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Researchers at the University of Kent have recreated the processes Neanderthals used to produce sharp flint axes, and found that our ancestors were skilled engineers. A modern-day 'flintknapper' replicated the sharpening processes that Neanderthals used to create tools -- a sort of modern 'reverse engineering' of ancient techniques in use by three kinds of early 'hominin' including Neanderthals as early as 300,000 years ago. The researchers found that Neanderthals could shape 'elegant' stone tools -- shaping them to be hard-wearing, easily sharpened and with a perfectly balanced centre of gravity. The reproduction of how Neanderthals worked shows that it is...

Palaeoanthropologists now know a great deal about these ice-age Europeans who flourished between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. We know, for example, that Neanderthals shared about 99.84 per cent of their DNA with us, and that we and they evolved separately for several hundred thousand years. We also know Neanderthal brains were a bit larger than ours and were shaped a bit differently. And we know where they lived, what they ate and how they got it. Skeletal evidence shows that Neanderthal men, women and children led very strenuous lives, preoccupied with hunting large mammals. They often made tactical use...

Here, Prof Clive Finlayson looks back at the year's developments in human evolution research and asks whether recent discoveries rule out a well known idea about our ancestors.Hobbits on Flores, Denisovans in Siberia, Neanderthals across Eurasia and our very own ancestors. Given this array of human diversity in the Late Pleistocene, we might well be forgiven for thinking that Ernst Mayr's contention that "in spite of much geographical variation, never more than one species of man existed on Earth at any one time" had finally been put to bed. It now seems that a high degree of diversity was also...

Dating of butchery marks crucial A multi-disciplinary team of French CNRS researchers, working with Norwegian and Russian scientists, studied the Byzovaya site in the Polar Urals in northern Russia. Using carbon 14 dating and an optical simulation technique, the team was able to put an accurate date on sediments and on mammoth and reindeer bones abandoned on the site. The bones bore traces of butchering by Mousterian hunters. The results intrigue scientists in more ways than one. They show that Mousterian culture may have lasted longer than scientists had originally thought. What's more, no Mousterian presence had ever been identified...

Modern humans possess brain structures larger than their Neanderthal counterparts, suggesting we are distinguished from them by different mental capacities, scientists find. We are currently the only extant human lineage, but Neanderthals, our closest-known evolutionary relatives, still walked the Earth as recently as maybe 24,000 years ago. Neanderthals were close enough to the modern human lineage to interbreed, calling into question how different they really were from us and whether they comprise a different species. To find out more, researchers used CT scanners to map the interiors of five Neanderthal skulls as well as four fossil and 75 contemporary human...

NEW YORK – In the latest use of DNA to investigate the story of humankind, scientists have decoded genetic material from an unidentified human ancestor that lived in Siberia and concluded it might be a new member of the human family tree. The DNA doesn't match modern humans or Neanderthals, two species that lived in that area around the same time — 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. > But "the human family tree has got a lot of branchings. It's entirely plausible there are a lot of branches out there we don't know about." >

Scientists have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human through analysis of DNA from a finger bone unearthed in a Siberian cave. The extinct "hominin" (human like creature) lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago. An international team has sequenced genetic material from the fossil showing that it is distinct from that of Neanderthals and modern humans. Details of the find, dubbed "X-woman", have been published in Nature journal. Ornaments were found in the same ground layer as the finger bone, including a bracelet. Professor Chris Stringer, human origins researcher at London's Natural History Museum, called...

A fourth type of hominid, besides Neanderthals, modern humans and the tiny “hobbit”, was living as recently as 40,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Nature. The discovery by Svante Pääbo and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is based on DNA sequences from a finger bone fragment discovered in a Siberian cave. EDITOR’S CHOICE Science briefing: Biofuel breakthrough - Feb-26 Public losing faith in science - Feb-22 Science briefing: Tracking cancer changes - Feb-19 Scientists discover the secret of ageing - Feb-15 Genome of balding Arctic ancestor decoded - Feb-10...

