Cassava’s many assets would seem to make it the ideal crop, except for one drawback: It’s highly poisonous. Human ingenuity has made cassava edible for millennia.
By detailing the landscape at the time of first humans’ migration into Australia, we can better understand how people travelled and where they settled.
Rock art showing a hunter-gatherer ritual dance; Kondoa, Tanzania.
Nick Longrich
The Punan Batu is one of the most active nomadic hunter-gatherer groups still existing in the world. They have unique characteristics that are different from other groups in Borneo.
In small-group, subsistence living, it makes sense for everyone to do lots of jobs.
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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.
For a decade, debate has raged over Dark Emu’s account of Aboriginal agriculture. But ancient food production in Australia is more complex than labels like farming or hunter-gathering suggest.
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.
What if prehistoric men and women joined forces in hunting parties?
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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.
Archaeologists excavate inside and outside Little Muck Shelter, in the Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa.
Photo: Tim Forssman
45,000 years ago, people first started arriving in what’s known as Europe today. We thought a worsening ice age made them disappear – but it seems some lineages survived.
During the Ice Age, hunter-gatherer societies built sedentary settlements.
(Shutterstock)
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.
New genetic research shows humans’ famed ability to adapt our behaviour and develop new tools and techniques has not always been enough to survive when times have grown tough.