Anthropology
- Anthropology
Ardi and her discoverers shake up hominid evolution in ‘Fossil Men’
A new book covers the big personalities, field exploits and scientific clashes behind the discovery of the hominid skeleton nicknamed Ardi.
- Anthropology
Bolivia’s Tsimane people’s average body temperature fell half a degree in 16 years
A new study echoes other research suggesting that people’s average body temperature is lower today than it used to be.
- Anthropology
Female big-game hunters may have been surprisingly common in the ancient Americas
A Peruvian burial that indicates that women speared large prey as early as 9,000 years ago sheds new light on gender roles of ancient hunter-gatherers.
- Anthropology
These human nerve cell tendrils turned to glass nearly 2,000 years ago
Part of a young man’s brain was preserved in A.D. 79 by hot ash from Mount Vesuvius’ eruption.
- Anthropology
The first Denisovan DNA outside Siberia unveils a long stint on the roof of the world
Genetic evidence puts Denisovans, humankind’s now-extinct cousins, on the Tibetan Plateau from 100,000 to at least 60,000 years ago.
- Anthropology
Mummified llamas yield new insights into Inca ritual sacrifices
Bound and decorated llamas, found at an Inca site in southern Peru, may have been buried alive as part of events in annexed territories.
- Anthropology
Homo erectus, not humans, may have invented the barbed bone point
Carved artifacts excavated from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge suggest now-extinct hominids made barbed bone points long before humans did, researchers say.
- Anthropology
How environmental changes may have helped make ancient humans more adaptable
An East African sediment core unveils ecological changes underlying a key Stone Age transition.
- Anthropology
Neandertal babies had stocky chests like their parents
Our evolutionary relatives may have inherited short, deep rib cages from their ancient ancestors.
- Archaeology
Bones from an Iron Age massacre paint a violent picture of prehistoric Europe
Bones left unburied, and in one case still wearing jewelry, after a massacre add to evidence that prehistoric Europe was a violent place.
- Anthropology
Seven footprints may be the oldest evidence of humans on the Arabian Peninsula
In what’s now desert, people and other animals stopped to drink at a lake more than 100,000 years ago, a new study suggests.
- Anthropology
A stray molar is the oldest known fossil from an ancient gibbon
A newly described tooth puts ancestors of these small-bodied apes in India roughly 13 million years ago.