In 2008, archeologists working at the Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains discovered a tiny piece of a finger bone, believed to be a pinky, buried with ornaments in the cave. Scientists extracted the mitochondrial DNA (genetic material from the mother’s side) from the ancient bone and checked to see if its genetic code matched with the other two known forms of early hominids–Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans. What they found was a real surprise. The team, led by geneticist Svaante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute, discovered that the mtDNA from the finger bone matched neither–suggesting there...

Genetic material pulled from a pinky finger bone found in a Siberian cave shows a new and unknown type of pre-human lived alongside modern humans and Neanderthals, scientists reported on Wednesday.

It is well-known today, based on various genetic studies, that some of the ancestors of modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, a closely-related human species or sub-species that lived 130,000 - 30,000 years ago in Eurasia. Less known is information that has recently emerged about the possibility that modern human ancestors were also busy with at least one other archaic human species. Additional information comes from a new study by researchers at Uppsala University. The study yielded findings that indicated people in East Asia share genetic material with archaic humans known as Denisovans, suggesting that the modern human ancestors of East...

Neandertals... constructed a large, ring-shaped enclosure out of 116 mammoth bones and tusks at least 44,000 years ago in West Asia, say archaeologist Laëtitia Demay of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and her colleagues. The bone edifice, which encircles a 40-square-meter area in which mammoths and other animals were butchered, cooked and eaten, served either to keep out cold winds or as a base for a wooden building... Mammoth-bone huts previously discovered at Homo sapiens sites in West Asia date to between 27,500 and 15,000 years ago. The new discovery comes from Molodova, a Ukrainian site first...

Complex computational modeling provides clues to Neanderthal extinctionTEMPE, Ariz. – Computational modeling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights into the extinction of Neanderthals. Details of the complex modeling experiments conducted at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado Denver will be published in the December issue of the journal Human Ecology, available online Nov. 17. > "It's been long believed that Neanderthals were outcompeted by fitter modern humans and they could not adapt," said Riel-Salvatore. "We are changing the main...

People may well have been roaming the land we now call the Netherlands for far longer than was assumed until recently. There is evidence to suggest that the country was home to the forebears of the Neanderthals. Amateur archaeologist Pieter Stoel found materials used by the oldest inhabitants in the central town of Woerden. These artefacts were shown to be at least 370,000 years old, which takes us back to long before the time of the Neanderthals. Our ancient forebears are often described as cavemen but that is not entirely accurate. There were no caves in this environment, explains Pieter...

European skull's evolving story The specimen was found along with bear remains The earliest modern humans in Europe were short of being the complete article, according to a study of a fossilised skull from Romania. The 35,000-year-old cranium discovered in Pestera cu Oase in the west of the country shows an interesting mix of features, say scientists. Whilst undeniably a Homo sapiens specimen, it has some traits normally associated with more ancient species. The skull is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr Helene Rougier, from Washington University in St Louis, US, and colleagues say the fossil...

Virtual anthropology allows new identification of first modern humansMembers of our species (Homo sapiens) arrived in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought. At this conclusion a team of researchers, led by the Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, arrived after re-analyses of two ancient deciduous teeth. These teeth were discovered 1964 in the "Grotta del Cavallo", a prehistoric cave in southern Italy. Since their discovery they have been attributed to Neanderthals, but this new study suggests they belong to anatomically modern humans. Chronometric analysis, carried out by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, shows that...

"Studies looking at limb length have always concluded that a shorter limb, including in Neandertals, leads to less efficiency of movement, because they had to take more steps to go a given distance," says lead author Ryan Higgins, graduate student in the Johns Hopkins Center of Functional Anatomy and Evolution. "But the other studies only looked at flat land. Our study suggests that the Neandertals' steps were not less efficient than modern humans in the sloped, mountainous environment where they lived." Neandertals, who lived from 40,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe and Western Asia, mostly during very cold periods,...

