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Our ancestors bred with other species in the Homo genus, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. The authors say that up to 2% of the genomes of some modern African populations may originally come from a closely related species. Palaeontologists have long wondered whether modern humans came from a single, genetically isolated population of hominins or whether we are a genetic mix of various hominin species. Last year, an analysis comparing the Neanderthal genome sequence to that of modern H. sapiens showed that some interbreeding did take place between the two...

Kamila Remisova Vesinova and her team of researchers from the Czech Archeological Society believe they have unearthed the remains of an early homosexual man. The remains date from around 2900-2500 B.C., on the outskirts of Prague. That claim stems from the fact the 5,000-year old skeleton was buried in a manner reserved for women in the Corded Ware culture: its head was pointed east rather than west, and its remains were surrounded by domestic jugs rather than by hammers, flint knives and weapons that typically accompany male remains....

They are rarely held up as examples of refined, gentle behaviour. Now scientists have found evidence that cavemen really were the violent and competitive knuckleheads depicted in movies and cartoons. A study of fossilised remains suggests that our ancient ancestors had far higher levels of the male sex hormone testosterone than people living today. If the findings are confirmed, it means they were more aggressive and promiscuous than modern men - and that tens of thousands of years of evolution have had a civilising influence on the human race. The study was carried out by British and Canadian scientists who...

Early modern humans and their predecessors in Europe were mostly big game hunters, but a pile of well-nibbled bird bones suggests that at least some prehistoric European cavemen enjoyed small prey too, according to a new study. The 202 bones, belonging to the Aythya genus of diving ducks, were found at Bolomor Cave near the town of Tavernes in Valencia, Spain. The ducks date to around 150,000 years ago, and were not eaten daintily. "The birds were de-fleshed using both stone tools and teeth," co-author Ruth Blasco told Discovery News, noting that some of the ducks may have even been...

Sometime between 28,000 and 30,000 years ago, an anatomically modern human in what is now France may have eaten a Neanderthal child and made a necklace out of its teeth, according to a new study that suggests Europe's first humans had a violent relationship with their muscular, big-headed hominid ancestors. The evidence, which includes teeth and a carefully butchered jawbone from a site called Les Rois in southwestern France, could represent the world's first known biological proof for direct contact between the two human groups.

* Baloch senator Israrullah Zehri says members should not politicise issue ISLAMABAD: The killing of women for honour is a demand of the tribal traditions, Balochistan Senator Israrullah Zehri informed the Senate on Friday. Zehri was responding to Senator Yasmeen Shah’s statement in which she had drawn the House’s attention towards reports that five women had been buried alive in Balochistan in the name of honour. She called it a sheer violation of human rights. Zehri asked the members not to politicise the issue, as it was a matter of safeguarding the tribal traditions. Leader of the Opposition in Senate...

Kaitlyn Mae is almost four years old and she's already picked up some of Grandmother's expressions. It's cute in a way, but unnerving, to hear the toddler recite back at you those phrases used so often without thought that the little pitcher's got big ears. Also, TV reviews of ABC's "Carpoolers" and "Cavemen", two shows that serve no purpose whatsoever. Plus, dig this TV reality contest...Who Is America's Best Psychic. We checked out this Lifetime offering and, wow, it's cool. Plus a Weekly Whisper about the Democrats' suggestion that staffers get innoculated before mingling with the riff-raff at the NASCAR...

Guys with bulldog-like faces have been chick magnets throughout human evolutionary history. A recent study of the skulls of human ancestors and modern humans finds that women, and thereby evolution, selected for males with relatively short upper faces. The region between the brow and the upper-lip is scrunched proportionately to the overall size of their heads. Among the men who fit the bill: Will Smith and Brad Pitt.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - There are so many negative vibes around "Cavemen" that at least one TV critic is taking bets that it won't even get on the air. The ABC series based on Geico insurance commercials has gone beyond being just another stupid sitcom. Questions are being raised about whether the Cro-Magnon characters will reinforce racial stereotypes.

The producers of ABC's new sitcom Cavemen, based on a series of popular advertisements for the insurance company Geico, were ready to defend themselves against charges of rampant commercialism. But the charge that their show about put-upon Cro-Magnons in the modern world has racist undertones took them by surprise. ''I actually didn't know we would catch so much hell,'' Cavemen writer Joe Lawson ruefully told a room full of highly critical critics at a gathering of North American television writers here Wednesday. ``That's a pleasant surprise.'' Cavemen, which features shaggy Cro-Magnons trying to make their way through a hostile Homo...

