* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Homo Sapiens

Blobrana · L

A team of French researchers has confirmed that devils trails preserved in volcanic ash atop the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy are the oldest human footprints, and that their owners were Homo heidelbergensis.
Study leader Stephane Scaillet, an expert from the Laboratory of Climatic and Environmental Sciences, has revealed that the research team used argon-dating techniques to verify the age of the prints.

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The Earth After Us examines the possible legacy of humankind on this geological timescale; 99% of species thought ever to have existed (and we're guessing wildly here) are now extinct, possibly without trace. Why should we be any different? Evangelical optimists may forecast a kind of digitally enhanced immortality by the end of the century, but even some sober commentators speculate that this century is our last. While both sing the solipsistic refrain that we are living in unique times, rising global temperatures and sea levels, vanishing sea ice, soaring population and renewed nuclear proliferation do seem to load the dice in favour of the pessimists.

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Blobrana · L

Researchers have found a possible new route taken by early modern humans as they expanded out of Africa to colonise the rest of the world.
A study published in the journal PNAS proposes a "wet corridor" through Libya for ancient human migrations.

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New evidence provides an alternative route out of Africa for early humans.
The widely held belief that the Nile valley was the most likely route out of sub-Saharan Africa for early modern humans 120,000 year ago is challenged in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A team led by the University of Bristol shows that wetter conditions reached a lot further north than previously thought, providing a wet corridor through Libya for early human migrations. The results also help explain inconsistencies between archaeological finds.

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Dynamics of Alliance Formation and the Egalitarian Revolution
Although anthropologists and evolutionary biologists are still debating this question, a new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, supports the view that the first egalitarian societies may have appeared tens of thousands of years before the French Revolution, Marx, and Lenin. These societies emerged rapidly through intense power struggle and their origin had dramatic implications for humanity. In many mammals living in groups, including hyenas, meerkats, and dolphins, group members form coalitions and alliances that allow them to increase their dominance status and their access to mates and other resources. Alliances are especially common in great apes, some of whom have very intense social life, where they are constantly engaged in a political manoeuvring as vividly described in Frans de Waal's "Chimpanzee politics".

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New research has revealed that the first humans to arrive on the Indian subcontinent from Africa about 65,000 years ago left a genetic imprint that can still be found in the tribes of India.
According to a report in New Scientist, anthropologists have long argued over the genetic makeup of India's population, because of its complex history of migrations and movement.
The first humans to people the sub-continent came from Africa, following the so-called southern route, along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean.

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Blobrana · L

Anthropologist Nathaniel J. Dominy of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has advanced the investigation of the diet of early human ancestors by painstakingly measuring the mechanical properties of the underground parts of nearly 100 plant species across sub-Saharan Africa.
Call it the "chewability factor" if you will, but determining the relative toughness and hardness of rhizomes, tubers, corms, and bulbs was the next step in Dominy's exploration of the hypothesis that our earliest ancestors may have eaten a diet rich in plants, specifically their carbohydrate-rich underground storage organs (USOs).
The flat, thickly enamelled molars of early humans have led scientists to infer that their diet consisted primarily of hard, brittle foods, with recent evidence suggesting that USOs played a key role as "fallback foods" eaten during times of scarcity.

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Blobrana · L

Homo Habilis

Blobrana · L

RE: Homo Sapiens