This article in the on-line magazine The Conversation explains how, beginning with the collision of India with Asia 20 mya, followed by the opening of the Great Rift Valley, the climate and landscape of East Africa changed from flat wet … Continue reading
A haul of stone blades from a cave in South Africa suggests that early humans were already masters of complex technology more than 70,000 years ago. The journal Nature reports on the new find which suggests that early humans passed … Continue reading
Archeologists from the University of Tübingen have found eight extremely well-preserved spears — an astonishing 300,000 years old, making them the oldest known weapons anywhere. The spears and other artifacts as well as animal remains found at the site demonstrate … Continue reading
Whether and how human populations exposed to the agricultural revolution are still affected by Darwinian selection remains controversial among social scientists, biologists, and the general public. Although methods of studying selection in natural populations are well established, our understanding of … Continue reading
The origin and evolution of language is very hard to study since it leaves no apparent traces, but that does not stop people trying. Evolutionary linguistics is the name of this multi-disciplinary field and one of the main sites is … Continue reading
Although an African origin of the modern human species is generally accepted, the evolutionary processes involved in the speciation, geographical spread, and eventual extinction of archaic humans outside of Africa are much debated. An additional complexity has been the recent … Continue reading
Archeological evidence points to the sudden appearance of strikingly modern behaviour in humans around 50,000 years ago in the form of sophisticated tools and art like painting, sculpture and engravings. A possible reason for this could be the development of … Continue reading