Humans news stories

You can now explore Rano Raraku, one of the major quarries on Easter Island, from the comfort of your home. A research team including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York has created the first-ever high-resolution 3D model of the quarry, providing people worldwide with a glimpse of the island, including almost 1,000 of its iconic moai statues.

For more than 4,000 years, Indigenous Americans painted rock art depicting their conception of the universe in what is now southwestern Texas and northern Mexico, a new study finds. The study was published Wednesday (Nov. 26) in the journal Science Advances.

Nearly a century ago, scientists proposed that a mysterious invisible substance they named dark matter clumped around galaxies and formed a cosmic web across the universe. Details are published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

It is a scientific consensus that water once flowed on Mars, and that it had a denser atmosphere, meaning that it was once habitable. New findings published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets indicate that Mars may have been habitable much longer than expected.

The study of an assemblage of Neanderthal human bones discovered in the Troisième caverne of Goyet (Belgium) has brought to light selective cannibalistic behavior primarily targeting female adults and children between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago.The research has just been published in Scientific Reports.

A stunning discovery in Southeast Asia is rewriting everything we thought we knew about early human migration. New evidence reveals a hidden chapter of ancient maritime mastery—thousands of years ahead of its time…These discoveries, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, suggest that maritime innovation may have emerged independently and much earlier than previously thought.

A new study led by the University of Oxford has found evidence that kissing evolved in the common ancestor of humans and other large apes around 21 million years ago, and that Neanderthals likely engaged in kissing too. The findings are published in Evolution and Human Behavior.

A 12,000-year-old clay figurine unearthed in northern Israel, depicting a woman and a goose, is the earliest known human-animal interaction figurine…The study, published in PNAS, combines advanced analytical techniques to reconstruct both the artifact’s composition and its cultural significance.

The “perfectly preserved” nasal cavity of Altamura Man is unique in the entire human fossil record, according to a study published Monday (Nov. 17) in the journal PNAS. These rare and fragile bones can therefore contribute important information to the question of whether Neanderthals’ faces were adapted to cold climates.

The story depicted on the ˁAin Samiya goblet—an 8 cm tall silver vessel from the Intermediate Bronze Age (c. 2650–1950 BCE)—might actually represent a different myth than originally thought, according to a new study.

The crater formed during the Holocene epoch when the last ice age ended roughly 11,700 years ago…The evidence confirming its extraterrestrial origin lies in the details. Within the granite, researchers found numerous quartz fragments exhibiting planar deformation features and microscopic characteristics that serve as geological fingerprints of impact events.

Dogs have been part of human societies across Eurasia for at least 20,000 years, accompanying us through many social and cultural upheavals. The new study by an international team was published in the journal Science.

A previously unknown Indigenous population lived in central Argentina for nearly 8,500 years, a new genetic study finds. The study was published Nov. 5 in the journal Nature.

“Surprisingly, we found that individuals in the Japanese archipelago from the prehistoric Jomon period [from around 16,000 to 3,000 years ago] carried the least Denisovan ancestry among ancient and present-day East Asians,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Oct. 20 in the journal Current Biology.

The study contradicts the prevailing idea that each community produced its own pottery using materials available in its immediate surroundings, and reinforces the idea of a complex and hierarchical social and economic system. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Despite research indicating migration into the area over 12,000 years ago, there is currently little DNA research that describes the lineages associated with the area. To remedy this problem, a group of DNA researchers conducted a genome-wide study on ancient individuals from the region. The new research is published in Nature.