Anthropology

Anthropology

How using sheepskin for legal papers may have prevented fraud

Removing fat is key to turning animal skin into parchment. With sheepskin, the process creates a writing surface easily marred by scratched-out words.

Anthropology

Riches in a Bronze Age grave suggest it holds a queen

Researchers have long assumed mostly men ran ancient Bronze Age societies, but the find points to a female ruler in Spain 3,700 years ago.

Anthropology

Finds in a Spanish cave inspire an artistic take on warm-weather Neandertals

Iberia’s mild climate fostered a host of resources for hominids often pegged as mammoth hunters.

Anthropology

Ardi may have been more chimplike than initially thought — or not

A contested study of hand and foot fossils suggests this 4.4-million-year-old hominid was a tree climber and branch swinger.

Anthropology

A body burned inside a hut 20,000 years ago signaled shifting views of death

Ancient hunter-gatherers burned a hut in which they had placed a dead woman, suggesting a change in how death was viewed.

Anthropology

Humanlike thumb dexterity may date back as far as 2 million years ago

A computer analysis suggests early Homo species developed a powerful grip, giving them an evolutionary edge over some other tool-using hominids.

Anthropology

Ice Age hunters’ leftovers may have fueled dog domestication

Ancient people tamed wolves by feeding them surplus game, researchers suggest.

Genetics

Plague may have caused die-offs of ancient Siberians

DNA suggests that the deadly bacterium that causes the plague reached northeast Asia by 4,400 years ago.

Archaeology

Ancient people may have survived desert droughts by melting ice in lava tubes

Bands of charcoal from fires lit long ago, found in an ice core from a New Mexico cave, correspond to five periods of drought over 800 years.

Anthropology

Ardi and her discoverers shake up hominid evolution in ‘Fossil Men’

A new book covers the big personalities, field exploits and scientific clashes behind the discovery of the hominid skeleton nicknamed Ardi.

Anthropology

Bolivia’s Tsimane people’s average body temperature fell half a degree in 16 years

A new study echoes other research suggesting that people’s average body temperature is lower today than it used to be.

Anthropology

Female big-game hunters may have been surprisingly common in the ancient Americas

A Peruvian burial that indicates that women speared large prey as early as 9,000 years ago sheds new light on gender roles of ancient hunter-gatherers.