Free Republic

Last year, a report claiming to support the idea that the origin of language can be traced to West Africa appeared in Science. The article caused quite a stir. Now linguist Michael Cysouw from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich has challenged its conclusions, in a commentary just published in Science... Atkinson based his claim on a comparative analysis of the numbers of phonemes found in about 500 present-day languages. Phonemes are the most basic sound units -- consonants, vowels and tones -- that form the basis of semantic differentiation in all languages. The number of phonemes used in natural languages varies widely....

'The Oldest (Neanderthal) Work Of Art Ever': 42,000-Year-Old Paintings Of Seals Found In Spanish Cave* Six paintings were found in the Nerja Caves, 35miles east of Malaga * They are the only known artistic images created by Neanderthal man By Tom Worden Last updated at 9:27 PM on 7th February 2012 Comments (38) Share The world's oldest works of art have been found in a cave on Spain's Costa del Sol, scientists believe. Six paintings of seals are at least 42,000 years old and are the only known artistic images created by Neanderthal man, experts claim. Professor Jose Luis Sanchidrian,...

A new study suggests that Homo erectus, a precursor to modern humans, was using advanced toolmaking methods in East Africa 1.8 million years ago, at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought. The study, published this week in Nature, raises new questions about where these tall and slender early humans originated and how they developed sophisticated tool-making technology. Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago, and ranged across Asia and Africa before hitting a possible evolutionary dead-end, about 70,000 years ago. Some researchers think Homo erectus evolved in East Africa, where many of the oldest fossils have been found,...

Early members of the genus Homo, possibly direct ancestors of people today, may have evolved in Asia and then gone to Africa, not vice versa... new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton and his colleagues... Evidence remains meager for the geographic origins of the Homo genus, says anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University... and it's possible that humankind's...

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.

Researchers in Germany have unearthed 400,000 year old wooden spears from what appears to be an ancient lake shore hunting ground stunning evidence that human ancestors systematically hunted big game much earlier than believed. The three spears, each carved from the trunk of a spruce tree, are 6 feet to more than 7 feet long. They were found with more than 10,000 animal bones, mostly from horses, including many obviously butchered. That indicates the ancient hunters were organized enough to trap horses and strong enough to kill them by throwing spears, perhaps ambushing herds that showed up for water. “There’s...

A research team reports new findings of stone age tools that suggest humans came "out of Africa" by land earlier than has been thought. Geneticists estimate that migration from Africa to South-East Asia and Australia took place as recently as 60,000 years ago. But Dr Michael Petraglia, of Oxford University, and colleagues say stone artefacts found in the Arabian Peninsula and India point to an exodus starting about 70,000 to 80,000 years ago - and perhaps even earlier. Petraglia, whose co-workers include Australian and Indian researchers, presented his ideas at the British Science Festival, which is hosted this year at...

Two fossil hobbits have given what’s left of their arms and legs to science. That wasn’t enough, though, to quell debate over hobbits’ evolutionary status at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists on April 17. Since 2004, the discoverers of unusual “hobbit” fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores have attributed their find to a pint-sized species, Homo floresiensis, that lived there from 95,000 to 17,000 years ago. These researchers also suspect, on the basis of hobbit anatomy and recent stone tool discoveries on Flores, that H. floresiensis evolved from a currently unknown hominid species that...

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...

Belgrade, city of very tumultuous history, one of the oldest in Europe. Its history has lasted for 7000 years. The area around the large rivers was inhabited in the Paleolithic period. From the older stone age, came the remains of human bones and skulls of Neanderthals, found in a quarry near Leštane, in a cave in the vicinity of the Cukarica Bajloni market. Remains of late Stone Age culture were found in Vinca, Zarkovo and Upper Town, above the confluence of the Sava and Danube. This indicates that the area of Belgrade has been continually inhabited and that the intensity...

PARIS (AFP) – Experts on prehistoric man are rethinking their dates after a find in a southern French valley suggested our ancestors may have reached Europe 1.57 million years ago: 200,000 years earlier than we thought. What provoked the recount was a pile of fossilised bones and teeth uncovered 15 years ago by local man Jean Rouvier in a basalt quarry at Lezignan la Cebe, in the Herault valley, Languedoc. In the summer of 2008, Rouvier mentioned his find to Jerome Ivorra, an archaeological researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). The subsequent dig uncovered a large variety...

