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Categories: Anthropology: General, Computer Science: Encryption

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Scientists have described a new species of bat based on the oldest bat skeletons ever recovered. The study on the extinct bat, which lived in Wyoming about 52 million years ago, supports the idea that bats diversified rapidly on multiple continents during this time.

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The question of how prehistoric populations obtained sustainable food in the barren heights of the Tibetan Plateau has long attracted academic and popular interest. A new study highlights the critical role of dairy pastoralism in opening the plateau up to widespread, long-term human habitation.

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A team of researchers compared the genomes of woolly mammoths with modern day elephants to find out what made woolly mammoths unique, both as individuals and as a species. The investigators report that many of the woolly mammoth's trademark features -- including their woolly coats and large fat deposits -- were already genetically encoded in the earliest woolly mammoths, but these and other traits became more defined over the species' 700,000+ year existence. They also identified a gene with several mutations that may have been responsible for the woolly mammoth's miniscule ears.

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Human culture and language may be the result of 'self-domestication': an evolutionary process that leads to less aggressive and more prosocial individuals. A research team argues that elephants -- like humans and bonobos -- may also be self-domesticated. Elephants show many traits associated with self-domestication, such as prosocial behavior, playfulness and complex communication skills. This makes elephants an interesting new animal model for the evolution of prosociality.

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With a growing interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems worldwide, researchers have created software that is able to verify how much information an AI farmed from an organization's digital database.

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When the human remains found on board the Swedish warship Vasa (1628) were investigated, it was determined that the skeleton designated G was a man. New research now shows that the skeleton is actually from a woman. About thirty people died when Vasa sank on its maiden voyage in Stockholm, 1628. We cannot know who most of them were, only one person is named in the written sources. When the ship was raised in 1961 it was the scene of a comprehensive archaeological excavation, in which numerous human bones were found on board and examined.

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For the first time, researchers have pinpointed a date when elite Mongol Empire people were drinking yak milk, according to a new study.

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Researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti -- and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti -- as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.

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Indigenous peoples as far north as Wyoming and Idaho may have begun to care for horses by the first half of the 17th Century, according to a new study by researchers from 15 countries and multiple Native American groups.

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The largest-yet analysis of ancient DNA in Africa, which includes the first ancient DNA recovered from members of the medieval Swahili civilization, has now broken the stalemate about the extent to which people from outside Africa contributed to Swahili culture and ancestry.

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Traces of ancient empires that stretched across Africa remain in the DNA of people living on the continent, reveals a new genetics study.

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Scientists often look to the past for clues about how Earth's landscapes might shift under a changing climate, and for insight into the migrations of human communities through time. A new study offers both by providing, for the first time, a reconstruction of prehistoric temperatures for some of the first known North American settlements.

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Cultivation and growth of grapevines have strongly influenced European civilizations, but where the grapevine comes from and how it has spread across the globe has been highly disputed so far. In an extensive genome project, researchers have determined its origin and evolution from the wild vine to today's cultivar by analyzing thousands of vine genomes collected along the Silk Road from China to Western Europe.

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The coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. Recent excavations confirm the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean.

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Geneticists have written new chapters in the reconstruction of pre-colonial Americas history after using DNA from the indigenous Ashaninka people from Amazonian Peru. They have discovered previously unexpected levels of genetic variation in this group and uncovered a strong hint that these people were involved in a South-to-North migration that led to the transition from an archaic to ceramic culture in the Caribbean islands.

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Peru's first great empire, the Wari, stretched for more than a thousand miles over the Andes Mountains and along the coast from 600-1000 CE. The pottery they left behind gives archaeologists clues as to how the empire functioned. In a new study researchers showed that rather than using 'official' Wari pottery imported from the capital, potters across the empire were creating their own ceramics, decorated to emulate the traditional Wari style. To figure it out, the scientists analyzed the pottery's chemical make-up, with help from laser beams.

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Researchers have discovered artefacts produced by old world monkeys in Thailand that resemble stone tools, which historically have been identified as intentionally made by early hominins. Until now, sharp-edged stone tools were thought to represent the onset of intentional stone tool production, one of the defining and unique characteristics of hominin evolution. This new study challenges long held beliefs about the origins of intentional tool production in our own lineage.

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Hunter-gatherers can help us understand the conditions that children may be psychologically adapted to because we lived as hunter-gatherers for 95% of our evolutionary history. And paying greater attention to hunter-gatherer childhoods may help economically developed countries improve education and wellbeing.

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Comparing the colors on pieces of ancient Peruvian pottery revealed that potters across the Wari empire all used the same rich black pigment: a sign of the empire's influence.

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Researchers have achieved a breakthrough to enable 'perfectly secure' hidden communications for the first time. The method uses new advances in information theory methods to conceal one piece of content inside another in a way that cannot be detected. This may have strong implications for information security, besides further applications in data compression and storage.