Anthropology

Ecosystems

Tracing Tahitian vanilla

The discovery of Tahitian vanilla’s heritage could set off a custody battle between nations.

Anthropology

Loud and clear

Skulls of Neandertal ancestors show the prehistoric humans had a hearing capacity similar to present-day people, suggesting human speech could have originated much earlier than previously thought.

Anthropology

Numbers beyond words

New research with Amazonian villagers suggests that their language lacks number words but that they still comprehend precise quantities of objects.

Anthropology

They’re fake, Indy!

Scientists find that two rock crystal skulls often attributed to pre-Columbian societies are really modern phonies.

Humans

Incan skull surgery

Incan healers became highly adept at skull surgery techniques that developed over thousands of years in ancient Peru.

Anthropology

European Roots: Human ancestors go back in time in Spanish cave

Excavations of a cave in northern Spain have yielded a fossil jaw and tooth that provide the first solid evidence that human ancestors reached Western Europe more than 1 million years ago.

Anthropology

A hip stance by an ancient ancestor

By 6 million years ago, upright human ancestors had evolved a hip design that remained stable for perhaps the next 4 million years, until the appearance of hip modifications in Homo erectus.

Anthropology

Small Wonders: Tiny islanders elevate ‘hobbit’ debate

The discovery in two South Pacific caves of bones from an extinct group of half-size humans has fueled the already heated scientific debate over the evolutionary identity of so-called hobbit remains from Indonesia.

Anthropology

Digging that Maya blue

The unusual pigment Maya blue was probably made over an incense fire as part of a ceremony honoring the rain god Chaak, a new analysis of a pot reveals.

Anthropology

Hairy Forensics: Isotopes can identify the regions where a person may have lived

The proportions of certain chemical isotopes in someone's hair can help detectives pin down that individual's region of origin and track their recent movements, a finding that could be particularly useful in forensic investigations.

Anthropology

Infectious Voyagers: DNA suggests Columbus took syphilis to Europe

A genetic analysis of syphilis and related bacterial strains from different parts of the world fits the theory that Christopher Columbus and his crew brought syphilis from the Americas to Renaissance Europe, where it evolved into modern strains of the sexually transmitted disease.

Anthropology

Ancient Ailment? Early human may have carried tuberculosis

A 500,000-year-old Homo erectus skull from Turkey may show telltale signs of tuberculosis, by far the earliest such evidence of the disease.