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Categories: Anthropology: General, Geoscience: Landslides

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Las Vegas, with its rapid urbanization and desert landscape, is highly vulnerable to flooding. For this reason, flood managers have built an extensive system of drainage ditches and detention basins to protect the public. Now, a new study shows how intentional engineering and urban development are interacting with climate change to alter the timing and intensity of flood risk.

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A new modelling study shows that the Seychelles and other islands in the western Indian Ocean are not responsible for most of the plastic waste that accumulates on their beaches. Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka were found to be the main sources of land-based plastic debris. The Seychelles also accumulate significant amounts of plastic debris of marine origin from fisheries and shipping lanes. • The results highlight the urgent need for a legally-binding Global Plastics Treaty and greater enforcement of regional policies to reduce plastic waste.

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While humans have been evolving for millions of years, the past 12,000 years have been among the most dynamic and impactful for the way we live today, according to an anthropologist.

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An international team of researchers achieves completely new insights into Bronze Age marriage rules and family structures in Greece. Analyses of ancient genomes show that the choice of marriage partners was determined by one's own kinship.

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The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the  people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Now, researchers describe genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old that help to fill the gap and show geneflow from people moving in the opposite direction from North America to North Asia.

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The analysis of ancient DNA allows scientists to trace human evolution and make important discoveries about modern populations. The data revealed by ancient DNA sampling can be valuable, but the human remains that carry this ancient DNA are often those of the ancestors of modern Indigenous groups, and some communities have expressed concerns about the ethics of sampling by outside parties. A group of scientists make the case for involvement of descendant communities in all aspects of the research process.

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Smallpox was once one of humanity's most devastating diseases, but its origin is shrouded in mystery. For years, scientific estimates of when the smallpox virus first emerged have been at odds with historical records. Now, a new study reveals that the virus dates back 2,000 years further than scientists have previously shown, verifying historical sources and confirming for the first time that the disease has plagued human societies since ancient times.

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Using a new method based upon comparing DNA mutation rates between parents and offspring, evolutionary biologists have revealed the average age of mothers versus fathers over the past 250,000 years, including the discovery that the age gap is shrinking, with women's average age at conception increasing from 23.2 years to 26.4 years, on average, in the past 5,000 years.

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A new study based on 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes analysed together with the genomic data of 16,638 present day Scandinavians resolve the complex relations between geography, ancestry, and gene flow in Scandinavia -- encompassing the Roman Age, the Viking Age and later periods. A surprising increase of variation during the Viking period indicates that gene flow into Scandinavia was especially intense during this period.

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A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum). The findings indicate that the growth of the ice sheets -- and the resulting drop in sea level -- occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested.

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Archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons.

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Analysis of more than 1,200 vessels from hunter-gatherer sites has shown that pottery-making techniques spread vast distances over a short period of time through social traditions being passed on.

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Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.

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Human bipedalism -- walking upright on two legs -- may have evolved in trees, and not on the ground as previously thought, according to a new study.

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Analysis of teeth of extinct lemurs has revealed fascinating clues to the evolution of humans, a new study has found.

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Modern Papuans' immune system likely evolved with a little help from the Denisovans, a mysterious human ancestor who interbred with ancient humans, according to a new study.

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Agriculture is driving rapid evolutionary change, not just on farms but also in wild species in surrounding landscapes, new research has found.

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Devastating megafires are becoming more common, in part, because the planet is warming. But a new study suggests bringing 'good fire' back to the U.S. and other wildfire fire-prone areas, as Native Americans once did, could potentially blunt the role of climate in triggering today's wildfires.

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For over a century, one of the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Spain has been long considered a Neanderthal. However, new analysis from an international research team dismantles this century-long interpretation, demonstrating that this fossil is not a Neanderthal; rather, it may actually represent the earliest presence of Homo sapiens ever documented in Europe.

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Supporters of the large-scale Mississippi River sediment diversions currently being planned by the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority got a boost to their case recently when scientists published an analysis of two existing freshwater diversions on the state's coastline, one of which shows a significant amount of land having formed over the past 17 years.