Female bodies have an advantage in endurance ability that means Paleolithic women likely hunted game, not just gathered plants. The story is written in living and ancient human bodies.
A forensic technique more often used at modern crime scenes identified blood residue from large extinct animals on spearpoints and stone tools used by people who lived in the Carolinas millennia ago.
If hunter-gatherers went beyond nose-to-tail eating to include the undigested plant matter in a prey animal’s stomach, assumptions about gendered division of labor start to fall apart.
This whirlwind tour of social history describes how infectious diseases have shaped humanity at every stage. It suggests reducing inequality will give us our best chance of surviving future plagues.
When, how, where and why did complex hierarchical societies evolve? Understanding how we got to this point in time may help us address global challenges, like climate change.
A new study doubles the age of ancient DNA in sub-Saharan Africa, revealing how people moved, mingled and had children together over the last 50,000 years.
Anthropologists believed that before the implementation of agriculture, men hunted and women gathered, but new evidence suggests that this might not have been the case.
Mason tirelessly sought to convince officials of the need to recognise and celebrate the African past, and the role that African people played in the making of modern South African society.
A survey of San ostrich eggshell beads - a common find at archaeological sites - paints a bigger picture of hunter-gatherers, herders and shifting cultural tradition.
Associate Professor of Anthropology; Curator of High Latitude and Western North American Archaeology, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology; Faculty Affiliate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, University of Michigan