Anthropology
- Archaeology
An ancient healer reborn
A research team in Israel has uncovered one of the oldest known graves of a shaman. The 12,000-year-old grave hosts a woman’s skeleton surrounded by the remains of unusual animals.
- Life
The Iceman’s mysterious genetic past
Scientists say that they have identified the complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of the 5,000-year-old Tyrolean Iceman, whose body was found protruding from a glacier in 1991.
- 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.
