Anthropology
- Anthropology
Viking-era woman sheds light on Iceland’s earliest settlers
Viking-era woman accompanied island’s early settlers as a child from Scandinavia or Britain.
- Anthropology
Hobbits died out earlier than thought
Tiny Indonesian hominids disappeared earlier than thought, around 50,000 years ago.
- Anthropology
Ancient DNA reveals who is in Spain’s ‘pit of bones’ cave
Ancient DNA shows Neandertals lived in northern Spain 430,000 years ago; the early date raises new questions about Neandertals’ origins.
- Neuroscience
Readers respond to stress, tattoos, and the universe
Stress, tattoos, cosmic origins and more reader feedback.
- Anthropology
H. erectus cut, chewed way through evolution
A diet that included raw, sliced meat changed the face of early Homo evolution, scientists say.
- Anthropology
Rise of human civilization tied to belief in punitive gods
Beliefs in all-knowing, punitive deities may have fueled the growth of human civilizations.
- Animals
Africa’s poison arrow beetles are key in traditional hunting method
In the Kalahari of Namibia, some San people still hunt with a traditional method — arrows laced with poison taken from beetle larvae.
- Anthropology
Attack 10,000 years ago is earliest known act of warfare
Human skeletons unearthed in East Africa show signs of a roughly 10,000-year-old lethal raid.
- Humans
No fairy tale: Origins of some famous stories go back thousands of years
Pairing folktales with ancient languages shows that at least a few folktales originated thousands of years ago.
- Archaeology
Humans visited Arctic earlier than thought
Human weapon injuries on mammoth bones show humans were in the Arctic up to 15,000 years earlier than researchers thought.
- Archaeology
Ancient stone tools raise tantalizing questions over who colonized Sulawesi
Hominids reached an island not far from hobbits’ home by around 200,000 years ago.
- Anthropology
Iceman has the world’s oldest tattoos
A more than 5,000-year-old European mummy gets his tattoos confirmed as world’s oldest.
