In 2010, a tiny little bone rocked the paleo anthropology world. After running it’s DNA to determine if the bone was Neanderthal or Early Modern Human, researchers were stunned to learn it belonged to a different human group altogether – that we previously knew NOTHING about. What’s more, Denisovans had […]

MORE NEANDERTHAL CANNIBALISM! Two recent research papers document that Neanderthal remains from El Sidron in Spain and BMG Cave in France show evidence of cannibalism by other Neanderthals. Dating at both sites tie to times of rapid shifts in climate that may have lessened the availability of large game animals […]

Okay, we know about our hookups with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Europeans and Asians all carry 1-5% Neanderthal genes, and some Southeast Asians are 6% Denisovan. But now we find there are two more skeletons (no pun intended) in our closet (okay the pun WAS intended). Two unknown species have been […]

Remains of a huge mammoth were recently found on a soybean farm in Michigan. Dating indicates that the mammoth lived more than 15,000 years ago. As exciting as the find was, it was even more exciting to learn that humans may have butchered the beast. University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel […]

Two 120,000-year-old European Neanderthals were more closely related to Neanderthals that inhabited Europe tens of thousands of years subsequently than they were to the similarly-aged Altai Neanderthal from Siberia. But get this – the two older individuals were quite similar genetically to the Neanderthal mom of the recently-discovered 90,000-year-old Denisovan […]

Although this article has some errors (can you find any?), there are some very interesting parts to it. It correctly discusses the Neanderthal male-modern human female infertility, and mentions that Neanderthals were never very numerous, with estimates of peak population as low as 3500 females. As for the errors – […]

You have to love an article with the subtitle, “SOME HUMANS JUST COULDN’T RESIST INTER-SPECIES SEX.” The main thing I like in this article is the map that shows the timing and our likely migration pathways as we dispersed into all parts of the world. Approximately 50,000 years ago, modern […]

BUILT 7000 YEARS BEFORE STONEHENGE, Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is awe-inspiring. Covering at least 22 acres, it features more than 200 T-shaped, image-covered, stone pillars up to 20 feet (6m) tall and weighing 22 tons (most of the ~100 stones at Stonehenge are of similar size, with a few being […]

In percentage terms, WORLD WAR ZERO WAS FAR WORSE than WW1 and WW2 combined, and the bad guys seem to have won. Remember the Beach Boy song Surf City, that had the line, “Two girls for every boy?” Well, paleo genetic studies have detected a severe Y chromosome bottleneck over […]

In the late 1600’s, he would go to the Dussel river, which runs through western Germany, to get inspiration for his poems. One of his 60 poems became famous, and to this day is commonly sung as a hymn in churches. People loved him during his short life, and in […]