

Nomadic animal-herders from the Eurasian steppe mingled with Copper Age farmers in southeastern Europe centuries earlier than previously thought. In a new study published in Nature, we used ancient DNA to gain new insights into the spread of culture, technologies and ancestry at a crucial juncture in European history.

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Forget ‘Man the Hunter’ – physiological and archaeological evidence rewrites assumptions about a gendered division of labor in prehistoric times

Forget ‘Man the Hunter’ – physiological and archaeological evidence rewrites assumptions about a gendered division of labor in prehistoric times

by | Mar 27, 2024 | , | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
Prehistoric men hunted; prehistoric women gathered. At least this is the standard narrative written by and about men to the exclusion of women. The idea of “Man the Hunter” runs deep within anthropology, convincing people that hunting made us human, only men did the hunting, and therefore evolutionary forces must only have acted upon men. Such depictions are found not only in media, but in museums and introductory anthropology textbooks, too.

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An incredible journey: the first people to arrive in Australia came in large numbers, and on purpose

An incredible journey: the first people to arrive in Australia came in large numbers, and on purpose

by | Dec 27, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The size of the first population of people needed to arrive, survive, and thrive in what is now Australia is revealed in two studies published today. It took more than 1,000 people to form a viable population. But this was no accidental migration, as our work shows the first arrivals must have been planned.

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Ancient humans may have paused in Arabia for 30,000 years on their way out of Africa

Ancient humans may have paused in Arabia for 30,000 years on their way out of Africa

by | Nov 13, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Most scientists agree modern humans developed in Africa, more than 200,000 years ago, and that a great human diaspora across much of the rest of the world occurred between perhaps 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. In new research published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, we have uncovered dozens of distinctive historical changes in the human genome to reveal a new chapter in this story.

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Have humans always gone to war?

Have humans always gone to war?

by | Sep 5, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The question of whether warfare is encoded in our genes, or appeared as a result of civilisation, has long fascinated anyone trying to get to grips with human society. Might a willingness to fight neighbouring groups have provided our ancestors with an evolutionary advantage? With conflicts raging across the globe, these questions have implications for understanding our past, and perhaps our future as well.

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Fresh clues to the life and times of the Denisovans, a little-known ancient group of humans

Fresh clues to the life and times of the Denisovans, a little-known ancient group of humans

by | Aug 14, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
We know that some modern human genomes contain fragments of DNA from an ancient population of humans called Denisovans, the remains of which have been found at only one site, a cave in what is now Siberia.

Two papers published in Nature today give us a firmer understanding of when these little-known archaic humans (hominins) lived.

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A cave site in Kenya’s forests reveals the oldest human burial in Africa

A cave site in Kenya’s forests reveals the oldest human burial in Africa

by | Apr 27, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
Africa is often referred to as the cradle of humankind – the birthplace of our species, Homo sapiens. There is evidence of the development of early symbolic behaviours such as pigment use and perforated shell ornaments in Africa, but so far most of what we know about the development of complex social behaviours such as burial and mourning has come from Eurasia.

However, the remains of a child buried almost 80,000 years ago under an overhang at Panga ya Saidi cave in Kenya is providing important new details.

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Why the Neanderthals may have been more sophisticated hunters than we thought – new study

Why the Neanderthals may have been more sophisticated hunters than we thought – new study

by | Feb 6, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
When Neanderthals are depicted in artistic reconstructions, they often have a spear in hand. Most archaeologists believe that Neanderthals were adept hunters, and we have found spears at Neanderthal sites. But our knowledge of how they used spears and how that compares with our own species has been inconclusive. Rather than using the spears for hunting, Neanderthals could have used them for self-defence or scavenging.

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