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Human ancestors overlooking a bleak, ice-covered landscape. Source: Dr_Microbe / Adobe Stock

Near-Extinction of Our Human Ancestors Revealed by Genetic Research

Approximately one million years ago, the Earth was populated by a few hundred thousand or so ancient human ancestors. But about 900,000 years ago there was a sudden and dramatic crash in this...
The disarticulated remains of an adult male, excavated from a large prehistoric burial pit at Cliffs End Farm, Kent.                     Source: Wessex Archaeology

Study Finds Huge Undetected Migration Wave to Prehistoric Britain

The Bronze Age in Britain lasted from circa 2500 BC to 700 BC. Prehistoric Britain in this period was marked by complex tool making using copper and bronze. Britain’s Bronze Age was also...
Study Reveals Extensive Hyper-Violence in Japan’s Ancient Yayoi Period

Study Reveals Extensive Hyper-Violence in Japan’s Ancient Yayoi Period

A new archaeological study in Japan, published in the August issue of Journal of Archaeological Science , has produced evidence supporting the idea that population growth can lead to an increase in...
A team at Monash University created stunning computer graphics depicting daily life at Angkor Wat in the late 12th century, before the Khmer exodus.

Staggering Statistics Revealed On Angkor Wat and the Khmer Exodus

Angkor Wat was the enormous capital city of the Khmer Empire , located in modern day Cambodia . Now, a new study has attempted to understand the Khmer exodus, whereby the ancient mega-city of almost...
Silhouettes (Public Domain) in front of blood cells (Public Domain) and a gene.

Rh-Negative Blood: An Exotic Bloodline or Random Mutation?

Most people who have the Rh blood type are Rh-positive. There are also instances, however, where people are Rh-Negative. Health problems may occur for the unborn child of a mother with Rh-Negative...
Landscape at the Baikal lake in Siberia, origins of the first Americans? Source: serge-b / Adobe Stock

Found! The Deepest Link Between Siberians and the First Americans

Using human population genetics, ancient pathogen genomics, and isotope analysis, a team of researchers assessed the population history of the Lake Baikal region, finding the deepest connection to...
Original position of the skeletal remains inside submerged cave of Muknal.    Source: Jerónimo Avilés /© 2020 Hubbe et al CC BY 4.0

First Americans Were More Diverse Than Thought

Scientists are claiming current theories “over-simplify” how the Americas were populated. Many of us were once taught that the Americas were void of humans until around 13,000 years ago. Authors like...
A Middle Bronze Age infant from the Lebanese site of Sidon buried in a large jar. (Claude Doumet-Serhal/ CC BY-NC-ND)

Babies Found in Jars Reveal Insights into Ancient Breastfeeding

Historians down the ages have examined the ebb and flow of populations in ancient societies. But most of these examinations have tended to focus on male dominated events – the wars, the politics, and...
Viking migrants in Ireland. Source: Jürgen Hamann / Adobe Stock.

Viking Migrants May Have Saved the Irish From Extinction

A new study could re-write the history of Ireland in the Middle Ages . It shows that the Irish population was in serious decline until the coming of the Vikings . This could change historians’ views...
Roman genetics has revealed the ancestral origins of the Romans. Source: serpeblu / Adobe Stock

Genetic Study Reveals Exactly Who ‘The Romans’ Were

Scholars have been studying Rome for hundreds of years, but it still holds some secrets - for instance, relatively little is known about the ancestral origins of the city's denizens. Now, an...

Viking Invasion Resurrected Ireland's Failing Population

By Rowan McLaughlin / Emma Hannah / The Conversation The early medieval period in Ireland (400-1200 AD) was a time of key importance. It was a turning point in European history and the origin of much...
First Americans, photo of mural in the Page Museum, Los Angeles by Travis S.

Previous Models of Ancient Populations in the Americas were ‘Unrealistically Simple’

A new genetic study of ancient individuals in the Americas and their contemporary descendants finds that two populations that diverged from one another 18,000 to 15,000 years ago remained apart for...
Maoi statues on Easter Island

Demise of ancient Rapa Nui civilization linked to European contact

A 2015 study suggests that European “exploration” of the world resulted in the collapse of yet another indigenous people previously thought to have died out pre-contact: the Rapa Nui of Easter Island...
Reconstruction of a Beaker burial, (National Archaeological Museum of Spain, Madrid).

90% of the Neolithic British Gene Pool Was Replaced by Beaker Immigrants

Scientists once could reconstruct humanity's distant past only from the mute testimony of ancient settlements, bones, and artifacts. No longer. Now there's a powerful new approach for illuminating...
A scientific illustration of what the Upward Sun River camp, where the remains of the ancient child were discovered, would have looked like. Source: Eric Carlson in collaboration with Ben Potter.

Ancient Infant DNA Rewrites the History of Humans Entering North America

Scientists claim that a genetic analysis of the 11,500-year-old remains of an infant girl from Alaska has shed new light on the populating of the Americas. The new finds suggest that the “Last...
Detail of a man depicted on an Uruk vase, Pergamon Museum. The Uruk civilization arose as it expertly adapted to the new climate.

Rising to the Challenge: Innovative Civilizations Advanced Through Climate Change

Beginning around 90,000 years ago, during an interglacial period, Anatomically Modern Humans were able to take advantage of the favorable climatic conditions and migrate throughout Africa and into...
The ‘Vulture-Stone’ at Gȍbekli Tepe.

Was a Comet Swarm Memorialized on an Obelisk at Prehistoric Gȍbekli Tepe?

It’s entered modern lore as a nightmare scenario for planet Earth: A huge asteroid or comet or a swarm of smaller comet fragments hits Earth and causes a major catastrophe. Now, scientists think they...
Why Isn’t This Map in the History Books?

Why Isn’t This Map in the History Books?

By the age of 10, most children in the United States have been taught all 50 states that make up the country. But centuries ago, the land that is now the United States was a very different place...
Imaginative depiction of the Stone Age, by Viktor Vasnetsov.

Just a Few Men Controlled Reproduction in Prehistory and Dominate World Genetics Today

A new genetic study of male ancestry shows there were periods in human prehistory when just a few elite men controlled reproduction. For example, one man about 190,000 years ago was the ancestor of 1...
Khoisan busy barbecuing grasshoppers

Khoisan people of South Africa were once the most populous humans on Earth

The Khoisan, an indigenous population in Namibia, may once have comprised the majority of living humans on the planet, for much of the past 150,000 years. The Khoisan population declined about 22,000...
Neanderthals faced extinction

Neanderthals faced extinction before humans appeared, but recovered

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,...
Tikal - Corn and Mayan Population

New analysis towards ancient Mayan population estimation

Mayans were an advanced civilization that thrived for many centuries going back as far as 800 BC according to new studies . Their advancement spanned sciences, religions, writing system, calendar and...