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According to new research, it may have also reshaped the evolutionary story of humans in Europe and beyond. Caves, Clothes, and Ochre: A Human Strategy for Survival As the magnetic field declined, the effects on Earth’s surface intensified. The map also shows areas of human activity on a global scale.
Between 45,000 and 29,000 years ago, early human activity not only altered landscapes but also reshaped the complex web of interactions between scavengers and prey. Large predators, such as hyenas and cave lions, were gradually displaced, while smaller scavengers like foxes and birds thrived in human-dominated environments.
Few traits define humanity as clearly as language. Yet, despite its central role in human evolution, determining when and how language first emerged remains a challenge. Every human society on Earth has language, and all human languages share core structural features. But we don’t.
A Quest for Our Earliest Stories Myths and legends have always been windows into the human psyche, revealing our fears, dreams, and attempts to understand the world. Yet, could these stories also encode the history of humanity’s migrations and interactions?
A New Chapter in Early Human Dispersal The story of humanity's expansion out of Africa has long been marked by unanswered questions about the timing, routes, and survival of early hominins in Eurasia. Reconstructing the Past: Climate and Ecology A Temperate and Seasonal Habitat The study doesn’t stop at human behavior.
Credit: Stepanchuk and Naumenko, 2025 That age alone would be noteworthy. Eleven of them bore unmistakable marks of human manipulation: flake scars, trimmed edges, and signs of deliberate shaping using techniques otherwise seen in lithic technology. “These hominins weren’t just surviving. link] Joordens, J.
The Footprints That Rewrite History In the shifting gypsum sands of White Sands National Park in New Mexico, a series of fossilized human footprints have surfaced, casting a striking new light on the ingenuity of Ice Age inhabitants. Historically, it was used by Plains peoples to haul loads across the land, often drawn by horses or dogs.
Human societies are built on layers of culture, law, and technology, yet beneath it all, some of the oldest instincts in the animal kingdom continue to shape our world. In A New Approach to Human Social Evolution 1 , neuroscientist and anthropologist Jorge A. At its core, the human brain retains an ancient architecture.
The early human settlement of South America stands as one of the last great migrations in human history, yet the environmental conditions that shaped this journey remain debated. 2 ) takes different cultural components and specific lithic traditions/categories into account. The modelling work (e.g., <2,5000 masl = orange.
For decades, the story of how human pigmentation changed as Homo sapiens spread across Europe has been told in broad strokes. Early humans arrived from Africa with dark skin, and as they adapted to lower UV radiation in northern latitudes, their skin lightened—a simple narrative of evolutionary selection. Credit: bioRxiv (2025).
An Ancient Practice, Revisited Through Code Knots are one of humanity’s oldest tools—so ancient, in fact, that they predate agriculture, metallurgy, and written language. Despite differences in time, geography, and material culture, many human groups developed the same set of knots—again and again.
In the long arc of human history, what makes a settlement persist? Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1 , the study draws on data from over 47,000 houses spanning nearly 3,000 archaeological sites and 10,000 years of human history. Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time. Ortman, S.
As Omane and colleagues put it: “The idea that a child learns only one particular language from a single caregiver, as is often assumed in Western cultures, does not apply to these communities.” “The common assumptions do not reflect the diversity and complexity found in other cultural contexts such as Ghana.”
From the sprawling villas of Roman elites to the thatched huts of the poor in medieval Europe, textbook history often presents wealth disparity as a consequence of human progress. ” Instead, the picture that emerges is one of human agency. . ” Instead, the picture that emerges is one of human agency. Bogaard, A.,
An Ancient Cave with Modern Questions Franchthi Cave, nestled in the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece, has been a silent witness to 40,000 years of human history. Yet, the isotopic signatures of human bones do not strongly reflect these inputs, pointing to their limited dietary importance. Read more 1 Martinoia, V., Papathanasiou, A.,
A Discovery in the Desert The story of human migration is often told in sweeping arcs—great waves of Homo sapiens leaving Africa, moving into Eurasia, and eventually populating the entire planet. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025). Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025).
A ‘Knowledge Revival’ A 2025 book by 10 education researchers in Europe and Australia, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival , makes the case that students cannot learn the skills of comprehension and critical thinking unless they know a lot of stuff first. Weve all been there.
These stories speak of migration, of belonging, of origins tied to Chaco Canyon, one of the great ceremonial and cultural centers of the ancient Puebloan world. Published in Nature 1 on April 30, 2025, the research represents the first time a U.S. The interpretation was shaped by cultural context. Related Research Pinotti, T.,
The shift from a hunter-gatherer existence to an agrarian lifestyle stands as one of the most profound transformations in human history. However, recent research challenges this narrative, emphasizing the pivotal role of human interactions and demographic dynamics in this monumental change. Szécsényi-Nagy, A.,
Found in different parts of Europe, these two industries have often been grouped together as “transitional industries,” implying that they might share a common technological or cultural origin. Neanderthals vs. Modern Humans: Who Made What? Meanwhile, the Uluzzian industry has long been associated with modern humans.
Using machine analysis of over 1,500 bilingual dictionaries spanning more than 600 languages, researchers report that vocabulary is not just a passive catalog of the world, but a cultural archive shaped by what humans find urgent, beautiful, or sacred. What happens to culturally dense concepts in endangered or creolized languages?
The lack of privacy comes at a cost In Rigby, educators lean toward human interaction. Its all about culture, said Chad Martin, the superintendent of Jefferson County School District in Rigby. Martin said those are helpful, but must be used in concert with human-led initiatives.
