Anthropology
- Anthropology
Inca cemetery holds brutal glimpses of Spanish violence
Bones from a 500-year-old cemetery have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca death at Spaniards’ hands.
- Anthropology
Ancient footprints yield oldest signs of upright gait
Human ancestors may have been walking with an efficient, extended-leg technique by 3.6 million years ago.
- Anthropology
Farming’s rise cultivated fair deals
A cross-cultural study suggests that the spread of farming unleashed a revolution in concepts of fairness and punishment.
- Anthropology
Ancient DNA points to additional New World migration
Scientists have extracted a nearly complete genome from the hairs of a 4,000-year-old man, suggesting a new scenario for Asian migrations into the New World.
- Anthropology
‘Modern’ humans get an ancient, nonhuman twist
Two new reports suggest that hominids other than Homo sapiens made complex stone tools and fancy necklaces.
- Anthropology
Stone Age campers set up separate activity areas
Hominids displayed advanced organizational thinking almost 800,000 years ago
- Anthropology
Ancient Maya king shows his foreign roots
Copán’s first king may have been part of a colonial expansion by another, distant Maya kingdom.
- Anthropology
Contested signs of mass cannibalism
A new study yields controversial evidence of mass cannibalism in central Europe 7,000 years ago.
- Anthropology
For Hadza, build and brawn don’t matter for choosing mates
Study of hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania shows that, across human groups, mating criteria vary.
- Anthropology
Macaws bred far from tropics during pre-Columbian times
Colorful birds possibly raised for ceremonial and trade purposes long before Spanish arrival
- Anthropology
Droughts gave early humans survival skills for later travels
Droughts were actually good times for early humans, helping to develop skills for survival in other parts of the world, Lisa Grossman reports in a blog from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing's New Horizons in Science meeting.
- Anthropology
Pygmies’ short stature linked to high death rates
Island-dwelling pygmies provide contested evidence that body size shrinks as mortality rates climb.
