Humans news stories

Knowledge about the first settlements of Homo sapiens in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic has been significantly advanced with a new study led by Edgar Téllez, a researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH). The findings are published in the journal Quaternary Science Advances.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Bern showed for the first time how the chemical composition of primordial Earth was complete three million years after it formed (ca. 4.5 billion years ago). Their results imply that the ingredients for life (water, carbon compounds, sulfur, etc.) were introduced later, likely by an impact.

A single dose of LSD eased anxiety symptoms for many folks and the benefits lasted up to three months, a new study reports. The findings were published Sept. 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Cultural ideas are inextricably entwined with the people who do science, the questions they ask, the assumptions they hold and the conclusions they land on.

Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a multicoloured three-dimensional wall that could date back 4,000 years, in an unprecedented find that has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas.

Classical psychedelics act on a surprisingly broad range of brain receptors, not just the serotonin receptor long associated with their hallucinogenic effects, according to new research published in the journal Neuron.

This discovery, published in the journal PLOS One, offers new insights into the complexity of early Homo sapiens’ interaction with plant resources—not only as food but also for more sophisticated uses such as dyeing and medicine. Indeed, Isatis tinctoria L., has a long history of use in both dyeing and healing.

A new fossil find in the Republic of Georgia is expanding our understanding of the earliest humans to leave Africa. The discovery, announced July 31 by the Georgian National Agency for Cultural Heritage Preservation, sheds new light on the evolution of our genus, Homo, and “is expected to reveal the reasons for the migration of early hominins out of Africa,”…

Results showed that a single dose of psilocybin had robust antidepressant effects in these individuals. Fifty percent demonstrated sustained depression reduction, while 43% experienced a sustained reduction in anxiety. The research was published in the journal Cancer.

Their findings, published this week (Aug. 25) in Nature Communications, show that migration of farming groups was the dominant factor, while cultural adoption by hunter-gatherers only played a minimal role.

Tiny stone artifacts discovered in Uzbekistan may be the oldest known arrowheads, a new study suggests.

The skull of a small child who lived and died many millennia ago represents the oldest direct evidence to date of the prolonged mingling between anatomically modern humans and our closely related cousins, the Neanderthals. The research has been published in L’Anthropologie.

Around 12,000 years ago, a man was shot by an arrow with an exotic stone tip in what is now Vietnam. He survived the initial injury but likely succumbed to infection, a new analysis of his remains suggests.

Many key crops, such as wheat, barley, and legumes, have been traced to the Fertile Crescent and the harvesting of wild grains by a people known as the Natufians, roughly 10,000 years ago. Now, a new study by an interdisciplinary research team shows that, by at least 9,200 years ago, people as far north and east as southern Uzbekistan were harvesting wild barley using sickle blades as well.

Even the words we use to express our connection to nature are dwindling as the demands of modern life isolate us from the non-human world, according to a new study by psychologist Miles Richardson of the University of Derby in the UK. The research was published in Earth.

The research, published in PLOS One, proposes that the beginnings of urban civilisation in ancient Mesopotamia were driven by the dynamic relationships between rivers, tides and sediments at the head of the Persian Gulf.