Contrary to what was previously assumed, modern humans may have populated Asia in more than 1 migration waveThe discovery by Russian archaeologists of the remains of an extinct prehistoric human during the excavation of Denisova Cave in Southern Siberia in 2008 was nothing short of a scientific sensation. The sequencing of the nuclear genome taken from an over 30,000-year-old finger bone revealed that Denisova man was neither a Neanderthal nor modern human, but a new form of hominin. Minute traces of the Denisova genome are still found in some individuals living today. The comparisons of the DNA of modern humans...

Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago, punching a hole in the theory that modern humans alone ate brain-boosting seafood so long ago, a new study shows. The discovery in a cave near Torremolinos in southern Spain was about 100,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence of Neanderthals consuming seafood, scientists said. Researchers unearthed the evidence when examining stone tools and the remains of shells in the Bajondillo Cave, they said in a study published online in the Public Library of Science. There, they discovered many charred shellfish -- mostly mussel shells --...

Sharing the results of a massive, worldwide study, geneticist Svante Pääbo shows the DNA proof that early humans mated with Neanderthals after we moved out of Africa. (Yes, many of us have Neanderthal DNA.) He also shows how a tiny bone from a baby finger was enough to identify a whole new humanoid species. Svante Pääbo explores human genetic evolution by analyzing DNA extracted from ancient sources, including mummies, an Ice Age hunter and the bone fragments of Neanderthals.

Part of a prehistoric skull, dating back 170,000 years, has been discovered during an archaeological dig in Nice. Experts say the discovery could reveal important clues to the evolution of humans. Students Ludovic Dolez and Sébastian Lepvraud were working on the excavation site, Lazaret Caves, on 13th August, when they came across the partial remains of a forehead belonging to a Homo Erectus. Paleontologist Marie-Antoinette de Lumley, who has been in charge of excavation at Lazaret since 1961, said the bone is an important find: "It belonged to a nomad hunter, less than 25 years old. He may be able...

We tend to think of garden design as a relatively new vocation. The truth told by archaeological findings not only lays such thoughts to rest, it tells a tale of a rich and ancient heritage of garden design. One such finding shows a garden of Ninevah, in present-day Iraq, that dates back to 650 BC. There are date palms, trees and shrubs of many types. True, an enemy's severed head is seen hanging from one of the trees, but times were different, or are they? They did like their gardens, however. Our vision of ancient Egyptian temples is one of...

New investigations at an iconic cave site on the Channel Island of Jersey have led archaeologists to believe the Neanderthals have been widely under-estimated.Neanderthals survived in Europe through a number of ice ages and died out only about 30,000 years ago. The site at La Cotte de St Brelade reveals a near-continuous use of the cave site spanning over a quarter of a million years, suggesting a considerable success story in adapting to a changing climate and landscape, prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens. New investigations at an iconic cave site on the Channel Island of Jersey have led...

Sexual relations between ancient humans and their evolutionary cousins are critical for our modern immune systems, researchers report in Science journal.Mating with Neanderthals and another ancient group called Denisovans introduced genes that help us cope with viruses to this day, they conclude. Previous research had indicated that prehistoric interbreeding led to up to 4% of the modern human genome. The new work identifies stretches of DNA derived from our distant relatives. In the human immune system, the HLA (human leucocyte antigen) family of genes plays an important role in defending against foreign invaders such as viruses. The authors say that...

A new study deals a blow to the idea that most European men are descended from farmers who migrated from the Near East 5,000-10,000 years ago. The findings challenge previous research showing that the genetic signature of the farmers displaced that of Europe's indigenous hunters. The latest research leans towards the idea that most of Europe's males trace a line of descent to stone-age hunters. But the authors say more work is needed to answer this question. The study, by an international team, is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Archaeological finds show that modern humans...

