Brenda Garstone is on the hunt for her heritage. Parts of her cultural inheritance are scattered across the Tanami desert in northwestern Australia, where dozens of ancient boab trees are…
Category: Anthropology
King Tut’s tomb still has secrets to reveal 100 years after its discovery
One hundred years ago, archaeologist Howard Carter stumbled across the tomb of ancient Egypt’s King Tutankhamun. Carter’s life was never the same. Neither was the young pharaoh’s afterlife. Newspapers around…
Ancient DNA unveils Siberian Neandertals’ small-scale social lives
DNA from a group of Neandertals who lived together and a couple of others who lived not far away has yielded the best genetic peek to date into the social…
Here’s where jazz gets its swing
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing — all you’ve got to do is stagger your timing. For decades, fans of jazz music have debated why…
Tina Lasisi wants to untangle the evolution of human hair
Though humans’ nearly hairless bodies stick out like a cowlick among other primates, our nakedness isn’t unique in the world of mammals. Dolphins and whales are naked, says biological anthropologist…
In Maya society, cacao use was for everyone, not just royals
In ancient Maya civilization, cacao wasn’t just for the elites. Traces of the sacred plant show up in ceramics from all types of neighborhoods and dwellings in and around a…
Fossil finds put gibbons in Asia as early as 8 million years ago
Small-bodied, long-armed apes called gibbons swing rapidly through the trees, far outpacing scientists’ attempts to decipher these creatures’ evolutionary story. Now, a partial upper jaw and seven isolated teeth found…
Humans may have started tending animals almost 13,000 years ago
Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Ancient plant samples extracted…
The oldest known surgical amputation occurred 31,000 years ago
A child who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo around 31,000 years ago underwent the oldest known surgical operation, an amputation of the lower left leg, researchers say. One…
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