10,000 B.C. (2008) Actors Steven Strait (D'Leh) Camilla Belle (Evolet) Omar Sharif Marco Khanlian (One Eye) Cliff Curtis Nathanael Baring Timothy Barlow (The Pyramid God) Mona Hammond (Old Mother) Reece Ritchie Joel Virgel Nakudu Mo Zinal Director by Roland Emmerich Director Epic tale that centers on three stages in the development of primitive man, as seen through a 21-year-old hunter from a primitive tribe who must hunt mammoth to survive. Release Date: March 7th, 2008 (wide) Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution

Fireballs set half the planet ablaze, wiping out the mammoth and America's Stone Age hunters Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere. Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and...

Is finding a way for marketers to beat commercial-zapping DVRs and helping networks to cure the distressed state of TV comedy so simple that a caveman could do it? ABC's decision last week to greenlight a half-hour pilot program based on Geico's popular cavemen characters highlights the blurring line between advertising and entertainment, as well as the trouble the network has had in launching successful sitcoms. Although the project is at a nascent stage -- there's no script and no cast -- plans call for the comedy to be titled "Cavemen" and focus on a trio of prehistoric characters who...

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2007 – Coalition and Afghan forces have killed 37 Taliban fighters and detained three others during operations in Afghanistan over the past three days. Soldiers of the 2nd Kandak, 205th Afghan National Army Corps, with coalition forces, interdicted Taliban fighters about 30 miles northeast of Qalat, in Zabul province, early this morning. Combined forces identified a large group of Taliban fighters on a ridgeline near a cave site and alerted air support. Coalition close-air support then destroyed the enemy position, killing 16 Taliban fighters. Several enemy fighters on motorcycles attempted to retreat from the air strike,...

Cavemen Chose Caves on Five Criteria Jennifer Viegas, Discovery NewsLocation, Location, LocationCave With A View April 9, 2007 — House buyers today usually peruse properties with a checklist of desired features in mind. This aspect of human behavior has apparently not changed much over the millennia, according to a new study that found prehistoric cave dwellers in Britain did exactly the same thing when choosing their homes. The recently released three-year-long survey of approximately 230 caves in the Yorkshire Dales and 190 caves in the northern England Peak District determined that people there from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C. selected caves...

Why cavemen liked curvy cavewomen...like Kylie 09/03/07 By Martin Evans THERE are a few exceptions which will always stand out, but most female stars yearn for a diminutive derriere. However, it appears that the small and slender bottom is very much a recent trend after an archaeological discovery revealed how Stone Age pin-ups were far from size zero. Ancient carvings depicting the female form 15,000 years ago reveal that prehistoric women were revered for their curvaceous bodies and prominent buttocks. The most popular were the cave-dwellers’ equivalents of Kylie Minogue (pictured), whose renowned behind is the world’s most popular posterior....

Report: Geico Cavemen Will Be Focus of New ABC Sitcom Friday , March 02, 2007 AP ADVERTISEMENT LOS ANGELES — It's a role so easy, even a caveman can do it. A sitcom based on the Geico insurance cavemen ads is being developed for ABC, the Hollywood trade publication Variety reported. The comedy would be about three cavemen living in modern-day Atlanta who are battling caveman-oriented prejudice, just as they do in the commercials, according to Variety. The writer of the "so easy, even a caveman can do it" spots is also writing the sitcom.

The beat-up video camera was delivered to Afghanistan in a box, and picked up by two clean-shaven Arabs posing as journalists. They met with Osama bin Laden before leaving on their mission — to kill mujahedeen hero Ahmad Shah Massood. Five years after the Taliban opponent was slain by a bomb hidden in the camera, a former Taliban official on Saturday described how al-Qaida staged the killing — two days before the Sept. 11 attack on America — hoping to strike a fatal blow to the pro-U.S. Northern Alliance. Waheed Mozhdah, director of the then-Taliban Foreign Ministry's Middle East and...

By recovering and sequencing intact DNA from an especially ancient Neandertal specimen, researchers have found evidence suggesting that the genetic diversity among Neandertals was higher than previously thought. The findings also suggest that genetic diversity may have been higher in earlier Neandertal periods relative to later periods that approached the arrival of humans in Europe. Changes in genetic diversity over time are thought to reflect population events, such as low-population bottlenecks caused by disease or environmental change, as well as the influence of random genetic change. The findings are reported in the June 6th issue of Current Biology by a...

