Free Republic

An artist's interpretation of the hominins that lived near the Sima de los Huesos cave in Spain. Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries. In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years. The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a...

Ancient Humans Had Sex With A Mystery Species Stephanie Pappas Live Science Dec. 4, 2013, 3:33 PM A new, improved sequencing of ancient human relative genomes reveals that Homo sapiens didn't only have sex with Neanderthals and a little-understood line of humans called Denisovans. A fourth, mystery lineage of humans was in the mix, too. As reported by the news arm of the journal Nature, new genetic evidence suggests that several hominids — human relatives closer than humans' current living cousin, the chimpanzee — interbred more than 30,000 years ago. This group of kissing cousins included an unknown human ancestor...

Scientists have found the oldest DNA evidence yet of humans’ biological history. But instead of neatly clarifying human evolution, the finding is adding new mysteries. In a paper in the journal Nature, scientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years. The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans....

In a further study of Neanderthal occupation at Abri du Maras, Ardèche in France, the evidence is stacking up to support the view that this group was behaviourally flexible and capable of creating a variety of sophisticated tools including projectile points and more importantly, cord and string.Fibrous materials that can be used to create cords are difficult to find in the archaeological record and have usually rotted away, so the oldest known string dated back only 30,000 years. However, perforations in small stone and tooth artefacts as well as shells from other Neanderthal sites in France suggested the pieces had...

**SNIP** According to ABC News, the results found that women with bigger backsides tend to have lower levels of cholesterol and are more likely to produce hormones to metabolize sugar. Therefore, women with big butts are less likely to have diabetes or heart problems. And having a big butt requires an excess of Omega 3 fats, which have been proven to catalyze brain development. The researchers also found that the children born to women with wider hips are intellectually superior to the children of slimmer, less curvy mothers.

A dental study of 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 hominin species shows that no known species matches the expected profile of the last common ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis and anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides evidence that the lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans diverged about 1 million years ago – much earlier than previous studies have suggested.“Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans. These discrepancies cannot be simply...

Neanderthal peoples' Asian cousins occupied the islands of our nearest neighbours and possibly Australia itself, scientists believe. Writing today in the journal Science, Adelaide University archaeologist Alan Cooper argues that the Denisovans – Neanderthal-like relatives of ancient humans – crossed Wallace’s Line, one of the world’s most formidable marine barriers, more than 100,000 years ago. Having achieved this feat, it would be “amazing” if they had not made what was then an easy crossing to Australia. “If you cross Wallace’s Line you’ve done all the hard work,” Professor Cooper told The Australian. The Denisovans were unknown before a finger bone...

A record of Neanderthal archaeology, thought to be long lost, has been re-discovered by NERC-funded scientists working in the Channel island of Jersey... a key archaeological site has preserved geological deposits which were thought to have been lost through excavation 100 years ago. The discovery was made when the team undertook fieldwork to stabilise and investigate a portion of the La Cotte de St Brelade cave, on Jersey's south eastern coastline. A large portion of the site contains sediments dating to the last Ice Age, preserving 250,000 years of climate change and archaeological evidence. The site, which has produced more...

For the seven-member team, the hazards of reaching the site, accessible only by diving through frigid underwater passages, were worth it. Their finds may help answer some of the most hotly debated questions about early humans: Did they make love or war with Neanderthals? Were Neanderthals intellectually inferior to our human ancestors? ...The team included a Portuguese shipwreck diver and archaeologist, a French Neanderthal specialist, a Romanian cave biologist, and the three Romanian adventurers who discovered the human fossils while exploring submerged caves... [T]he ceiling lowered until they were forced, first, to swim on their backs and, finally, don...

Dr Francis Wenban-Smith discovered a site containing remains of an extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in 2003, in an area of land at Ebbsfleet in Kent, during the construction of the High Speed 1 rail link from the Channel Tunnel to London... Excavation revealed a deep sequence of deposits containing the elephant remains, along with numerous flint tools and a range of other species such as; wild aurochs, extinct forms of rhinoceros and lion, Barbary macaque, beaver, rabbit, various forms of vole and shrew, and a diverse assemblage of snails. These remains confirm that the deposits date to a warm...

...Dr. Shannon McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany... and Dr. Michel Lenoir of the University of Bordeaux have been excavating the site of Abri Peyrony where three of the bones were found. "...Modern humans seem to have entered Europe with pointed bone-tools only, and soon after started to make lissoir. This is the first possible evidence for transmission from Neandertals to our direct ancestors," says Dr. Soressi of Leiden University, Netherland. She and her team found the first of four bone-tools during her excavation at the classic Neandertal site of Pech-de-l'Azé I... Microwear analysis...

