Beyond bones & stones
Ian Towle of John Moores University and colleagues published an interesting paper in the International Journal of Paleopathology that illuminates early hominins had similar dental issues as we do now. Dental erosion from brushing too vigorously as well as fizzy drinks, fruit juice, wine, and other acidic food and drink can leave shallow, shiny, lesions... Continue Reading →
A pair of 13,000-year-old incisors found contain the earliest known use of fillings – made out of bitumen, or asphalt/cement. This earliest example of dentistry we know to date. The teeth, two upper central incisors belonged to one person and were discovered at the Riparo Fredian site near Lucca in northern Italy. The results were... Continue Reading →
Over at the Washington Post, there's an interesting article documenting how two Amazonian Awá tribeswomen have escaped the modern life after being forced out of their traditional life styles. The Awá are one of many endangered tribes, threatened out of existence due to deforestation and modernization. Theye estimated to be about 450 people who now mostly... Continue Reading →
Researchers from the University of Cambridge Leverhulme Center for Human Evolutionary Studies have published the findings of the remains of 27 hunter–gatherers were unearthed in a remote part of Kenya called Nataruk near Lake Turkana in 2012 —many of whom, based on the startling state of their bony remnants, died horrifically violent deaths, in this... Continue Reading →
A team of French geologists and paleontologists and led by Jean-Michel Geneste, published in PLoS One that they believe that they have identified the oldest known images of erupting volcanoes, daubed in red and white pigments over other cave paintings in south-eastern France cave site, Chauvet, around 36,000 years ago. The curiously abstract images were first found... Continue Reading →
Circular burial pits like the one shown above were common during the Neolithic period in Central and Western Europe some 6,500 to 5,500 years ago. But rarely do graves from this time hint at so much brutality. This one, a 6.5 foot (2 meter) deep circular pit excavated in Bergheim, France, includes several complete human... Continue Reading →
A study published in Nature today announces the 2011 discovery of Australopithecus deyiremeda a hominid that lived between 3.3 and 3.5 million years ago. The species is represented by a maxilla, mandible and dentition found in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia about 22 miles from the spot where the remains of Australopithecus afarensis were... Continue Reading →
At last week's Biology of Genomes meeting in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, Qiaomei Fu, a palaeogenomicist at Harvard Medical School, raised the concept that modern humans were mating with Neanderthals right near the time they became extinct. She and her team estimate that 5–11% of the genome of the 40,000 year old mandible from... Continue Reading →
A study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology has for the first time analysed the fragments of three individuals found between '67 and '80 at the French site, Marillac, dating back 57,600 years ago. These are an incomplete diaphysis of a right radius, another of a left fibula and the majority of a right... Continue Reading →
