Traces of an Ancient Human Culture From 40,000 Years Ago Unearthed in China

Scientists discovered remnants of an Old Stone Age culture, less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Beijing, where ancient hominins used a reddish pigment called ochre and crafted tiny, blade-like tools from stone.   The archaeological site, called Xiamabei, offers a rare glimpse into the life of Homo sapiens and now-extinct human relatives who inhabited the region some … Read more

Animal behaviour: Female mammals that suckle another’s young have more offspring

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Suckling piglets suckling a sow Shutterstock / Thuwanan Krueabudda Mammals that share their milk produce more offspring over the course of the year – and the benefits are even greater than those seen when nursing mothers are supported in other ways, such as being provided abundant food or parenting help. The findings suggest … Read more

Neuroscientists Find Part of The Brain That Responds Specifically to Singing

The capacity to engage with and comprehend music spans nearly every human society. While other creatures also display musical behaviors (think bird song, humpback whale calls, or bonobo vocalizations), our musical cognition appears to be evolutionary distinct within the animal kingdom.    A new study has given us more insight into the brain’s relationship with music, finding that … Read more

The Man Who Tasted Words review: Inside the odd world of human senses

A new book by neurologist Guy Leschziner looks at the astonishing ways some people’s brains interpret the world, offering insight into how we all experience reality Humans 23 February 2022 By Carissa Wong Tasting words is one possible outcome of crossed sensory wires in the brain Shutterstock/Brian Mueller The Man Who Tasted Words: Inside the … Read more

We Now Have The Largest Ever Human ‘Family Tree’, With 231 Million Ancestral Lineages

In June 2000, two rival groups of researchers shook hands in the shared success of a milestone in biology – the delivery of a rough draft of the human genome. What started with an incomplete map of our chromosomes has since bloomed into a vast trove of individualized sequences from all corners of the globe, … Read more

Human evolution: Largest ever family tree reveals our species’ history

By Michael Marshall A visualisation of relationships between ancestors and descendants in the genealogy of modern and ancient genomes Wohns et al. (2022) Meet your relatives. A family tree of humanity has been constructed using genetic data from thousands of modern and prehistoric people. The tree gives a view of 2 million years of prehistory … Read more

Oldest human DNA from Africa reveals complex migrations | Science

Africa is the birthplace of our species, but ancient DNA from the continent has so far provided relatively few clues to our history there, partly because researchers have struggled to recover genetic samples that survived the hot, humid climate. Now, an analysis of ancient DNA from six individuals from southeastern Africa offers a glimpse of … Read more

Human genome: A virus has been ‘fossilised’ in our DNA for 106 million years

The remnants of a virus that plagued our mammal ancestors during the age of the dinosaurs have been found lurking in our genomes Life 18 February 2022 By Michael Le Page An artist’s impression of prehistoric animals from the early Cretaceous period MARK P. WITTON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Around 106 million years ago, the DNA of … Read more

It is only human to treat the metaverse with scepticism – here’s why

Meta and Microsoft’s new virtual reality projects have been met with suspicion by many, but history has shown that people are often right to be wary of technological change, says James Ball Technology | Comment 16 February 2022 By James Ball Michelle D’urbano HARDLY a day goes by without some new claim promising to bring … Read more