Anthropology

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anthropology

Mysterious Migrations

Controversial new studies report that modern humans from Africa launched cultural advances in Europe at least 36,000 years ago and reached what's now western Russia more than 40,000 years ago.

Anthropology

Ancient Slow Growth: Fossil teeth show roots of human development

An extended period of childhood evolved in people at least 160,000 years ago.

Anthropology

Tools for Prey: Female chimps move to fore in hunting

For the first time, researchers have observed wild chimpanzees making and using tools to hunt other animals, a practice adopted mainly by adult females and youngsters.

Anthropology

New age for ancient Americans

New radiocarbon dates indicate that the Clovis people, long considered the first well-documented settlers of the New World, inhabited North America considerably later and for a much shorter time than previously thought.

Anthropology

Chimpanzee Stone Age: Finds in Africa rock prehistory of tools

Researchers have uncovered evidence of a chimpanzee stone age that started at least 4,300 years ago in West Africa.

Anthropology

Neandertals’ tough Stone Age lives

Neandertals that 43,000 years ago inhabited what's now northern Spain faced periodic food shortages and possibly resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Anthropology

South African find gets younger

The partial skeleton of a human ancestor previously found in South Africa dates to about 2.2 million years ago, roughly 1 million years younger than the original estimates.

Anthropology

Stone Age Role Revolution: Modern humans may have divided labor to conquer

A new analysis of Stone Age sites indicates that a division of labor first emerged in modern-human groups living in the African tropics around 40,000 years ago, providing our ancestors with a social advantage over Neandertals.