In a joint study, Professor Hervé Bocherens of the University of Tübingen, Germany, together with colleagues from the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, Belgium have found at a cave in the Caucasus Mountains indirect hints of fish consumption by Neandertals... Bone analyses ruled out cave bears and cave lions to have consumed the fish whose remains were found at the Caucasian cave... located on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, called Kudaro 3. There, the bone fragments of large salmon, migrating from...

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed a method of sourcing obsidian artefacts that takes only 10 seconds -- dozens of times faster than the current methods -- with a handheld instrument that can be used at archaeological excavations. Obsidian, naturally occurring volcanic glass, is smooth, hard, and far sharper than a surgical scalpel when fractured, making it a highly desirable raw material for crafting stone tools for almost all of human history. The earliest obsidian tools, found in East Africa, are nearly two million years old, and obsidian scalpels are still used today in specialised medical procedures. The...

Dr Ruebens' investigations uncovered new evidence that two separate handaxe traditions or designs existed – one in a region now spanning south-western France and Britain – the other in Germany and further to the East. In addition, she found an area covering modern day Belgium and the Netherlands that demonstrates a transition between the two. She comments: "In Germany and France there appears to be two separate handaxe traditions, with clear boundaries, indicating completely separate, independent developments. "The transition zone in Belgium and Northern France indicates contact between the different groups of Neanderthals, which is generally difficult to identify but...

"The Neanderthal genetic component in the [Tianyuan] early modern human was likely due to interbreeding after early modern humans had left Africa and overlapped with Neanderthals in the Middle East, before splitting into separate groups heading toward what are now Europe and East Asia," explained Fu. Fu and other scientists compared the DNA of the Tianyuan human with the genome of the now-extinct Neanderthal that the Max Planck Institute helped sequence and publish in 2010. The initial decoding of the Neanderthal genome and comparison with present-day populations around the world revealed that all contemporary humans outside of Africa carry a...

A scanty but varied ensemble of finds challenges the idea that Neandertal material culture was essentially static and did not include symbolic items. In this study we report on a fragmentary Miocene-Pliocene fossil marine shell, Aspa marginata, discovered in a Discoid Mousterian layer of the Fumane Cave, northern Italy, dated to at least 47.6-45.0 Cal ky BP. The shell was collected by Neandertals at a fossil exposure probably located more than 100 kms from the site. Microscopic analysis of the shell surface identifies clusters of striations on the inner lip. A dark red substance, trapped inside micropits produced by bioeroders,...

The FOXP2 gene is involved in speech and language (Lai et al. 2001)... Modern humans and Neanderthals share two changes in FOXP2 compared with the sequence in chimpanzees (Krause et al. 2007). Neanderthals may also have their own unique derived characteristics in the FOXP2 gene that were not tested for in this study... The researchers then tried to determine how the FOXP2 variant came to be found in both Neanderthals and modern humans... Though chimpanzees also have different blood groups, they are not the same as human blood types. While the mutation that causes the human B blood group arose...

[Note: headline edited slightly in order to fit] Origins of modern language are ten times older than thought and could date back half a million years, according to Dutch researchers It contradicts the popular idea that our modern language began with a sudden emergence of modernity presumably due to one or a few genetic mutations that gave rise to language The scientists claim that far from being slow brutes, Neanderthals' cognitive capacities and culture were comparable to ours Dutch researchers have claimed that our modern language can be traced back to stone age man - ten times older than previously...

The oldest example of grave flowers has been discovered in Israel. An ancient burial pit dating to nearly 14,000 years ago contained impressions from stems and flowers of aromatic plants such as mint and sage. The new find "is the oldest example of putting flowers and fresh plants in the grave before burying the dead," said study co-author Dani Nadel, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel. snip... Past evidence suggested that humans only started using flowers in graves more recently. (A 35,000-year-old Neanderthal burial site called Shanidar Cave in Iraq contained pollen, but subsequent research revealed that...

The study, led by Caleb Everett, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Miami, reveals that languages containing ejective consonants are spoken mainly in regions of high elevation. Ejectives are sounds produced with an intensive burst of air. The findings also indicate that as elevation increases, so does the likelihood of languages with ejectives. "Ejectives are produced by creating a pocket of air in the pharynx then compressing it." Everett says. "Since air pressure decreases with altitude and it takes less effort to compress less dense air, I speculate that it's easier...