Diamond-mining pits have yielded stone artifacts old enough to suggest that hand axe production started 1.6 million years ago in southern Africa, not just in eastern Africa. (p. 11)

Members of the prehistoric Nasca culture in southern Peru took trophy heads from their own people rather than from foreigners captured in wars or raids, a new biochemical analysis suggests. (p. 12)

New brain-imaging studies indicate that similar brain areas coordinate face recognition in people, chimpanzees and macaque monkeys, suggesting that a face-sensitive brain system evolved early in primate evolution.

A long-term study of dolphins living off Australia’s coast finds that a small number of them, mostly females, frequently use sea sponges to forage for fish on the ocean floor. (p. 13)

Two new studies suggest that, at 3 to 5 months of age, boys already outperform girls on mental rotation tasks. (p. 8)