Anthropology

  1. Anthropology

    Sail Away: Tools reveal extent of ancient Polynesian trips

    Rock from Hawaii was fashioned into a stone tool found in Polynesian islands more than 4,000 kilometers to the south, indicating that canoeists made the sea journey around 1,000 years ago.

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  2. Anthropology

    Walking Small: Humanlike legs took Homo out of Africa

    Newly discovered fossils, 1.77 million years old, show that the earliest known human ancestors to leave Africa for Asia possessed humanlike legs, feet, and spines, but strikingly small brains and primitive arms.

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  3. Anthropology

    Advantage: Starch

    An enhanced ability to digest starch may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over their ape relatives.

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  4. Anthropology

    Men’s fertile role in evolving long lives

    The ability of men 55 and older to father children may have had evolutionary effects that caused both sexes to develop longer lifespans.

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  5. Anthropology

    Red-Ape Stroll

    Wild orangutans regularly walk upright through the trees, raising the controversial possibility that the two-legged stance is not unique to hominids.

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  6. Anthropology

    Ape Aid: Chimps share altruistic capacity with people

    Chimpanzees, as well as 18-month-old children, will assist strangers even when getting no personal reward, suggesting that human altruism has deep evolutionary roots.

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  7. Anthropology

    Chicken of the Sea: Poultry may have reached Americas via Polynesia

    Polynesians may have traveled back and forth to South America more than 600 years ago, introducing chickens to the Americas in the process.

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  8. Anthropology

    When female chimps become baby killers

    Although long thought to be rare, instances in which female chimps band together to kill other females' infants occur fairly regularly under certain circumstances.

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  9. Anthropology

    Kin play limited role in chimp cooperation

    Male chimps collaborate in a variety of ways and, like people, often find partners outside of their immediate families for cooperative ventures.

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  10. Anthropology

    Children of Prehistory

    Accumulating evidence suggests that children and teenagers produced much prehistoric cave art and perhaps left behind many fledgling attempts at stone-tool making as well.

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  11. Anthropology

    Disinherited Ancestor: Lucy’s kind may occupy evolutionary side branch

    A controversial analysis of a recently discovered jaw from a 3-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis puts Lucy's species on an evolutionary side branch that eventually died out.

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  12. Anthropology

    Asian Trek: Fossil puts ancient humans in Far East

    A 40,000-year-old partial human skeleton from a Chinese cave intensifies a debate over whether Stone Age people dispersing from Africa interbred with humanlike species that they encountered.

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