Early Humans News

July 14, 2024

Top Headlines

'A History of Contact': Geneticists Are Rewriting the Narrative of Neanderthals and Other Ancient Humans

July 11, 2024 — Using genomes from 2,000 living humans as well as three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, an international team mapped the gene flow between the hominin groups over the past quarter-million ...

Insight Into One of Life's Earliest Ancestors Revealed in New Study

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have shed light on Earth's earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already ...

Ancient Dingo DNA Shows Modern Dingoes Share Little Ancestry With Modern Dog Breeds

July 8, 2024 — A study of ancient dingo DNA revealed that the distribution of modern dingoes across Australia, including those on K'gari (formerly Fraser Island), pre-dates European colonization and interventions ...

Extinct Humans Survived on the Tibetan Plateau for 160,000 Years

July 3, 2024 — Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:13pm EDT

First Case of Down Syndrome in Neanderthals Documented in New Study

June 26, 2024 — A new study documents the first case of Down syndrome in Neanderthals and reveals that they were capable of providing altruistic care and support for a vulnerable member of their social ...

Origins of Cumulative Culture in Human Evolution

June 17, 2024 — Cumulative culture -- the accumulation of technological modifications and improvements over generations -- allowed humans to adapt to a diversity of environments and challenges. But, it is unclear ...

Early Homo Sapiens Facilitated the Establishment of the Bonelli's Eagle in the Mediterranean 50,000 Years Ago

June 14, 2024 — Scientists have unraveled the ancestral history of one of the most iconic birds of prey in the current Iberian fauna: the Bonelli's eagle (Aquila ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown ...

75,000-Year-Old Female Neanderthal from Cave Where Species Buried Their Dead

May 1, 2024 — A new documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of ...

How Evolving Landscapes Impacted First Peoples' Early Migration Patterns Into Australia

Apr. 30, 2024 — Scientists have applied a dynamic model of the landscape to patterns of human migration into Sahul, the combined continent of Australia, Tasmania and ...

Revised Dating of the Liujiang Skeleton Renews Understanding of Human Occupation of China

May 1, 2024 — Researchers have provided new age estimates and revised provenance information for the Liujiang human fossils, shedding light on the presence of Homo ...

More Plants on the Menu of Ancient Hunter-Gatherers

Apr. 29, 2024 — It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from ...

Genetic Variant Identified That Shaped the Human Skull Base

Apr. 17, 2024 — Researchers have identified a variant in the gene TBX1 as key in the development of the unique morphology at the base of the skull. TBX1 is present at higher levels in humans than in closely related ...

Interspecies Competition Led to Even More Forms of Ancient Human -- Defying Evolutionary Trends in Vertebrates

Apr. 17, 2024 — Competition between species played a major role in the rise and fall of hominins -- and produced a 'bizarre' evolutionary pattern for the Homo ...

Earlier Headlines

Evolution's Recipe Book: How 'Copy Paste' Errors Cooked Up the Animal Kingdom

Apr. 15, 2024 — A series of whole genome and gene duplication events that go back hundreds of millions of years have laid the foundations for tissue-specific gene expression, according to a new study. The ...

When Did the Chicken Cross the Road? New Evidence from Central Asia

Apr. 2, 2024 — An international team of scholars present the earliest clear archaeological and biomolecular evidence for the raising of chickens for egg production, based on material from 12 archaeological sites ...

DNA Study IDs Descendants of George Washington from Unmarked Remains, Findings to Aid Service Member IDs Going Back to World War II

Mar. 28, 2024 — New DNA sequencing technologies have identified the historical remains of George Washington's grandnephews, Samuel Walter Washington and George Steptoe Washington Jr., and their mother, Lucy ...

Persian Plateau Unveiled as Crucial Hub for Early Human Migration out of Africa

Mar. 25, 2024 — A new study combining genetic, palaeoecological, and archaeological evidence has unveiled the Persian Plateau as a pivotal geographic location serving as a hub for Homo sapiens during the early ...

