The origins and migrations of modern humans around the world are a hot topic of debate. Genetic analyses have pointed to Africa as the continent from which our ancestors dispersed in the Late Pleistocene epoch, which began about 126,000 years ago. Various dispersal routes have been suggested.| phys.org
The ability to make art has often been considered a hallmark of our species. Over a century ago, prehistorians even had trouble believing that modern humans from the Upper Paleolithic (between 45,000 and 12,000 years ago) were capable of artistic flair.| phys.org
Research led by Vladimír Sládek sheds new light on how bones age, questioning long-standing assumptions that sedentary lifestyles are the primary cause of weakening bone strength in modern humans.| phys.org
The arrival of agriculture coincided with a sharp rise in a gene variant that protected against the virus that causes winter vomiting, researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Linköping University report after analyzing DNA from over 4,300 prehistoric individuals and cultivating "mini guts."| phys.org
For more than a century, scientists have been piecing together the puzzle of human evolution, examining fossil evidence to understand the transition from our earliest ancestors to modern humans.| phys.org
Malaria is one of the world's most widespread and deadliest parasitic diseases. But some people may have natural protection thanks to DNA inherited from an extinct group of archaic humans known as the Denisovans. New research has looked at specific Denisovan-derived genes that may protect against this and other tropical diseases.| phys.org
Humans could learn a thing or two from orangutans when it comes to maintaining a balanced, protein-filled diet. Great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are marvels of adaptation to the vagaries of food supply in the wild, according to an international team of researchers led by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientist. The critically endangered primates outshine modern humans in avoiding obesity through their balanced choices of food and exercise, the sc...| phys.org
Cultural burning is an Indigenous community-based practice where controlled fire is used to manage landscapes like forests. These work by reducing dried, flammable vegetation in a manageable way.| phys.org
An analysis of stone tools found in Italy and Lebanon indicates that around 42,000 years ago, modern humans in Europe and the Near East took different approaches to toolmaking.| phys.org
If you were lucky 74,000 years ago, you would have survived the Toba supereruption, one of the largest catastrophic events that Earth has seen in the past 2.5 million years.| phys.org
The latest featured stories on science including: Physics, Space Science, Earth Science, Health and Medicine| phys.org
