Human Evolution

[Jo Bowyer]

5000 years of dietary variations of prehistoric farmers in the Great Hungarian Plain

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0197214

[Jo Bowyer]

How Do We Explain ‛Autistic Traits’ in European Upper Palaeolithic Art?

https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpd...-2018-0016.pdf

[Jo Bowyer]

Cultural hitchhiking and competition between patrilineal kin groups explain the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04375-6

[Jo Bowyer]

In ancient boulders, new clues about the story of human migration to the Americas

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0530144144.htm

[Jo Bowyer]

Cranium of a Four Million Year Old Hominin Shows Similarities to That of Modern Humans

https://neurosciencenews.com/hominin...volution-9444/

“Our study revealed that the cranium of the Jacovec specimen and of the Ausralopithecus specimens from Sterkfontein in general was thick and essentially composed of spongy bone,” says Beaudet. “This large portion of spongy bone, also found in our own cranium, may indicate that blood flow in the brain of Australopithecus may have been comparable to us, and/or that the braincase had an important role in the protection of the evolving brain.”

[Jo Bowyer]

Why the Neanderthals may have been more sophisticated hunters than we thought – new study

https://theconversation.com/why-the-...%20new%20study

[Jo Bowyer]

Marauding Vikings left lasting impact on Irish DNA

https://www.natureindex.com/country-...7f4a80ba045212

[Jo Bowyer]

Migrants have crossed the Mediterranean for centuries – but they used to head from north to south

https://theconversation.com/migrants...h%20to%20south

The racist rhetoric that has found fertile ground in a public debate about migration in Europe tends to centre around two flawed assumptions: that migration is a new phenomenon; and that the Mediterranean has been historically “divided”, with people moving from the poor southern shores to those of the prosperous north.

Migration is central to the history of the Mediterranean and there is a rich tradition of contact between its two shores. In the early modern era, between roughly the 16th and 18th centuries, mobility was intense and varied, in a similar way to today.

[Jo Bowyer]

Our human ancestors walked on two feet but their children still had a backup plan

Most complete foot of ancient human child ever


https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0704151911.htm

In studying the fossil foot's remarkably preserved anatomy, the research team strived to reconstruct what life would have been like years ago for this toddler and how our ancestors survived. They examined what the foot would have been used for, how it developed and what it tells us about human evolution. The fossil record indicates that these ancient ancestors were quite good at walking on two legs. "Walking on two legs is a hallmark of being human. But, walking poorly in a landscape full of predators is a recipe for extinction," explained DeSilva.

At 2½ years old, the Dikika child was already walking on two legs, but there are hints in the fossil foot that she was still spending time in the trees, hanging on to her mother as she foraged for food. Based on the skeletal structure of the child's foot, specifically, the base of the big toe, the kids probably spent more time in the trees than adults. "If you were living in Africa 3 million years ago without fire, without structures, and without any means of defense, you'd better be able get up in a tree when the sun goes down," added DeSilva. "These findings are critical for understanding the dietary and ecological adaptation of these species and are consistent with our previous research on other parts of the skeleton especially, the shoulder blade," Alemseged noted.

[Jo Bowyer]

Foot fossil pegs hominid kids as upright walkers 3.3 million years ago
But a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis’ foot still had some apelike features

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-newsletter-v2

“The overall anatomy of this child’s foot is strikingly humanlike,” says study director Jeremy DeSilva, a paleoanthropologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover.

But the foot retains some hints of apelike traits. Compared with children today, for example, the A. afarensis child — only about 3 years old at the time of death — had toes more capable of holding onto objects or anyone who was carrying her, the team found. Those toes included a somewhat apelike, grasping big toe. “Young children having some ability to grasp mom could have made a big energetic difference for Australopithecus afarensis adults as they traveled,” DeSilva says.

[Jo Bowyer]

Did Our Species Evolve in Subdivided Populations across Africa, and Why Does It Matter?

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-...347(18)30117-4


Highlights

The view that Homo sapiens evolved from a single region/population within Africa has been given primacy in studies of human evolution.

However, developments across multiple fields show that relevant data are no longer consistent with this view.

We argue instead that Homo sapiens evolved within a set of interlinked groups living across Africa, whose connectivity changed through time.

Genetic models therefore need to incorporate a more complex view of ancient migration and divergence in Africa.

We summarize this new framework emphasizing population structure, outline how this changes our understanding of human evolution, and identify new research directions.We challenge the view that our species, Homo sapiens, evolved within a single population and/or region of Africa. The chronology and physical diversity of Pleistocene human fossils suggest that morphologically varied populations pertaining to the H. sapiens clade lived throughout Africa. Similarly, the African archaeological record demonstrates the polycentric origin and persistence of regionally distinct Pleistocene material culture in a variety of paleoecological settings. Genetic studies also indicate that present-day population structure within Africa extends to deep times, paralleling a paleoenvironmental record of shifting and fractured habitable zones. We argue that these fields support an emerging view of a highly structured African prehistory that should be considered in human evolutionary inferences, prompting new interpretations, questions, and interdisciplinary research directions.

