A Reader’s Question About Surviving the Ice Age
An anthropologist describes the multiple ice ages of the Earth’s past and how our species survived the most recent one. This article was originally published at The Conversation…
Tag: hominins
The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress”
The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and…
Did Neanderthals Make Art?
Experts continue to debate whether Neanderthals were painters and jewelry-makers. A paleoanthropologist explores the evidence for Neanderthal art and the sources of people’s skepticism. ✽ As a Neande…
What the Discovery of Denisovan Remains in Laos Means
The Tam Ngu Hao 2 Cave in Laos held Denisovan remains—the first ever found in Southeast Asia, showing the expansive geographical reach of this hominin species. Fabrice Demeter/University…
Five Turning Points in the Evolution of Wine
Archaeologists have investigated Greek wine containers shipwrecked in the Mediterranean. Cristian Umili/Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images Contrary to popular belief, the evolution of wine …
The Deep Human Story of Collecting Fossils
The Greek myth of Odysseus and the one-eyed Cyclops may have been inspired by ancient mammoth and mastodon skulls, on which the opening for the trunk looks like…
What Ancient DNA Reveals About Life in Africa 20,000 Years Ago
Kondoa Irangi rock art in present-day Tanzania features the cultural expressions of hunter-gatherers and pastoralists over a 2,000-year span. Nina R/Wikimedia Commons This article was ori…
Meet the Ancient Technologists Who Changed Everything
The idea of crafting and using beads as ornamentation may have spread from North Africa outward to other parts of the African continent and to Europe. Nicholas R.…
My Tribute to Richard Leakey
Richard Leakey and his teams’ fossil discoveries profoundly shaped our knowledge of human origins. Keith Beaty/Toronto Star/Getty Images On January 2, paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey d…
The Humans We Haven’t Met Yet
At the Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of the Bones”) archaeological site in Spain, researchers recovered DNA from 417,000-year-old hominin fossils that may be the ancestors of Neanderthals.…
The Blockbuster Exhibit That Shouldn’t Have Been
Museum professionals often point to the 1972 to 1981 Treasures of Tutankhamun tour as the beginning of the blockbuster exhibit era, in which museums host exhibitions that appeal…
How Human Are We?
Hand axes crafted by Homo erectus required skills and planning—and likely, generational knowledge. Nick Longrich This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been rep…
What Drove Homo Erectus Out of Africa?
The ‘Ubeidiya site today is an expanse of grasses. Concealed from this view are slabs of fossilized pebbly clay, a source of ancient finds that have helped scholars…
Five Human Species You May Not Know About
We’re so used to the idea of being the only people around that it seems outlandish to think that not so long ago in our evolutionary history, multiple…
Is Homo longi an Extinct Human Species?
[no-caption] Chuang Zhao This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. In 1933, a mysterious fossil skull was discovered near …
Five Ways Humans Evolved to be Athletes
The coming Olympics will showcase some of the most extraordinary human feats of strength, speed, and agility. As an archaeologist who focuses on the development of the human…
How Apes Reveal Human History
Except for humans, every great ape is endangered—many at great risk of going extinct. There are fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees living in the wild. USAID Africa Bureau/Wikimedia Commons…
Mapping Human and Neanderthal Genomes
Back in 1990, researchers embarked on an epic project to map out all of human DNA: the Human Genome Project. Their first draft of the human genome was…
Evolutionary Foodprints
*This essay includes a photograph of a replica Paranthropus boisei skull and a replica human skull. New approaches to the dental remains of early hominins and the diets…
Climate Change May Have Been a Major Driver of Ancient Hominin Extinctions
New research suggests some of our species’ closest relatives died out because of significant changes in climate, findings that may offer a warning for humanity today. Aliraza Khatri/Getty…
Early Humans Controlled Fire to Make Stone Tools
Researchers found these ancient flint blades in Israel’s Qesem Cave. Filipe Natalio Humanity’s creation and mastery of fire likely came in stages. Being able to reliably kindle this…
Imagining the Neanderthal’s World
[no-caption] Denis Pobytov Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Bloomsbury Sigma, August (U.K.) & October (U.S.) 2020. Archaeology and genomics k…
A Spark of Insight Into Neanderthal Behavior
In 2017, Naomi Martisius, now a postdoctoral researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, was sitting in a conference session when she had an…
How Elders Make Us Human
[no-caption] Matthias Zomer/Pexels On March 23, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick sparked controversy and outrage by suggesting that older people in the United States might be willing to…