neanderthals

The story begins arrestingly, with the tale of a migrant, a well-connected man in his thirties, who finds himself on the losing side of a long-running war in an Asian country. His wife is killed in the fighting and he becomes a refugee, taking a boat out from the Turkish coast to Greece. His eventual destination is Rome, but after a harrowing journey, their boat is turned back from Sicily and lands in Tunisia. Eventually, after many adventures, the man does get to Rome. Migrants who undertook the crossing from…

Multi-functional bone tool, retouched on one of its edges, used as a retoucher and chisel. Credit: M.Baumann-TraceoLab-ULiège Were anatomically modern humans the only ones who knew how to turn bone into tools? A discovery by an international team at the Chez-Pinaud-Jonzac Neanderthal site settles the question. Published in PLOS ONE, it sheds light on a little known aspect of Neanderthal technology.…

The Neanderthals weren’t that different from you and me—which is maybe not that strange after all, considering we probably have a bit of a Neanderthal in us. Credit: Tom Björklund No one knows what happened when we, Homo sapiens, first encountered the Neanderthals. But we know we met. We know that for thousands of years we lived…

The first synthetic substance ever brewed on planet Earth may not have been a product of our own species but was concocted by a close relative as far back as around 200,000 years ago.Researchers from the University of Tübingen and the State Museum of Prehistory in Germany and Strasbourg University in France recently conducted a complex chemical analysis on Neanderthal artifacts made using birch tar, concluding how it was extracted wasn't incidental.Birch tar is a sticky black goo used since ancient times for its various…

Königsaue birch tar and experimental production techniques. a KBP1, Königsaue 1 (left); KBP2, Königsaue 2 (right). b Drawing of the condensation method; c cobble-groove condensation method; d the bark roll buried technique; e the pit roll technique; f raised structure. 1, birch bark; 2, birch tar. Explanations in the main text but also see supplementary information. Credit: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2023). DOI:…

A Neanderthal premolar tooth from the Almonda cave system, Portugal, seen from different angles. Isotopes of strontium were used to track the movement of this individual over the 2 to 3 years the enamel took to form. Credit: João ZilhãoAn international group of researchers, led by the University of Southampton, has offered a fascinating look into the hunting strategies and dietary habits of Neanderthals and other human groups residing in Western Europe.The team scrutinized the chemical composition preserved within tooth…

A Neanderthal premolar tooth from the Almonda cave system, Portugal, seen from different angles. Isotopes of strontium were used to track the movement of this individual over the 2 to 3 years the enamel took to form. Credit: João Zilhão A study by an international team of researchers, led by the University of Southampton, has given an intriguing glimpse of the hunting habits and diets of Neanderthals and other humans living in…

Researchers have identified a gene that is associated with taller noses in humans and found it likely comes from Neanderthals, an extinct hominin group intimately related to our own species.The Painted Skeletons of ÇatalhöyükNeanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) died off around 40,000 years ago, making them the most recent hominin species to go extinct. But, in a way, they are still around, since most humans today are walking around with Neanderthal DNA. Lots of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals may have…

Scientists are rewriting the story of how modern humans first spread out of Africa, and it might contain more run-ins with Europe's Neanderthals than previously recognized.Last year, archaeologists uncovered several lines of evidence to suggest that Homo sapiens was living in Europe a whole 10,000 years before we once thought.That initial group of human migrants might have been the first adventurers to take to the new continent, but they likely weren't the last – nor were they the most successful.A new analysis of…

Professor Sahra Talamo, director of the BRAVHO Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Bologna and first author of the study. Credit: University of Bologna It is called radiocarbon 3.0, the newest method in radiocarbon dating, and promises to reveal valuable new insights about key events in the earliest human history, starting with the interaction between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in Europe. This is shown by the…