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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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Hybrid

Top: Sumerian chariots drawn by hybrid animals known as kungas, illustrated on the Standard of Ur (© Thierry Grange) Bottom left: Hybrid animals known as ‘kungas’ found at Umm el-Marra site, Syria (Glenn Schwartz/John Hopkins University). Bottom right: South of Gobekli Tepe, Turkry, D enclosure T pillars. (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin).		Source: CNRS

Earliest-known Human Engineered Hybrid Animals Identified in Mesopotamia

A super-powerful animal known as the ‘kunga’ was the first-known human-engineered hybrid of two animal species, reports a new study published in Science Advances . The researchers conducted a genome-...
Minotaur

Myth of the Minotaur: The Making of a Monster

One of the most intriguing myths of ancient Greece is that of the Minotaur on the island of Crete, the bull-headed human-animal hybrid of Greek mythology. The story of the bestial Minotaur trapped in...
Lapedo Child

The Controversial Lapedo Child – A Neanderthal / Human Hybrid?

Buried for millennia in the rear of a rock-shelter in the Lapedo Valley 85 miles north of Lisbon, Portugal, archaeologists uncovered the bones of a four-year-old child, comprising the first complete...
Humans and Neanderthals Have More in Common than Polar and Brown Bears

Humans and Neanderthals Have More in Common than Polar and Brown Bears

Ancient humans and Neanderthals, and Denisovans, were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a...
Human-Neanderthal fertility gene discovered in recent study. Source: Dimid / Adobe Stock.

Neanderthal Gene Makes Women More Fertile

Are you in the “one in three” group of European women with the special Neanderthal gene required for fewer pregnancy issues? The revelatory new DNA study by researchers at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft...
Young chimpanzee. On Right - Human Embryo. Source: Left, Public Domain; Right, CC BY-SA 2.0.

World’s First Human-Monkey Hybrid Created In China

A team of American and Spanish scientists relocated to China to jump European laws and they have created the world’s first human-monkey embryo, in the next step in the controversial breeding of...
Key images from the top human origins stories of 2018: Sophisticated tools and large, all-purpose handaxes from the Olorgesailie Basin in Kenya. (Human Origins Program, Smithsonian) Drawing of a Neandertal mother and a Denisovan father with their child, a girl, at Denisova Cave in Russia. (Petra Korlević) Neanderthal cave art in La Pasiega, Spain (C.D Standish, A.W.G. Pike and D.L. Hoffmann) Photograph of a footprint beside digitally-enhanced image of the same feature. (Duncan McLaren) The left hemi-maxilla

Five Things We Learned About Our Human Origins in 2018

The question of what makes us human is one that is fascinating to most of us, and for many the answer lies in looking back to our roots as a species. 2018 was a fantastic year for learning new and...
Drawing of a Neandertal mother and a Denisovan father with their child, a girl, at Denisova Cave in Russia.

Neanderthal Mother, Denisovan Father! Concrete Proof that Hybrid Hominin Families Did Exist

Together with their sister group the Neanderthals, Denisovans are the closest extinct relatives of currently living humans. "We knew from previous studies that Neanderthals and Denisovans must have...
A Match Made in Greek Legend: What Happened When Heracles Met the Snake Woman?

A Match Made in Greek Legend: What Happened When Heracles Met the Snake Woman?

While completing his Twelve Labors, the Greek hero Heracles (a.k.a. Hercules) got up to tons of mischief—and that included bedding a lot of women. In the process, he fathered a whole host of...
Ancient Egyptian relief carving of a dog.

Ritual and Burial: The Strange and Elaborate Ways Humans Prepared Animals for the Afterlife

The practice of animal burial is one that dates back to prehistoric epochs. Many cultures around the globe have buried animals for various reasons: sentimentality, religious rituals, superstition,...
Celtic burial with hybrid-animal bone arrangements

Excavation reveals bizarre Celtic burial with hybrid-animal bone arrangements

The Celtic inhabitants of a small, industrious Iron Age settlement in Dorset, England, are believed to have sacrificed a young woman by slitting her throat, before burying her body in a curious...
50,000-year-old Skull

50,000-year-old Skull May Show Human-Neanderthal Hybrids Originated in Levant, not Europe as Thought

A 55,000-year-old skull found at Manot Cave in northern Israel is shedding light on the origins and migrations of ancient humanity. The skull, suggested to be evidence of a pairing between...
Sasquatch - Bigfoot

Another Human Hybrid? The Controversy Continues One Year Later

Last year, we reported on the results of genetic research which revealed that the genome of one of our ancient ancestors, the Denisovans, contains a segment of DNA that seems to have come from...
Neanderthal Hybrid

Human-Neanderthal Hybrids discovered

In a recent scientific paper, a skeleton found in Italy is suggested to be a Neanderthal-human hybrid. Further analysis is to be done, but if correct then it will prove that humans and Neanderthals...