In the 8th century CE, the Avars—an enigmatic group with roots in the East Asian steppes—settled in Central Europe, weaving a tapestry of cultural cohesion amid genetic diversity. Their findings reveal an intriguing story of cultural integration despite distinct genetic divides.
2025 This sliver of bone, shaped, smoothed, hardened in fire, and likely hafted with tar, speaks not of crude imitation, but of invention. “The production technology of bone-tipped hunting weapons used by Neanderthals was in the nascent level in comparison to those used and introduced by modern humans,” — Golovanova et al.,
The Puzzle of the Missing Fires In the bleak cold of the Last Glacial Maximum, it seems obvious that fire would have been essential for human survival. Fire as Cultural Technology Fire is not merely a survival tool. Plant foods and the dietary ecology of Neanderthals and early modern humans. link] Sorensen, A. link] Wrangham, R.
A Genetic Mystery Unraveled For years, scientists have tried to piece together the evolutionary puzzle of human language. What genetic shifts allowed humans to develop the intricate vocal control necessary for language? Research suggests that mutations in the human NOVA1 gene may have played a role in the development of language.
Flint tools left behind at the site 1 tell a story of mobility, cultural identity, and the quiet ingenuity of Upper Paleolithic peoples who refused to be hemmed in by mountains or ice. They were hand-selected, transported, and exchanged—signifiers of distant homelands and enduring human ties. These weren’t random rocks.
For decades, archaeologists have described the architectural evolution of early human settlements as a transition from circular to rectangular structures—a shift thought to reflect deeper societal changes. These sites span from the Natufian culture (15,000 years ago) to the early Neolithic period (8,500 years ago).
Nearly two million years ago, in the high-altitude landscape of the Ethiopian Highlands, early human ancestors at the Acheulian site of Melka Wakena weren’t simply grabbing the nearest stones to use as tools. Some of the bones display telltale anthropogenic marks, suggesting that early humans had a significant presence here.
The results challenge long-held assumptions about how early humans controlled tool shape and suggest that the differences in Levallois core designs may be more influenced by cultural traditions than previously thought Why Levallois Technology Matters Levallois technology represents a milestone in human cognitive and technological evolution.
The Bone Archive of Human History If genes are blueprints, skulls are blueprints weathered by time. The results hint at a Europe in flux: a continent repeatedly reshaped not just by migration but by the slow churn of diet, disease, and cultural transformation. BC, without cultural affiliation, Věstonice cluster).
A new study in Scientific Reports 1 argues that their grammar preserves a faint but measurable imprint of the first humans to populate the continent. Naranjo have identified a gradient in grammatical complexity across the Western Hemisphere that aligns with the likely direction of prehistoric human expansion. link] Reich, D.
A Discovery That Reshapes the Story of Human Innovation For over a century, Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania has been the stage for some of the most profound discoveries in human evolution. Credit: CSIC This finding changes the way we think about early human cognition, technological adaptability, and cultural innovation.
While sites in Iberia, Greece, and the Levant reveal a flourishing network of trade, agriculture, and technology, North Africa—except for Egypt—has often been cast as an empty land, a region untouched by the cultural currents shaping the rest of the ancient world. This is a crucial detail.
Long before pharaohs ruled and scribes recorded human affairs, the seeds of economic disparity had already taken hold. By applying the Gini coefficient—a widely used metric for measuring inequality—to house sizes, the study created a cross-cultural snapshot of economic disparity over 10,000 years. link] Kohler, T.
Journal of Quaternary Science (2025) A new study in the Journal of Quaternary Science 1 suggests that at least one band of Late Upper Paleolithic foragers made their way to the windswept tip of the Isle of Skye, a place so remote it has long been considered beyond the reach of early postglacial settlement. Hardy et al., Hardy et al.,
But beneath its cracked sediment and the shifting shoreline of long-vanished lakes, archaeologists are beginning to piece together a story not just of survival—but of deep cultural adaptation. Jórdeczka in Radiocarbon (2025) DOI:10.1017/RDC.2025.4 Pottery from FV 139 B - bottom of layer 1 (0–10 cm).
Digital credentials, which adhere to open interoperability standards, provide a machine and human-readable way to showcase those skills and make it easier for potential employers to verify those claims. Skills-based credentials are valuable because they state specific skills in which a learner achieved or displayed competence.
These instruments, linked to the Umm an-Nar culture, provide compelling evidence of a shared musical tradition between the ancient civilizations of the Arabian Peninsula and the Indus Valley. Al Rahbi Music has long served as a universal language, transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. S., & Douglas, K.
That lack of disturbance makes it an exceptional place to study how humans occupied the region during the final millennia of the Upper Paleolithic. The presence of butchery marks on many of these bones suggests that humans actively hunted and processed animals at the site. Indeterminate bone with a short cut mark; C.
Our hybrid conference, scheduled for May 2, 2025 , will be held in person at the Graduate Center in Manhattan and online via Zoom. The event will investigate how landscape features such as rivers, mountains, and other natural elements function as both connectors and boundaries, shaping cultural narratives and societal interactions.
Before the soft-footed, domesticated Felis catus found its way into Chinese homes, another feline species occupied human settlements for thousands of years. Their findings suggest that leopard cats filled the niche of rodent control in human settlements long before domesticated cats arrived.
Undergraduate students making an individual submission must ensure their mentors have paid the CAAS membership fee for 2025 before making a submission. women, enslaved humans, people of color) in order to be more inclusive of the changing demographics in American society explore how the incorporation of noncanonical authors or writings (e.g.,
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