An Evolutionary Mystery 125 Million Years in the Making

Mar. 4, 2024 — Plant biologists have uncovered an evolutionary mystery over 100 million years in the making. It turns out that sometime during the last 125 million years, tomatoes and Arabidopsis thaliana plants ...

Scientists ID Burned Bodies Using Technique Used for Extracting DNA from Woolly Mammoths, Neanderthals

Feb. 29, 2024 — A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to ...

Did Neanderthals Use Glue? Researchers Find Evidence That Sticks

Feb. 21, 2024 — Neanderthals created stone tools held together by a multi-component adhesive, a team of scientists has discovered. Its findings, which are the earliest evidence of a complex adhesive in Europe, ...

Vittrup Man Crossed Over from Forager to Farmer Before Being Sacrificed in Denmark

Feb. 14, 2024 — Vittrup Man was born along the Scandinavian coast before moving to Denmark, where he was later sacrificed, according to a new ...

Some Pre-Roman Humans Were Buried With Dogs, Horses and Other Animals

Feb. 14, 2024 — Some people from an ancient community in what is now northern Italy were interred with animals and animal parts from species such as dogs, horses and pigs. The reasons remain mysterious, but might ...

Great Apes Playfully Tease Each Other

Feb. 13, 2024 — Babies playfully tease others as young as eight months of age. Since language is not required for this behavior, similar kinds of playful teasing might be present in non-human animals. Now cognitive ...

Innovation in Stone Tool Technology Involved Multiple Stages at the Time of Modern Human Dispersals

Feb. 7, 2024 — A new study illuminates the cultural evolution that took place approximately 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the dispersals of Homo sapiens across Eurasia. The insights gleaned from their ...

Thailand's Iron Age Log Coffin Culture

Feb. 6, 2024 — A mortuary practice known as Log Coffin culture characterizes the Iron Age of highland Pang Mapha in northwestern Thailand. Between 2,300 and 1,000 years ago, individuals were buried in large wooden ...

Neanderthals and Humans Lived Side by Side in Northern Europe 45,000 Years Ago

Jan. 31, 2024 — Archaeologists have debated whether Neanderthals or modern humans made stone tools that are found at sites across northern Europe and date from about 40,000 years ago. A new excavation at one site in ...

How Did Humans Learn to Walk? New Evolutionary Study Offers an Earful

Jan. 29, 2024 — A new study, which centers on evidence from skulls of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape, Lufengpithecus, offers important clues about the origins of bipedal locomotion courtesy of a novel method: ...

AI Provides More Accurate Analysis of Prehistoric and Modern Animals, Painting Picture of Ancient World

Dec. 14, 2023 — A new study of the remains of prehistoric and modern African antelopes found that AI technology accurately identified animals more than 90% of the time compared to humans, who had much lower accuracy ...

Paleolithic Humans May Have Understood the Properties of Rocks for Making Stone Tools

Dec. 1, 2023 — Research suggests that Paleolithic humans in the Middle East selected flint for their cutting tools based on differences in the mechanical properties of the rock. They seem to have purposefully ...

A Mixed Origin Made Maize Successful

Nov. 30, 2023 — Maize is one of the world's most widely grown crops. It is used for both human and animal foods and holds great cultural significance, especially for indigenous peoples in the Americas. Yet ...

Dishing the Dirt on Human Evolution: Why Scientific Techniques Matter in Archaeology

Nov. 30, 2023 — Scientists should seek answers hidden in the dirt using proven and state-of-the-art archaeological science techniques to support new discoveries about human evolution following recent controversies ...

Unknown Animals Were Leaving Bird-Like Footprints in Late Triassic Southern Africa

Nov. 29, 2023 — Ancient animals were walking around on bird-like feet over 210 million years ago, according to a new ...

Neanderthals Were the World's First Artists, Research Reveals

Nov. 21, 2023 — Recent research has shown that engravings in a cave in La Roche-Cotard (France), which has been sealed for thousands of years, were actually made by Neanderthals. The findings reveal that the ...