The Denisova cave had already yielded a fossil tooth and finger bone, in 2000 and 2008. Last year, Pääbo's DNA analysis suggested both belonged to a previously unknown group of hominins, the Denisovans. The new bone, an extremely rare find, looks likely to belong to the same group... The primitive morphology of the 30,000 to 50,000-year-old Denisovan finger bone and tooth indicates that Denisovans separated from the Neanderthals roughly 300,000 years ago. At the time of the analysis, Pääbo speculated that they came to occupy large parts of east Asia at a time when Europe and western Asia were dominated...

Modern humans may have picked up key genes from extinct relatives. For a field that relies on fossils that have lain undisturbed for tens of thousands of years, ancient human genomics is moving at breakneck speed. Barely a year after the publication of the genomes of Neanderthals1 and of an extinct human population from Siberia2, scientists are racing to apply the work to answer questions about human evolution and history that would have been unfathomable just a few years ago. The past months have seen a swathe of discoveries, from details about when Neanderthals and humans interbred, to the important...

Wednesday, 3 October, 2001, 18:00 GMT 19:00 UK Science shows cave art developed early Chauvet cave paintings depict horses and other animals By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse A new dating of spectacular prehistoric cave paintings reveals them to be much older than previously thought. Carbon isotope analysis of charcoal used in pictures of horses at Chauvet, south-central France, show that they are 30,000 years old, a discovery that should prompt a rethink about the development of art. The remarkable Chauvet drawings were discovered in 1994 when potholers stumbled upon a narrow entrance to several underground chambers ...

A swell of modern humans outnumbered Neanderthals in Europe by nearly 10 to one, forcing their extinction 40,000 years ago, suggested a study of French archaeology sites on Thursday. Scientists have long debated what caused the Neanderthals to die off rather suddenly, making way for the thriving population of more advanced Homo sapiens who likely moved in from Africa. The latest theory, published in the journal Science, is based on a statistical analysis of artifacts and evidence from the Perigord region of southern France, where lies the largest concentration of Neanderthal and early modern human sites in Europe. Researchers at...

Grandparents barely existed until as recently as 30,000 years, research suggests, because early humans died so young. But when people did start to survive into older age, it had "far-reaching effects" that led to the development of new tools and art forms. The advantages that humans enjoyed by having larger families with older relatives could have helped them "out-compete" rivals such as Neanderthals, it is claimed... In the article, Rachel Caspari describes how analysis of the teeth of Neanderthals found in Croatia, who lived about 130,000 years ago, suggests "no one survived past 30". Because of gaps in the fossil...

Westerners could be genetically programmed to consume fatty foods and alcohol more than those from the east, researchers have claimed. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen say a genetic switch - DNA which turns genes on or off within cells - regulates appetite and thirst. The study suggests it is also linked to depression. Dr Alasdair MacKenzie conceded it would not stop those moving to the west adapting to its lifestyle. > "The fact that the weaker switch is found more frequently in Asians compared to Europeans suggests they are less inclined to select such options. "These results give us...

Interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals may have given Europeans and Asians resistance to northern diseases that their African ancestors didn't have. Peter Parham, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford, recently presented evidence to the Royal Society in London that Europeans gained many of the genes for human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) from neanderthals. The antigens helped them adapt to diseases in the north much more quickly than would have otherwise occurred. Comparisons of the human and Neanderthal genomes were conducted by Parham to locate similarities and differences in the DNA of modern human populations and Neanderthals. Parham found that modern...

Scientists have found that our cousins the Neanderthal employed sophisticated hunting strategies similar to the tactics used much later by modern humans. The new findings come from the analysis of subtle chemical variations in reindeer teeth.Reindeer and caribou are nowadays restricted to the northernmost regions of Eurasia and America. But many thousands of years ago, large reindeer herds roamed throughout Europe and were hunted by the Neanderthal people. Kate Britton, an archaeologist now at the University of Aberdeen, and her colleagues were part of a team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, that studied the Jonzac Neanderthal...

