Anthropology

Anthropology

European find gets Stone Age date

A new radiocarbon analysis indicates that a skeleton found more than a century ago in an Italian cave dates to around 26,400 to 23,200 years ago.

Anthropology

Baboons demonstrate social proficiency

Wild baboons exhibit a richer, more complex social life than scientists have often assumed, according to two new studies.

Anthropology

Baboons demonstrate social proficiency

Wild baboons exhibit a richer, more complex social life than scientists have often assumed, according to two new studies.

Anthropology

Anklebone kicks up primate debate

The discoverers of a roughly 40-million-year-old anklebone in Myanmar say that it supports the controversial theory that anthropoids, a primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans, originated in Asia.

Anthropology

Europe’s Iceman was a valley guy

The 5,200-year-old Iceman, whose mummified body was found 12 years ago in the Alps between Italy and Austria, spent his life in the valleys just south of where his body was found, according to chemical analyses of his remains.

Anthropology

Stone Age Code Red: Scarlet symbols emerge in Israeli cave

Lumps of red ocher excavated near human graves in an Israeli cave indicate that symbolic thinking occurred at least 90,000 years ago, much earlier than archaeologists have traditionally assumed.

Anthropology

Erectus Ahoy

A researcher who explores the nautical abilities of Stone Age people by building rafts and having crews row them across stretches of ocean contends that language and other cognitive advances emerged 900,000 years ago with Homo erectus, not considerably later among modern humans, as is usually assumed.

Anthropology

Y Trail of the First Americans: DNA data point to late New World entry

Scientists identified a gene variant on the Y chromosome that allowed them to estimate that people first reached the Americas no earlier than about 18,000 years ago.

Anthropology

Continental Survivors: Baja skulls shake up American ancestry

Members of a foraging group that lived on Mexico's Baja peninsula around 600 years ago were direct descendants of America's first settlers, who arrived on the continent at least 12,000 years ago.

Anthropology

New World Newcomers: Men’s DNA supports recent settlement of the Americas

New data on genetic differences among the Y chromosomes of Asian and Native American men support the notion that people first reached the Americas less than 20,000 years ago.

Anthropology

Lucy’s kind takes humanlike turn

A new analysis of fossils from a more than 3-million-year-old species in the human evolutionary family reveals that the males were only moderately larger than the females, a finding that has implications for ancient social behavior.

Anthropology

The Ultimate Colonists

Human ancestors managed to adjust to life in a variety of ecosystems during the Stone Age, indicating that their social lives were more complex than they've often been given credit for.