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Categories: Anthropology: Early Humans, Anthropology: General

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A new study shows that sand dunes can serve as repositories of fire history and aid in expanding scientific understanding of fire regimes around the world.

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A new study finds that early human species adapted to mosaic landscapes and diverse food resources, which would have increased our ancestor's resilience to past shifts in climate.

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Scientists have used mitochondrial DNA to trace a female lineage from northern coastal China to the Americas. By integrating contemporary and ancient mitochondrial DNA, the team found evidence of at least two migrations: one during the last ice age, and one during the subsequent melting period. Around the same time as the second migration, another branch of the same lineage migrated to Japan, which could explain Paleolithic archeological similarities between the Americas, China, and Japan.

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Humans inherited genetic material from Neanderthals that affects the shape of our noses, finds a new study.

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Scientists have used sub-surface imaging and aerial surveys to see through floodplains in the Red Lily Lagoon area of West Arnhem Land in Australia. These ground-breaking methods showed how this important landscape in the Northern Territory was altered as sea levels rose about 8,000 years ago.

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Stone tools recovered from near the Senegalese coast extend occupation of the region back to 150 thousand years ago and are comparable to those seen across Africa at this time, but uniquely persist in the region until 10 thousand years ago.

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An international research team has for the first time successfully isolated ancient human DNA from a Paleolithic artefact: a pierced deer tooth discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. To preserve the integrity of the artefact, they developed a new, nondestructive method for isolating DNA from ancient bones and teeth. From the DNA retrieved they were able to reconstruct a precise genetic profile of the woman who used or wore the pendant, as well as of the deer from which the tooth was taken. Genetic dates obtained for the DNA from both the woman and the deer show that the pendant was made between 19,000 and 25,000 years ago. The tooth remains fully intact after analysis, providing testimony to a new era in ancient DNA research, in which it may become possible to directly identify the users of ornaments and tools produced in the deep past.

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Researchers have proposed a new evolutionary model for the origin of a kingdom of viruses called Bamfordvirae, suggesting a billion-years evolutionary arms race between two groups within this kingdom and their hosts.

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Scientists from around the globe are using the largest mammalian genomic dataset in history to determine the evolutionary history of the human genome in the context of mammalian evolutionary history. Their ultimate goal is to better identify the genetic basis for traits and diseases in people and other species.

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What the human genome is lacking compared with the genomes of other primates might have been as crucial to the development of humankind as what has been added during our evolutionary history, according to a new study led by researchers at Yale and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The new findings, published April 28 in the journal Science, fill an important gap in what is known about historical changes to the human genome.

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Even though it is important to know where these variations are located in the genome, it's also useful to know how or why these genetic variations happened in the first place.

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Global space for Asian elephant habitats has been in rapid decline since the 1700s, a new report reveals. More than 3 million square kilometers of the Asian elephant's historic habitat range has been lost in just three centuries and may underlie present-day conflicts between elephants and people.

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New research has found evidence -- locked into an ancient stalagmite from a cave in the Himalayas -- of a series of severe and lengthy droughts which may have upturned the Bronze Age Indus Civilization.

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Scientists found parallels between the neural circuitry that guides locomotion in sea slugs and in more complex animals like mammals.

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Genetic analysis links 3,000-year-old bone found in cave to modern Alaska Natives.

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An international team of researchers has used geochemical fingerprinting to reconstruct long-distance voyages between central and western Pacific Islands during the last millennium A.D.

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What shapes the structure of languages? In a new study, an international team of researchers reports that grammatical structure is highly flexible across languages, shaped by common ancestry, constraints on cognition and usage, and language contact. The study used the Grambank database, which contains data on grammatical structures in over 2400 languages.

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The diverse swimming techniques of the ancient reptiles that ruled the Mesozoic seas have been revealed.

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The Xiongnu, contemporaries of Rome and Egypt, built their nomadic empire on the Mongolian steppe 2,000 years ago, emerging as Imperial China's greatest rival and even inspiring the construction of China's Great Wall. In a new study, researchers find that the Xiongnu were a multiethnic empire, with high genetic diversity found across the empire and even within individual extended elite families. At the fringes of the empire, women held the highest positions of power, and the highest genetic diversity was found among low-status male servants, giving clues to the process of empire building that gave rise to Asia's first nomadic imperial power.

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Anthropologists have long thought that our ape ancestors evolved an upright torso in order to pick fruit in forests, but new research from the University of Michigan suggests a life in open woodlands and a diet that included leaves drove apes' upright stature.