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Tag: anthropology
UK archaeologist suggests Stonehenge may have been an ancient solar calendar
Enlarge / A new theory holds that Stonehenge served as an ancient solar calendar. (credit: Timothy Darvill/Bournemouth University) Scholars have long speculated that the famed prehistoric monument Stonehenge might have served as some kind of calendar that helped local people predict eclipses, summer and winter solstices, the equinox, and other relevant celestial events. Now, a […]
Members of our species were in Western Europe around 54, 000 years ago
Enlarge (credit: Slimak et al. 2022) According to a recent study, a child’s tooth unearthed from an old layer of a cave floor in Southern France belonged to a member of our species. If so, the tooth is now the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens living in Europe, and its presence means that our species […]
The oldest hominin fossil ever found in the Levant
Enlarge (credit: Barash et al 2022) When the first members of our species ventured out of Africa, they walked into a world that earlier hominins, such as Homo erectus, had first explored a million years earlier. According to a recent study of a 1 . 5 million-year-old vertebra, those earlier hominins may have expanded beyond […]
Did eating meat really make us human?
Enlarge (credit: Kryssia Campos | Getty Images) Twenty-four years ago, Briana Pobiner reached into the north Kenyan soil and put her hands on bones that had last been touched 1.5 million years ago. Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist, was digging up ancient animal bones and searching for cuts and dents, signs that they had been butchered by […]
At least 2 hominin species lived at Laetoli site 3. 6 million years ago
Enlarge / A human relative left these five tracks in a 3. 6 million-year-old layer of sediment at the Laetoli Fossil site in Tanzania. (credit: McNutt et al. 2021) The first evidence of human relatives walking on two feet comes from about 70 footprints left by at least two Australopithecus afarensis walking across soft volcanic […]
The proof’s in the poop: Austrians have loved beer, blue cheese for 2, 700 years
Enlarge / A 2, 700-year-old piece of human excrement found at the Hallstatt salt mines, in which beans, millet, and barley are clearly visible (assuming one wishes to look that closely). Ancient Iron Age miners in what is now Austria were quite fond of beer and blue cheese, according to a new analysis, published in […]
Is the “Dragon Man” skull actually from a new hominin species?
Enlarge / The Harbin skull (left) and the Dali skull (right). (credit: Ni et al. 2021) The reported discovery of a new hominin species from China created a lot of buzz last week. Its discoverers—paleoanthropologists Xijun Ni, Qiang Ji, Chris Stringer, and their colleagues—say that a skull discovered near Harbin, in northeast China, has a […]
Ancient DNA finds family ties between Viking Age warriors
Enlarge (credit: Ida Marie Odgaard AFP) Roughly a thousand years ago, a young man in his early 20s met a violent end in England. 800 kilometers (500 miles) away, in Denmark, an older man who had survived a lifetime of battles died sometime in his 50s. At first glance, there’s nothing to suggest a connection […]
Someone stabbed a cave bear in the head with a spear 35,000 years ago
Enlarge (credit: Gimranov et al. 2021) During the last Ice Age, more than 100 cave bears died in Imanay Cave, a 100-meter-long corridor of stone in Russia’s southern Ural Mountains. The dead bears, along with a cave lion and a few other Pleistocene mammals, left behind nearly 10,000 bones, which have mostly worn down to […]