Iran-Cave MP from Jiroft, Ali Zadsar here Wednesday said that a village whose residents are cavemen has been discovered at the heights of the city of Jiroft near Anbarabad in the southeastern province of Kerman. Speaking on the sidelines of Majlis open session, he said that a village was discovered 120 kms from the town of Anbarabad in the winter of 2005. He added that the residents of the newly-discovered village put on no clothes and feed on leaves. Zadsar said, "The village, called Pid-Nekoupieh, is situated in the mountain and the 200 people who live there have never left...

They say blonds have more fun, and now a Canadian anthropologist says it's been happening for over 10,000 years. The population of blond women grew rapidly at the end of the last ice age because their looks got them noticed at a time of male scarcity in northern and eastern Europe, says Peter Frost, who is associated with St. Andrews University in Scotland. Food was also in short supply, which made men more choosy as they cut down on the mouths they had to feed by selecting fewer mates, his study says. The blond gene had begun in Europe as...

THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks. According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost...

THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks. According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - An ancient weapon that struck fear in the hearts of Spanish conquistadors, and that some think was used to slay wooly mammoths in Florida, may soon be added to the arsenal of Pennsylvania's hunters. The state Game Commission is currently drafting proposed regulations to allow hunters to use the atlatl, a small wooden device used to propel a six-foot dart as fast as 80 mph. The commission could vote to legalize its use as early as January. It's unclear which animals atlatlists may be allowed to hunt, but the proposal is being pushed by people who want...

Testosterone has a bad reputation. The public image of it is closely linked to the idea of dumb aggression, to the caveman. But this is a far from complete image. In recent years new research is starting to show that it would be more accurate to associate this much maligned hormone with Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein and Edison than the rough and brutal Neanderthal. Testosterone, it seems, could be the true driver of our civilisations. Satoshi Kanazawa at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, studied the biographies of 280 scientists and plotted their intellectual achievements against their ages. He discovered...

Economics-free trade may have contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals 30,000-40,000 years ago, according to a paper published in the “Journal of Economic Organization and Behavior.” “After at least 200,000 years of eking out an existence in glacial Eurasia, the Neanderthal suddenly went extinct,” writes University of Wyoming economist Jason Shogren, along with colleagues Richard Horan of Michigan State University and Erwin Bulte from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. “Early modern humans arriving on the scene shortly before are suspected to have been the perpetrator, but exactly how they caused Neanderthal extinction is unknown.” Creating a new kind of caveman...

Were cavemen painting for their gods? (Filed: 23/02/2005) The meaning of Ice Age art has been endlessly debated, but evidence is increasing that some was religiously motivated, says Paul Bahn At least 70,000 years ago, our ancestors began to adorn their bodies with beads, pendants and perhaps tattoos; by 35,000 years ago, they had begun to paint and engrave animals, people and abstract motifs on cave walls, like those in Lascaux, France, and Altamira in Spain. They sculpted voluptuous figurines in ivory or stone, such as the Venus of Willendorf. Underestimating art: 35,000 years ago, our ancestors began painting representations...

'B.C.' cartoon seen as slur of Islam Muslims allege veteran artist Hart made cryptic attack Posted: November 22, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The Council on American-Islamic Relations once again is demanding an apology for an alleged slur of Muslims, this time asserting a veteran cartoonist has cryptically defamed Islam. The Washington, D.C.-based group sent out a dispatch to its e-mail list after a "B.C." cartoon last week by Johnny Hart was publicly questioned on a Washington Post Web chat page. The cartoon shows a caveman entering an outhouse at night, and then saying, from inside, "Is it just me,...

GEORGE SKELTON / CAPITOL JOURNAL Pressure's on Senator to Drop Out of Race, but Why Should He? September 1, 2003 [Snip] McClintock has a loud public address system to expound the tax-and-spend causes he always has cared deeply about. At least he has since, as a high school freshman, he came home one day and found his Realtor-mom in tears because she'd miscalculated her tax and was about to forfeit to the IRS a year's savings from commissions. [Snip] He has never voted for a tax increase. Indeed, he was one of a group of Assembly Republican "cavemen" whom then-Gov....