How Smart Were the First Toolmakers?
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) makes it possible to image people’s brains while they are moving their arms, which allows researchers to study the brain activity of toolmakers. …
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) makes it possible to image people’s brains while they are moving their arms, which allows researchers to study the brain activity of toolmakers. …
The story of human origins is much more varied and complex than we often recognize. Biswarup Ganguly/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Conversation and has be…
Rock fragments found near part of a mastodon tusk in San Diego, California, suggest that a hominin species lived there about 130,000 years ago. The finding could dramatically…
In 2014, Steve Lee, a space scientist at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS), approached me with an interesting proposition. An astronaut friend, Kjell Lindgren, was…
Neanderthals were able to manipulate fire well before they came into contact with Homo sapiens. Starting fire, however, was an entirely different matter. David Williams In the 1981…
For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching…
For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching…
The textbook narrative of human history tells us that between 70,000 and 60,000 years ago our earliest modern human ancestors traveled out of Africa on a journey that…
Earlier this year, a team of Australian researchers led by Peter Hiscock from the University of Sydney published new findings about a fragment of a ground-edge ax—which might…
John Kappelman, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues conducted a paleoforensic analysis on Lucy, the celebrated 3.18-million-year-old hominin skeleto…
In 1939, anthropologist Carleton Coon used an artist’s reconstruction of the Neanderthal specimen La Chapelle aux Saints in a hat to argue that people’s impressions of differences between grou…
Since the 1920s, scientists have debated whether the first Americans arrived from Asia—or somewhere else—some 11,000 years ago, or millennia before. Artifacts such as this Clovis spear point…
Stone tools, like Acheulean hand axes, remain well-preserved for eons because they are stones first, tools second. Fired ceramics remain well-preserved for millennia because they are, in essence,…
Recently found fossil remains that are 700,000 years old provide new insights about the extinct species Homo floresiensis, which was originally discovered in 2003. Researchers have attributed the…
When first found, “Neanderthal man” remains were thought by some scientists to be from a diseased modern human. However, upon examining the Gibraltar skull, George Busk argued that…
I was sitting in the brightly lit workroom at the Pitt Rivers Museum on a frigid day in November 2010, when I opened one of the bags that…
A Stone Age archaeological site in South Africa has been saved from the threat of diamond mining. The site, called Canteen Kopje, is renowned for its cache of…
“I do not think any spectacle can be more interesting, than the first sight of Man in his primitive wildness.” —Charles Darwin, letter to J.S. Henslow, April 11,…
Researchers are panicking as a Stone Age archaeological site in South Africa called Canteen Kopje is facing demolition by diamond mining. Miners have already started to clear the…
To my mind, a well-made Acheulean hand ax is one of the most beautiful and remarkable archaeological objects ever found, anywhere on the planet. I love its clean,…
A baby displays his eating prowess with only a few teeth. Holly Dunsworth Did you hear about the Homo erectus who lost all but one of his teeth?…
Humans (Homo sapiens) may have caused the extinction of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) because of our greater talent for social innovation and tool creation. This new conclusion makes a…
Let’s start with some old dirt. Who were the first people to arrive in North America more than 12,000 years ago? Did these intrepid explorers originate in Siberia…