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…
Category: Anthropology
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…
7-million-year-old limb fossils may be from the earliest known hominid
In 2001, researchers unearthed a partial fossil leg bone and two forearm bones in the central African nation of Chad. Those fossils come from the earliest known hominid, which lived…
‘The Five-Million-Year Odyssey’ reveals how migration shaped humankind
The Five-Million-Year OdysseyPeter BellwoodPrinceton Univ., $29.95 Archaeologist Peter Bellwood’s academic odyssey wended from England to teaching posts halfway around the world, first in New Zealand and then in Australia. For…
Famine and disease may have driven ancient Europeans’ lactose tolerance
Ancient Europeans may have evolved an ability to digest milk thanks to periodic famines and disease outbreaks. Europeans avidly tapped into milk drinking starting around 9,000 years ago, when dairying…
Famine and disease may have driven ancient Europeans’ lactose tolerance
Ancient Europeans may have evolved an ability to digest milk thanks to periodic famines and disease outbreaks. Europeans avidly tapped into milk drinking starting around 9,000 years ago, when dairying…
Ancient DNA links an East Asian Homo sapiens woman to early Americans
A previously undetected Homo sapiens population inhabited what’s now southwestern China around 14,000 years ago and contributed to the ancestry of ancient Americans. This far-ranging Asian group’s evolutionary identity has…
Demond Mullins climbed Everest to inspire more Black outdoor enthusiasts
Demond “Dom” Mullins’ days as a student at Lehman College in New York were interrupted in 2004 when his National Guard unit was deployed to Baghdad. A year later, he…
The idea that many people grow following trauma may be a myth
“What does not kill me, makes me stronger,” 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote. Variations of that aphorism abound in literary, spiritual and, more recently, psychological texts. That…
