Recovery from a "megadrought" 100,000 years ago precipitated the exodus of ancient humans from tropical Africa to Europe and Asia, according to a UA researcher. Analysis of soil samples extracted from below the bottom of the 2,000-foot-deep Lake Malawi in Africa shows the area believed to the cradle of anatomically modern humans depicts an area hit hard by drought, said Andy Cohen, University of Arizona geology professor.
When the going got tough, early humans went to the beach for seafood and possibly a dose of symbolic thought, according to a new study. Researchers excavating a cave on the southern coast of South Africa discovered a bowl's worth of edible shellfish dating back to about 165,000 years ago, when Africa was colder and drierpushing back the earliest known seafood meal by 40,000 years.
The reason that women outlive men by an average of around five years is due to sex, harems and violence in the Stone Age, according to a study published today. Scientists have struggled to understand why men only tend to live to an average age of 75 while women live to an average of 80. Now it seems that the reason is that our prehistoric male ancestors kept female harems and fought over them to procreate: because male life was nasty, brutish and short, evolutionary forces focused on making males big and strong, rather than long lived.
The waste from shellfish dinners discarded in a South African cave is said to be the earliest evidence of humans living and thriving by the sea. The material was found by scientists working in a sandstone opening at Pinnacle Point on the Cape. Researchers tell the journal Nature the remains were buried in sediments that are 164,000 years old.
In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show. Call it a beach party for early man. But it is a beach party thrown by people who were not supposed to be advanced enough for this type of behaviour. What was found in a cave in South Africa may change how scientists believe Homo sapiens marched into modernity.
Homo floresiensis may have had long arms and tiny brains but our new-found cousins were agile and smart enough to make stone tools used to fashion other tools, probably for hunting and butchering animals. What's more, they did so at least 40,000 years before modern humans arrived on their home island of Flores in Indonesia. The discovery comes from Queensland scientists who have studied wear patterns and residue on about 100 stone tools found with the remains of hobbits (Homo floresiensis) in Liang Bua cave by Australian and Indonesian researchers.
"We're talking about a creature that was fairly well advanced. It was able to use stone tools to make other tools - value-adding in a sense" - Carol Lentfer, archaeologist and paleobotanist at University of Queensland and Southern Cross University.
From 135,000 to 90,000 years ago tropical Africa had megadroughts more extreme and widespread than any previously known for that region, according to new research. Learning that now-lush tropical Africa was an arid scrubland during the early Late Pleistocene provides new insights into humans' migration out of Africa and the evolution of fishes in Africa's Great Lakes.
"Lake Malawi, one of the deepest lakes in the world, acts as a rain gauge. The lake level dropped at least 600 meters -- an extraordinary amount of water lost from the lake. This tells us that it was much drier at that time. Archaeological evidence shows relatively few signs of human occupation in tropical Africa during the megadrought period" - lead scientist Andrew S. Cohen of The University of Arizona in Tucson
The new finding provides an ecological explanation for the Out-of-Africa theory that suggests all humans descended from just a few people living in Africa sometime between 150,000 and 70,000 years ago.
Want to walk in the footsteps of the early humans? Tourists in Italy can do almost that, after footpaths believed to have been left up to 385,000 years ago were opened to the public. The fossilised footprints, which Italian scientists say are among the oldest anywhere, extend along six trails at the edge of the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy. There is also a handprint, made when one of the primitive humans slipped on the soft earth.
Yes, I know its hard to believe, but you have indeed come to the 24th Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival. Just lean your club against the wall, grab a hunk of raw flesh and park your hairy arse on the damp ground. And try not to smack anybody. Read more
"You don't have to be an anthropologist, but bipedalism is encouraged."
Rensselaer researchers have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. The new algorithm works by looking for specific DNA markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. from something as basic a simple cheek swab. Petros Drineas, senior author of the study and assistant professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said, this is unlike previous computer programs of its kind that required prior knowledge of an individual's ancestry and background. He said the researchers, nevertheless, used genetic data from previous studies to perform and confirm their research, including the new HapMap database, which is working to uncover and map variations in the human genome.