The first humans to reach Europe may have found it a ghost world. Carbon-dated Neanderthal remains from the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains suggest that the archaic species had died out before modern humans arrived. The remains are almost 10,000 years older than expected. They come from just one cave in western Russia, called Mezmaiskaya, but bones at other Neanderthal sites farther west could also turn out to be more ancient than previously thought, thanks to a precise carbon-dating technique, says Thomas Higham, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Oxford, UK, and a co-author of a study published this week...

Ah, the irony! Right after a paper on Neandertal extinction c. 40,000 years ago, we now get a paper about Neandertal survival as late as 31,000 years ago in Russia's north. The two are not entirely incompatible, however, as Neandertals could very well have survived in the periphery of the sapiens range later than in its center. To give an analogy with the more recent spread of agriculturalists, it is precisely in northern Eurasia, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and Central/South Africa, i.e., areas distant from the primary centers of plant and animal domestication that relic pre-farming groups have...

"We know now that the sediments in the cave were laid down long, long before the last ice age, and that it's Paleolithic "Levalloisian" chert flakes, some of which have edges modified by "Mousterian" retouch are among the oldest of this kind not only in Europe but even in Africa, and are accompanied by an "Acheulian" hand-axe on a stone cobble," reports Michael Walker. "The entire 5-meter deep block of sediment in the cave belongs to the end of the early Early Pleistocene ( 2,588,000-781,000years ago) according to new optical sediment luminescence dating carried out at Oxford University in 2007...

An improvement in the dating of fossils suggests that the Neanderthals, a heavily muscled, thick-boned human species adapted to living in ice age Europe, perished almost immediately on contact with the modern humans who started to enter Europe from the Near East about 44,000 years ago. Until now bones from several Neanderthal sites have been dated to as young as 29,000 years ago, suggesting there was extensive overlap between the two human species. This raised the question of whether there had been interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals, an issue that is still not resolved. RSS Feed RSS Get Science News...

The last common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals was a tall, well-traveled species called Heidelberg Man, according to a new PLoS One study. The determination is based on the remains of a single Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis) known as "Ceprano," named after the town near Rome, Italy, where his fossil -- a partial cranium -- was found. Previously, this 400,000-year-old fossil was thought to represent a new species of human, Homo cepranensis. The latest study, however, identifies Ceprano as being an archaic member of Homo heidelbergensis......

Evidence for a likely 50,000-year-old Neanderthal burial ground that includes the remains of at least three individuals has been unearthed in Spain... The deceased appear to have been intentionally buried, with each Neanderthal's arms folded such that the hands were close to the head. Remains of other Neanderthals have been found in this position, suggesting that it held meaning. Neanderthals therefore may have conducted burials and possessed symbolic thought before modern humans had these abilities... So far they have found buried articulated skeletons for a young adult female, a juvenile or child, and an adult -- possibly male -- Neanderthal......

David Frayer, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, has used markings on fossilized front teeth to show that right-handedness goes back more than 500,000 years... His research shows that distinctive markings on fossilized teeth correlate to the right or left-handedness of individual prehistoric humans... The oldest teeth come from a more than 500,000-year-old chamber known as Sima de los Huesos near Burgos, Spain, containing the remains of humans believed to be ancestors of European Neandertals. Other teeth studied by Frayer come from later Neandertal populations in Europe... Overall, Frayer and his co-authors found right-handedness in 93.1 percent of...

Anthropologists were surprised to discover that the grey matter of our infant ancestors, who became extinct about 28,000 years ago, shared the same shape and size. Adult Neanderthal brains were less globular and more elongated than ours. They also grew quicker and were slightly larger. Researchers suggest that this is because human brains spend the first 18 months developing more neural circuitry, helping them think... To compare the two brains, scientists assembled a virtual Neanderthal brain by scanning skull fragments and comparing the computer models at different stages of growth to the human baby brain... Humans are thought to have...