[Jo Bowyer]

Stone tools put early hominids in China 2.1 million years ago

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...-newsletter-v2

Members of the human genus, Homo, left Africa far earlier than thought, reaching what’s now central China by around 2.12 million years ago, a new study finds.

Some stone tools unearthed at China’s Shangchen site date to roughly 250,000 years before what was previously the oldest Eurasian evidence of Homo, say geologist Zhaoyu Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Guangzhou and his colleagues. Toolmakers visited the Chinese spot on and off until as late as 1.26 million years ago, the scientists report online July 12 in Nature. No hominid fossils have been found at Shangchen.

Until now, the Dmanisi site, in the western Asia nation of Georgia, had yielded the oldest hominid remains outside Africa. Homo erectus fossils unearthed at Dmanisi date to between 1.85 million and 1.77 million years ago (SN: 11/16/13, p. 6).

“An early form of Homo probably made the Shangchen artifacts, but it’s too early to say if that was H. erectus,” says coauthor Robin Dennell, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in England.

After learning how to make stone flakes sharp enough to slice meat off animals’ carcasses around 2.6 million years ago, African hominids may have had the survival skills to fan out into Asia and reach Shangchen by 2.1 million years ago, Dennell says.

[Jo Bowyer]

Ötzi loaded up on fatty food before he died

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...=Editors_Picks

[Jo Bowyer]

Prehistoric people started to spread domesticated bananas across the world 6,000 years ago

https://theconversation.com/prehisto...%20years%20ago

In a globalised world, we routinely move enormous quantities of food around the planet in trade and for aid. Many countries, including the UK, would struggle to feed their populations without food imports. Most people are used to being able to buy a wide range of produce which domestic farmers would struggle – or find impossible – to grow. A typical example is the banana, once a prized exotic novelty, but now a staple in many country’s supermarkets.

The first people for whom we have evidence arrived at Fahien Cave perhaps as early as 46,000 years ago and used it for shelter regularly but intermittently thereafter.

Phytolith evidence tells us that from the beginning they were eating and using a variety of wild plants, including breadfruit, durians, canarium nuts, species of palm and bamboo – and wild bananas. Even today, the leaves, flowers, fruits, stems and rhizomes of the two wild banana species on Sri Lanka are still used. Ethnographic observations suggest uses as diverse as plates, food wrapping, medicines, stimulants, textiles, clothing, packaging, paper-making, crafts, ornaments and also in ceremonial, magic and ritual activities.

Ancient DNA studies suggest that movement of populations and interconnection between distant peoples in the ancient world was remarkably common. These early travellers seem, on several occasions, to have carried food plants with them, especially starchy staple crops. For instance, in an earlier paper, we suggested the carriage of swamp sago from New Guinea to Borneo about 10,000 years ago. This would have required a sea voyage of more than 2,000km, but the durable seeds of this important food plant could have been carried easily.

However, because domesticated bananas are sterile, reproduction has to be vegetative, so cuttings or whole plants must have been carried. The transport of banana plants or cuttings between Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka would have been fraught with difficulty, as it most likely happened in open canoes – an amazing feat, even if the journey took many voyages over many years.

These heroic journeys also occurred on land. For instance Martin Jones’ FOGLIP Project has charted the spread of millets, wheat and barley across Asia from the sixth millennium BC. The ancient dispersal of manioc from central South America to Mexico and of maize in the opposite direction has also been suggested.

What does all this indicate? Global connections and exchange may be perceived as part of the modern world – but it is becoming increasingly apparent that these tendencies are deeply rooted in our prehistory.

[Jo Bowyer]

Chimpanzee ‘nests’ shed light on the origins of humanity

https://theconversation.com/chimpanz...0of%20humanity

[Jo Bowyer]

Study Challenges Evolution of How Humans Acquired Language

https://neurosciencenews.com/genetics-language-9658/

“In the past five years, several archaic hominin genomes have been sequenced, and FOXP2 was among the first genes examined because it was so important and supposedly human-specific,” said first author Elizabeth Atkinson of Stony Brook University and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. “But this new data threw a wrench in the 2002 paper’s timeline, and it turns out that the FOXP2 mutations we thought to be human-specific, aren’t.”

“We’re interested in figuring out, on a genetic level, what makes us human,” Henn said. “This paper shows how important it is to use a diverse set of humans in studying the evolution of all of us as a species. There’s a severe Eurocentric bias in a lot of medical and other scientific studies, but we’ve found a scientific impetus for emphasizing diversity and inclusivity in data collection because it clearly yields more accurate results.”