A key stage in human evolution may have taken place on the fringes of Europe and not in Africa as has generally been thought, scientists said yesterday. Fossils of an ancient human relative, or hominin, from Georgia dated from 1.8 million years ago suggest that the first of our ancestors to walk upright could have done so in Eurasia, the British Science Festival was told. David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgian National Museum, said the skulls, fossils and limb bones found at Dmanisi in 1999 and 2001 raise the possibility that Homo erectus, a forerunner of modern humans, evolved in...

Fossil finds of early humans in southeast Asia may actually be the remains of an unknown ape. Russell Ciochon says that many palaeoanthropologists -- including himself -- have been mistaken. Fourteen years ago, a Nature paper by my colleagues and I described a 1.9-million-year-old human jaw fragment from Longgupo in Sichuan province, China1. The ancient date in itself was spectacular. Previous evidence had suggested that human ancestors arrived in east Asia from Africa about 1 million years ago, in the form of Homo erectus. Longgupo nearly doubled that estimate. But even more exciting -- and contentious -- was our claim...

Revealed: Face of first European as fragments of 35,000-year-old skull are made flesh This is the face of the first early European human which has been painstakingly constructed by scientists from bone fragments. The man or woman - it is still not possible to determine the sex - lived 35,000 years ago in the Carpathian Mountains that today are part of Romania. Their face was rebuilt in clay based on an incomplete skull and jawbone discovered in a cave where bears hibernated. Forensic artist Richard Neave made the model based on his measurements of the pieces of bone and his...

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Six years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown. Recent research has only widened their challenge to conventional thinking about the origins, transformations and migrations of the early human family. Indeed, the more scientists study the specimens and their implications, the more they are drawn to heretical speculation. ¶Were these primitive survivors of even earlier hominid migrations out of Africa, before Homo erectus migrated about 1.8 million years ago? Could...

Universiti Sains Malaysia's (USM) Centre for Archaeological Research Malaysia has found evidence of early human existence in the country dating back 1.83 million years... The evidence was obtained from the discovery of artefacts in Bukit Bunuh, Lenggong, Perak... included stone-made tools such as axes and chopping tools. The artefacts were found embedded in suevite rock, formed as a result of the impact of meteorite crashing down at Bukit Bunuh. The suevite rock, reputedly the first found in Southeast Asia, was sent to the Geochronology Japan Laboratory three months ago and carbon dated using the fission track dating method... Based on...

Balkan caves, gorges were pre-Neanderthal haven Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:25am EDT By Ljilja Cvekic BELGRADE (Reuters Life!) - A fragment of a human jaw found in Serbia and believed to be up to 250,000 years old is helping anthropologists piece together the story of prehistoric human migration from Africa to Europe. "This is the earliest evidence we have of humans in the area," Canada's Winnipeg University anthropology professor Mirjana Roksandic told Reuters. The fragment of a lower jaw, complete with three teeth, was discovered in a small cave in the Sicevo gorge in south Serbia. "It is a pre-Neanderthal...

Prehistoric settlement found in Qatar 6/23/2008 2:25:18 DOHA • A prehistoric settlement in what is now Qatar may confirm alternative theories on how early humans emigrated from the African continent, a report in a Danish newspaper said. Danish archaeologists have uncovered a settlement they believe may be over 700,000 years old, making it the oldest organised human community ever found, reported Berlingske Tidende newspaper. Eight dwellings in the desert region of Qatar indicate that an early human species crossed what is now the Red Sea to leave their origins in Africa, according to the scientists. There is still uncertainty within...

MADRID, Spain - A small piece of jawbone unearthed in a cave in Spain is the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor in Europe and suggests that people lived on the continent much earlier than previously believed, scientists say. The researchers said the fossil found last year at Atapuerca in northern Spain, along with stone tools and animal bones, is up to 1.3 million years old. That would be 500,000 years older than remains from a 1997 find that prompted the naming of a new species: Homo antecessor, or Pioneer Man, possibly a common ancestor to Neanderthals and modern...

Out of Africa, Not Once But Twice Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Out of Africa March 14, 2008 -- Modern humans are known to have left Africa in a wave of migration around 50,000 years ago, but another, smaller group -- possibly a different subspecies -- left the continent 50,000 years earlier, suggests a new study. While all humans today are related to the second "out of Africa" group, it's likely that some populations native to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia retain genetic vestiges of the earlier migrants, according to the paper's author, Michael Schillaci. Schillaci, an...