Humans news stories

A concentrated cannabis extract has shown “remarkable” potential to kill off the most dangerous type of skin cancer. The study was published in Cells.

Following the arrival of the first farmers in Scandinavia 5,900 years ago, the hunter-gatherer population was wiped out within a few generations, according to a new study from Lund University in Sweden, among others

University of Wyoming archaeology Professor Todd Surovell and his team of collaborators have discovered a tube-shaped bead made of bone that is about 12,940 years old. See the study here.

The wall may be among the oldest hunting structures on Earth and one of the largest Stone Age structures ever found in Europe. The study about the discovery was published Monday (Feb. 12) in the journal PNAS.

An ancient bone dating back thousands of years is the first solid evidence that humans in Europe were collecting and storing a powerful and dangerous drug. The research has been published in Antiquity.

A study published in Nature Communications has challenged this narrative, that a dramatic and sudden “revolution” called the Middle-Upper Paleolithic cultural transition occurred instead implying that this “revolution” was more of a gradual and complex process.

I wasn’t open to experiences and possibilities outside the realm of what was considered “normal,” but that was all about to change.

“Our research examines the relationship between humans and their environments in the seasonal tropics. One crucial aspect is the exploration of the social structure of these prehistoric communities, as well as explaining their connections with other pre-Neolithic, Neolithic and post-Neolithic groups in this region”.

The idea that two different human species, Homo sapiens (us) and Neanderthals, co-existed in western Eurasia 50–40,000 years ago has long captured the imagination of academics and the public alike.

Could LSD, Ketamine and ayahuasca revolutionise mental health treatment? The Brave New World podcast speaks to experts David Nutt and Amanda Feilding about the psychedelic renaissance. (10 min clip).

Image from: Justin Cooke (Wiki Commons)

Scholars of antiquity believe they are on the brink of a new era of understanding after researchers armed with artificial intelligence read the hidden text of a charred scroll that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago.

Recent research…points to rapid development in the Middle East, in the region known as the Fertile Crescent. The innovations that came about there subsequently spread, and were adopted by hunter gatherer communities in the Anatolian peninsula (present day Turkey).

New research suggests that low doses of MDMA can help to reduce the challenging effects associated with psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin, the active component in magic mushrooms. The findings, published in Scientific Reports, shed new light on the effects of “candy flipping” and “hippy flipping”…

New evidence from the fossilised skulls of a 6-million-year-old ape called Lufengpithecus has revealed important clues about how our quadrupedal ancestors made the transition to walking on two legs. The analysis is published in the journal Innovation.

Scientists are finding ever-earlier examples of artistic expression in the archaeological record that reshape what we know about the cognitive abilities of our archaic human relatives, such as Neanderthals.