A palaeontologist has claimed at a recent meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Texas that Neanderthals cooked stews using skin bags or birch bark trays, according to a National...
Scientific debate regarding the demise of the Neanderthals has been ongoing for decades with many experts proposing factors such as climate change, competition for resources, of lack of intelligence...
Research has shown that modern-day humans and their extinct Neanderthal cousins differ by only a fraction of a percent. So what accounts for the differences that are known to exist between the two?...
Last week, we reported on a new study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology that revealed that Neanderthals were no strangers to good parenting. Their research indicated that Neanderthal...
A team of archaeologists from the Centre for Human Palaeoecology and Evolutionary Origins at the University of York have challenged the traditional perspective that Neanderthal childhood was...
In recent months, numerous DNA studies of ancient humans have all converged on one conclusion – Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred. While for many this may seem unsurprising or even obvious, we...
A study published earlier this year confirmed what scientists have long believed to be the case – the human brain is shrinking. For more than 7 million years the hominid brain has grown increasingly...
Neanderthals were once considered to be subhuman brutes with low intelligence and capable of communicating through little more than a series of grunts. However, research fuelled by a fascination into...
It has long been believed that the piles of mammoth and woolly rhino bones found piled up at the foot of a cliff in Jersey was the result of Neanderthals driving the animals to their deaths over the...
Anew study of mitochondrial DNA sequences published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution has found that Neanderthals came close to extinction during the last Ice Age in Western Europe,...
The last few months has seen the release of several ground-breaking research studies which are beginning to demystify our ancient origins. This included the first ever complete sequencing of a...
This year, huge strides were made in unravelling some of the mysteries of our ancient ancestors. For example, in the first ever analysis of a virtually complete Neanderthal genome, scientists were...
Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which the body does not produce enough insulin or the cells in the body do not use insulin properly. It is an illness which is known to disproportionately affect...
Archaeologists sometimes face the same gruesome discoveries that forensic scientists deal with today, having to unravel the stories behind brutal murders, sacrifices and other dark rituals. Here are...
The results of an extensive analysis of a 50,000-year-old toe bone belonging to a Neanderthal woman, which was unearthed in a cave in 2010, have been long awaited. Now, after much anticipation, the...
Researchers have discovered a 1.5 million-year-old fossil that possesses an anatomical feature that is believed to be vital for making and using complex tools . The implication is that our human...
In yet another revealing study showing that Neanderthals were not that different from modern humans, researchers have found proof that our ancient relatives buried their dead intentionally . Evidence...
A new landmark study has revealed the oldest known human DNA ever to be found, dating back approximately 400,000 years – substantially older than the previous earliest human DNA from a 100,000-year-...
Archaeologists in Italy have found a collapsed rock shelter which has revealed that Neanderthals kept an organised and tidy home with separate spaces for preparing food, sleeping, making tools and...
It seems that Neanderthals passed on more than just their tool-making know how. A new study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry has revealed the discovery of a receptor that allows the...
A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE has revealed a discovery that serves to challenge a number of adamant and self-assured scientists who have refused to believe that pre-human species had...
Nearly a decade ago, a group of cave explorers stumbled upon a large collection of Neanderthal remains in the El Sidrón cave system in north western Spain. In new research presented to the Royal...
A new study presented to the Royal Society meeting on ancient DNA in London last week has revealed a dramatic finding – the genome of one of our ancient ancestors, the Denisovans, contains a segment...
A new study published in the journal Current Biology has discovered a link between viruses present in Neanderthals and Denisovans half a million years ago, and modern diseases such as AIDS and cancer...