Ben Marwick, University of Washington; Bo Li, University of Wollongong et Hu Yue, University of Wollongong
A fresh look at museum artifacts fills in a gap in the Asian archaeological record and refutes the idea that an advanced technique was imported from the West by early modern humans.
Rampasasa people are from Waemulu village, Flores – near Liang Bua where ‘the Hobbit’ fossils were discovered.
Dean Falk, Florida State University
Modern day people of short stature became physically small due to the effects of living on a small island or forested environment. But we’re not sure why “the Hobbit” of Flores was so small.
Looking for food, water and maybe adventure?
Unsplash
New research suggests that hints left in Creole languages can identify where the original speakers came from – even hundreds of years after they migrated and mixed together.
Skeletal fragments from Hummervikholmen, one of sites featured in this study.
Beate Kjørslevik
Scandinavia was populated by two main migrations, making its first inhabitants more genetically diverse and adapted to harsh climates than those in the rest of Europe.
Indigenous Australians created elaborate rock art, as shown here in Arnhem Land.
P. Taçon
Researchers in human evolution used to focus on Africa and Eurasia – but not anymore. Discoveries in Asia and Australia have changed the picture, revealing early, complex cultures outside of Africa.
Women shipfitters working on board the USS Nereus at the U.S. Navy Yard in Mare Island, circa 1943.
Department of Defense
Thousands of American women moved west to take advantage of wartime employment opportunities during WWII. For some, this version of the California dream was temporary; for others, it lasted a lifetime.
Much more must be done to keep teachers in South Africa.
Shutterstock
Policy needs to focus on making the teaching profession stable and more appealing. South Africa must ensure its locally trained teachers have more reason to stay in the country.
The genetics of Indonesian people are a mix between different groups of humans.
from www.shutterstock.com
I try to learn who are the ancestors of Indonesian people through genetics. The genetics of Indonesian people are a mix between different groups of humans.
Lida Ajer cave - a small but well decorated front entrance.
Julien Louys
The evidence of a much earlier presence of humans in Indonesia was found more than 100 years ago. But only now has the age of the fossil teeth been accurately dated.
Excavations at the limestone cave of Leang Bulu Bettue on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Justin Mott (Mott Visuals)
Ancient bone and teeth ornaments found in an Indonesian cave advance our knowledge of the culture and traditions of some of the earliest people in our region.
Looks like paradise – but how did the first people get there?
Global Environment Facility
Researchers ran computer simulations that take into account environmental variability and geographical setting to investigate how early explorers made it to these tiny, remote islands in the Pacific.
New research challenges a previous view that humans got to America via this area, where an ice-free corridor existed during the last ice age.
Mikkel Winther Pedersen
A new study suggests the first humans probably got to America from Siberia via the Pacific coast rather than through a corridor between two giant ice sheets, as previously thought.
There are indications that climate change in Malawi will make the country poorer and its people more static.
Meaduva/Flickr
Humans evolved in Africa, spread across the world, and then it gets messy. Luckily advances in genetic sequencing have helped us track the complex history of human migration.
Map depicting the two major hypotheses of the spread of Indo-European languages (white arrows) and geographic distribution of the archaeological cultures described in the text.
Wolfgang Haak
Europe is famously tesselated, with different cultural and language groups clustering in different regions. But how did they all get there? And how are they related?
Modern cattle in Kenya.
Steven Goldstein, Washington University St. Louis
New research upends the previous theory that tsetse flies – and the disease they carry – were the main reason the spread of livestock domestication in Africa stalled out for a thousand years.
Modern Papuans have descended from beachcombers.
cifor
It is well established that modern humans originated in Africa, before moving out to inhabit rest of the planet. They first spread into Asia and Europe via the Arabian Peninsula, and those in the Far East…
Wild chickens are everywhere in Hawaii but how did they get there?
Flickr/jaybergesen
Holiday in Hawaii and one of the birds you’re most likely to encounter is the chicken. You find them everywhere from beaches, to car parks and on walks through the bushland. The locals warn that your chance…