Humans news stories

Study Reveals How Ancient Humans Escaped Climate Extinction 900,000 Years Ago
18th March 2024 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Humans

According to the results of a genomics study published last year, modern humanity’s ancestors were reduced to a breeding population of barely 1,300 individuals in a devastating bottleneck that brought us to the very brink of annihilation. Now, a new study has found that a mass migration of humans out of Africa occurred at the same time.

Psychedelics are about to become a casualty of Oregon’s opioid crisis
18th March 2024 | vox.com | Humans, Misc.

Four years ago, the state decriminalized all drugs. Now it’s trying to course-correct — and might make a mistake in the process.

Psilocybin therapy alters prefrontal and limbic brain circuitry in alcohol use disorder
18th March 2024 | psypost.org | Humans, Misc.

A recent study published in Scientific Reports reveals new insights into how psilocybin-assisted therapy modifies brain function in people with alcohol use disorder (AUD). These changes suggest a potential mechanism behind the therapy’s success and could point toward new avenues for treatment.

Ancient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning—with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them
15th March 2024 phys.org | Ancient, Humans, Tech

A groundbreaking announcement for the recovery of lost ancient literature was recently made. Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometers southeast of Naples, Italy.

Did ‘alien’ debris hit Earth? Startling claim sparks row at scientific meeting
15th March 2024 | nature.com | Earth, Humans, Space

The debate occurred at a packed session featuring Hairuo Fu, a graduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is a member of the team that found the fragments…Many scientists have said they don’t want to spend much time analysing and refuting these claims.

New research sheds light on psychedelics’ complex relationship to psychosis and mania
15th March 2024 | psypost.org | Humans, Misc.

In a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry, researchers led by Otto Simonsson of Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience have cast new light on the controversial topic of psychedelic drug use among adolescents.

Human activity on Curaçao began centuries earlier than previously believed, study finds
13th March 2024 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

Findings from the team, published in The Journal of Coastal and Island Archaeology, place human occupation of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean, as far back as 5735–5600 BCE—up to 850 years earlier than previously thought.

Migration of hominins out of Africa may have been driven by the first major glaciation of the Pleistocene
13th March 2024 phys.org | Ancient, Earth, Humans

A pair of planetary scientists… have found evidence that the exodus of hominins out of Africa approximately 1 million years ago may have been driven by the first major glaciation of the Pleistocene. See the study here.

Earliest Direct Evidence of Body Piercings Uncovered in Neolithic Graves
13th March 2024 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Humans

Found in the graves of a Neolithic settlement in south-east Türkiye, they could represent the earliest convincing examples of body piercing. The study has been published in Antiquity.

Indigenous Australian fire-stick farming began at least 11,000 years ago
12th March 2024 | nature.com | Ancient, Humans

Indigenous Australians have been using fire to shape the country’s northern ecosystems for at least 11,000 years, according to charcoal preserved in the sediment of a sinkhole. The study was published on 11 March in Nature Geoscience.

‘Larger than Everest’ comet could become visible to naked eye this month
12th March 2024 | theguardian.com | Earth, Humans, Space

A comet that is larger than Mount Everest could become visible to the naked eye in the coming weeks as it continues its first visit to the inner solar system in more than 70 years, say astronomers.

3,300-year-old tablet from mysterious Hittite Empire describes catastrophic invasion of four cities
12th March 2024 | livescience.com | Ancient, Humans

Researchers think a sacred language inscribed in cuneiform on the tablet suggest the Hittite king visited or lived where the tablet was found in Turkey.

Oldest human presence in Europe found in Ukraine
8th March 2024 cosmosmagazine.com | Ancient, Humans

The oldest firmly dated evidence of human ancestors in Europe has been found at a 1.4-million-year-old site in Ukraine. The findings are detailed in a study published in Nature.

Astronomers detect ‘waterworld with a boiling ocean’ in deep space
8th March 2024 | theguardian.com | Humans, Space

Astronomers have observed a distant planet that could be entirely covered in a deep water ocean, in findings that advance the search for habitable conditions beyond Earth.

Ancient humans used cave in Spain as burial spot for 4 millennia, 7,000 bones reveal
8th March 2024 | livescience.com | Ancient, Humans

Starting about 7,000 years ago, ancient humans in what is now northeastern Spain buried their dead deep in a cave, creating a necropolis of sorts that spans about four millennia and now contains more than 7,000 bones, according to archaeologists. And there are signs it may have been used for tens of thousands of years before that.

New timeline for East Asian hominins’ tool-making revealed
6th March 2024 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

A new study from the Nihewan basin of China has revealed that hominins who possessed advanced knapping abilities equivalent to Mode 2 technological features occupied East Asia as early as 1.1 million years ago (Ma), which is 0.3 Ma earlier than the date associated with the first handaxes found in East Asia. This suggests that Mode 2 hominins dispersed into East Asia much earlier than previously thought.

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