...The two sites used between 50,000 to 35,000 years ago were found last summer in the Pindos Mountains, near the village of Samarina -- one of Greece's highest -- some 400 kilometers (250 miles) northwest of Athens...

Neanderthals plucked the feathers from falcons and vultures, perhaps for symbolic value, scientists find. This new discovery adds to evidence that our closest known extinct relatives were capable of creating art. Scientists investigated the Grotta di Fumane — "the Grotto of Smoke" — in northern Italy, a site loaded with Neanderthal bones. After digging down to layers that existed at the surface 44,000 years ago, the researchers discovered 660 bones belonging to 22 species of birds, with evidence of cut, peeling and scrape marks from stone tools on the wing bones of birds that had no clear practical or culinary...

That human evolution follows a progressive trajectory is one of the most deeply-entrenched assumptions about our species. This assumption is often expressed in popular media by showing cavemen speaking in grunts and monosyllables (the GEICO Cavemen being a notable exception). But is this assumption correct? Were the earliest humans significantly different from us? In a paper published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologist John Shea (Stony Brook University) shows they were not. The problem, Shea argues, is that archaeologists have been focusing on the wrong measurement of early human behavior. Archaeologists have been searching for evidence of "behavioral...

Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife. .................

Humans, versus other great apes, are built for running fast and long as opposed to very impressive strength, but what about Neanderthals? If a modern human and a Neanderthal competed in a marathon, who would win? (Comparison of Neanderthal and Modern Human skeletons. Credit: K. Mowbray, Reconstruction: G. Sawyer and B. Maley, Copyright: Ian Tattersall) In a short sprint, the Neanderthal might have had a chance, but most fit humans would always win longer races, suggests new research accepted for publication in the Journal of Human Evolution. Anthropologist David Raichlen of the University of Arizona and his colleagues determined that...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Dying young was not likely the reason Neanderthals went extinct, said a study out Monday that suggests early modern humans had about the same life expectancy as their hairier, ancient cousins. Scientists have puzzled over why the Neanderthals disappeared just as modern humans were making huge gains and moving into new parts of Africa and Europe, and some have speculated that a difference in longevity may have been to blame. If anything, higher fertility rates and lower infant mortality gave modern humans an advantage over the Neanderthals, who died off about 30,000 years ago, said the study...

Scientists could be forced to re-write the history of the evolution of modern man after the discovery of 400,000-year-old human remains. Until now, researchers believed that homo sapiens, the direct descendants of modern man, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and gradually migrated north, through the Middle East, to Europe and Asia. Recently, discoveries of early human remains in China and Spain have cast doubt on the 'Out of Africa' theory, but no-one was certain. The new discovery of pre-historic human remains by Israeli university explorers in a cave near Ben-Gurion airport could force scientists to re-think earlier theories.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A US study on Monday found that Neanderthals, prehistoric cousins of humans, ate grains and vegetables as well as meat, cooking them over fire in the same way homo sapiens did. The new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) challenges a prevailing theory that Neanderthals' over reliance on meat contributed to their extinction around 30,000 years ago. Researchers found grains from numerous plants, including a type of wild grass, as well as traces of roots and tubers, trapped in plaque buildup on fossilized Neanderthal teeth unearthed in northern Europe and Iraq.

Sequencing of ancient DNA reveals new hominin population that is neither Neanderthal nor modern human Researchers have discovered evidence of a distinct group of "archaic" humans existing outside of Africa more than 30,000 years ago at a time when Neanderthals are thought to have dominated Europe and Asia. But genetic testing shows that members of this new group were not Neanderthals, and they interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans who are alive today. Until last year, the mainstream view in genetics was that modern humans inherited essentially their entire DNA makeup from Neanderthal-related individuals when they migrated from...