When human ancestors began scavenging for meat regularly on the open plains of Africa about 2.5 million years ago, they apparently took more than their fair share of flesh. Within a million years, most of the large carnivores in the region—from saber-toothed cats to bear-size otters—had gone extinct, leaving just a few “hypercarnivores” alive, according…
If early humans had been vegans we might all still be living in caves, Swedish researchers suggested in an article recently published in the journal PLoS ONE. When a mother eats meat, her breast-fed child’s brain grows faster and she is able to wean the child at an earlier age, allowing her to have more…
Working together can hasten brain evolution, according to a new computer simulation. When programmed to navigate challenging cooperative tasks, the artificial neural networks set up by scientists to serve as mini-brains “learned” to work together, evolving the virtual equivalent of boosted brainpower over generations. The findings support a long-held theory that social interactions may have…
Scientists say they have new evidence that our ancestors were using fire as early as a million years ago. the evidence takes the form of ash and bone fragments recovered from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. The research team told the journal PNAS that the sediments suggest frequent, controlled fires were lit on the site….
Unthinkable as it may be, humanity, every last person, could someday be wiped from the face of the Earth. We have learned to worry about asteroids and supervolcanoes, but the more-likely scenario, according to Nick Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at Oxford, is that we humans will destroy ourselves. Bostrom, who directs Oxford’s Future of…
Neanderthals in Western Europe started disappearing long before Homo sapiens showed up, suggesting that cold weather, and not cold-hearted humans, might have been responsible for the species’ ultimate demise. The findings, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, suggest that at least one population of Neanderthals was vulnerable to climate change. The researchers found…
Fossil foot hints that tree-dwellers lived alongside species built for walking.
The memories of a World War II-era Marine have renewed hopes of solving one of the greatest archaeological mysteries — the whereabouts of the lost Peking Man fossils, South African and Chinese scientists said. Renowned South African paleontologist Lee Berger and two Chinese colleagues say the fossils may be lying under a parking lot in…
Humans hunted Australia’s giant vertebrates to extinction about 40,000 years ago, the latest research published in Science has concluded. The cause of the widespread extinction has provoked much debate, with climate change being one theory. However, scientists studied dung samples from 130,000 and 41,000 years ago, when humans arrived, and concluded hunting and fire were…
Scientists in China have found what may be a new species of human. Fossils show a group of people with similarities to and differences from modern humans.