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.
Location of the Buran Kaya III (1), Zlatý Kůň (2), Fournol (3), Serinyà (4), Krems-Wachtberg (5) and Věstonice (6) archeological sites, whose remains were were analysed in the study. Also shown are one of the analysed skull fragments and pierced beads discovered with the bone fragments from the Buran Kaya III site, as well as the Venus statuettes from Věstonice, Willendorf and the Dame de Brassempouy (from right to left).
E-M. Geigl
Genetic analysis of two skull fragments dating back almost 40,000 years shows that our species colonised Europe from the east and interbred with our Neanderthal cousins.
Ludovic Slimak, Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier
Meet the archeologist who is overhauling our understanding of early human history.
Is this really what our Paleolithic ancestors ate? New data suggests prehistoric diets had a lot more overlap with our own than earlier studies estimated.
(Shutterstock)
The Paleo Diet is popular, but research has yet to substantiate its purported health benefits. As evolutionary anthropologists, here’s why we think it’s time to leave the Paleo Diet in the past.
Ancient DNA preserved in the tooth tartar of human fossils encodes microbial metabolites that could be the next antibiotic.
Werner/Siemens Foundation
Ancient microbes likely produced natural products their descendants today do not. Tapping into this lost chemical diversity could offer a potential source of new drugs.
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
A way to recover the owner’s DNA from ancient artefacts will help archaeologists understand past societies in more detail than ever before.
To test the ballistic properties of the stone points found in the Mandrin cave, modern duplicates were created and hafted on to shafts, as they may have been 54,000 years ago.
Laure Metz, Ludovic Slimak
Laure Metz, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU); Jason E. Lewis, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York), and Ludovic Slimak, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
In 2022 we detailed the discovery of 1,500 stone points in France’s Madrin cave. Experiments now show that they could were used as arrowheads, pushing back evidence of archery in Eurasia by 40,000 years.
Human remains dating back more than 30,000 years were found at Paviland cave in Gower.
Left: Leighton Collins/Shutterstock; right: Ethan Doyle White CC BY-SA 3.0.
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.
The Grotte Mandrin rock shelter saw repeated use by Neanderthals and modern humans over millennia.
Ludovic Slimak
Stone artifacts and a fossil tooth point to Homo sapiens living at Grotte Mandrin 54,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals were still living in Europe.
Today, teens are often seen as troublesome and difficult. Ancient Roman writers also described adolescence as a period of “hooliganism and debauchery.”
(Shutterstock)
Teens across millennia have yearned to explore, try new things and participate in risky behaviours. The key difference, however, seems to be the experience of a rebellion or restlessness.
The author examining pictographs in 60th Unnamed Cave, Tennessee.
Alan Cressler
For thousands of years, Native Americans left their artistic mark deep within caves in the American Southeast. It wasn’t until 1980 that these ancient visual expressions were known to archaeologists.
De nouvelles preuves confirment que des différences culturelles intergroupes, notables et anciennes, ont façonné les dernières étapes de l'évolution humaine en Afrique.
A reconstruction of a dinosaur’s back passage reveals it may have been used for visual communication.
A: Border Cave’s 200,000 year old fossilised grass fragments. B: The profile section of desiccated grass bedding dating to around 43,000 years ago.
Both images copyright Lyn Wadley
Before 200,000 years ago, close to the origin of our species, people preferred the use of broad-leaved grasses to build their beds and resting areas using ash layers underneath.
The newly discovered Kupoupou stilwelli would have once swam in the waters around Chatham Island near New Zealand.
Illustration by Jacob Blokland
This newly discovered species is the oldest one known to resemble today’s penguins in both size and leg proportions, unlike its giant co-habitants at the time.
An Islamic State photo purports to show the destruction of a Roman-era temple in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in 2015.
Islamic State/Handout via Reuters
Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for about 180 million years. But around 66 million years ago, a huge rock from outer space (called an asteroid) smashed into the Earth. Then things got worse for dinosaurs.