anthropology

Ancient stashes of animal bones, tools, and other artifacts are often dismissed as archaic garbage heaps, but the deposits provide glimpses of the cultural practices and environmental conditions of past Indigenous settlements.

New techniques have shown that people reached the New World far earlier than the long-standing estimate of 13,000 years ago, but scientists still debate exactly when humans arrived on the continent—and how.

Diverse lines of evidence point to humans’ presence in the New World long before the dawn of Clovis culture. But rewriting this chapter of human history raises many questions about how these early people came to inhabit these continents.

In Chapter 7, “More Remarkable Encounters,” author Gregory Forth relays a story told to him by Tegu, a Lio man who says he found and disposed of a dead organism that might fit the description of an "ape-man."

Do members of Homo floresiensis still inhabit the Indonesian island where their fossils helped identify a new human species fewer than 20 years ago?

See some of the coolest images recently featured by The Scientist

Hundreds of people turned up to show solidarity with three grad students suing the university over a professor’s alleged misconduct, while faculty who had previously spoken in the professor’s favor walk back their support.

The Kenyan fossil finder is known for his discoveries of various Stone Age artifacts and ancient human skulls and skeletons.

Genomic analysis of ancient chum salmon bones and cultural knowledge from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation suggest that people in the Pacific Northwest managed fisheries for thousands of years by harvesting males and releasing females.

Taieb recognized the potential importance of the Hadar Formation, where remains of the hominin Australopithecus afarensis were found only a few years later.

An analysis concludes that pigments were transported into the cave, and the marks were made with intention, though their ultimate meaning remains unknown.

Watch researchers travel to a cave deep in the Amazon to search for clues about the first humans to populate the Americas.

While questions still outnumber answers, new findings from archaeology, genetics, and other disciplines are revealing surprising insights into the early cultures of the most recently populated continent.

An isotopic analysis of eggshell beads dating back more than 30,000 years indicates that they helped build networks that stretched for hundreds of kilometers.

Watch Reading Frames author Peter Rhys-Evans and documentarian Sir David Attenborough discuss the book The Waterside Ape and the impact it may have on our understanding of human evolution.

In Chapter 11, “Surfer’s Ear,” author Peter Rhys-Evans describes a key piece of evidence he says supports his hypothesis of a brief period of semi-aquatic living in early hominins.

A recent book outlines fossil evidence supporting the controversial hypothesis.

Using DNA data, researchers track family dynamics in Europe over the last 500 years and find socioeconomic status is related to married women having a child with a man other than their husband.

The 12-million-year-old bones of a previously unknown species named Danuvius guggenmosi challenge the prevailing view about when and where our ancestors first started walking upright.