Anthropology
An ancient Chinese skull might change how we see our human roots
Digital reconstruction of a partially crushed skull suggests new insight into Homo sapiens’ evolutionary relationship to Denisovans and Neandertals.
Anthropology
More Stories in Anthropology
- Animals
Greenland sled dog DNA is a window into the Arctic’s archaeological past
A genomic analysis of Greenland’s Qimmeq dogs suggest they and their human partners arrived on the island centuries earlier than previously thought.
- Anthropology
A drowned landscape held clues to the lives of ancient human relatives
The remains of extinct Homo erectus dredged from the seabed off Java, along with thousands of animal fossils, are revealing a long-lost ecosystem.
- Anthropology
‘Dragon Man’ skull may be the first from an enigmatic human cousin
Ancient proteins and DNA may peg a 146,000-year-old Chinese skull as the most complete fossil to date from Denisovans, a puzzling line of Asian hominids.
- Anthropology
Males of this ancient human cousin weren’t always bigger than females
Molecular evidence from a 2-million-year-old southern African hominid species indicates sex and genetic differences in P. robustus.
- Anthropology
Humans used whale bones to make tools 20,000 years ago
Ancient scavengers of the beached beasts turned their bones into implements that spread across a large area, researchers say.
- Animals
A ‘talking’ ape’s death signals the end of an era
Kanzi showed apes have the capacity for language, but in recent years scientists have questioned the ethics of ape experiments.
- Animals
Wild chimpanzees give first aid to each other
A study in Uganda shows how often chimps use medicinal plants and other forms of health care — and what that says about the roots of human medicine.
- Anthropology
A lion’s bite marks a fatal fight with a possible Roman-era gladiator
The first skeletal evidence of a gladiator show or execution involving an exotic animal comes from a Roman British man with bite marks from a lion.
- Humans
Ancient horse hunts challenge ideas of ‘modern’ human behavior
An archaeological site in Germany suggests communal hunting and complex thinking emerged earlier in human evolution than once thought.
