As the former location of a Civil War outhouse and POW facility to an antebellum furniture maker and ice factory, a patch of dirt in downtown Tuscaloosa has hidden a wealth of Southern history within its layers. Excavations by a University of Alabama archaeological research team is further revealing some of the country’s rich past.
George Washington University researcher, in upcoming Nature study, collected motion data from baseball players to uncover why humans are such good throwers.
A team of Washington and Lee University archaeologists have uncovered a significant site on the university's campus that has yielded thousands of artifacts from the early 1800s and is offering a glimpse into the lives of students of the era.
Lisa Overholtzer, an assistant anthropology professor at Wichita State University, is researching whether the Aztecs who conquered the city of Xaltocan in ancient Mexico around the year 1435 changed the genetic makeup of those who lived there.
Most apes eat leaves and fruits from trees and shrubs. New studies spearheaded by the University of Utah show that human ancestors expanded their menu 3.5 million years ago, adding tropical grasses and sedges to an ape-like diet and setting the stage for our modern diet of grains, grasses, and meat and dairy from grazing animals.
People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive and a sign of a potential mate's youth and fertility. But a new research study shows that the Karo Batak living in rural villages in Indonesia deem women with big feet as more appealing, suggesting that culture – not just genetics – plays a role in deciding what makes a mate attractive.
A new study, led by a Binghamton University anthropologist and published this week by the National Academy of Sciences, could shed new light on the the earliest existence of humans. The study analyzed the tiny ear bones, the malleus, incus and stapes, from two species of early human ancestor in South Africa.
A recent Baylor University research study has shed new light on the diet and food acquisition strategies of some the earliest human ancestors in Africa.
Ancient DNA recovered from a series of skeletons in central Germany up to 7500 years old has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe.
Close examination of the lower jawbone, teeth and skeleton of the hominid species Australopithecus sediba proves conclusively that it is uniquely different from a closely related species, Australopithecus africanus.
According to a new study, our Australopithecus ancestors may have used different approaches to getting around on two feet. The new findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Science and represent the culmination of more than four years of research into the anatomy of Australopithecus sediba (Au. sediba). The two-million-year-old fossils, discovered in Malapa cave in South Africa in 2008, are some of the most complete early human ancestral remains ever found.
A team of scientists has pieced together how the hominid Australopithecus sediba (Au. sediba) walked, chewed, and moved nearly two million years ago. Their research also shows that Au. sediba had a notable feature that differed from that of modern humans—a functionally longer and more flexible lower back.
Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology Heritage Studies (JEMAHS) is a new peer-reviewed journal devoted to traditional, anthropological, social, and applied archaeologies of the Eastern Mediterranean, encompassing both prehistoric and historic periods. The journal’s geographic range spans three continents and brings together, as no academic periodical has done before, the archaeologies of Greece and the Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant, Cyprus, Egypt and North Africa.
A scientist who helped verify authenticity of the fabled Gospel of Judas today revealed how an ancient Egyptian marriage certificate played a pivotal role in confirming the veracity of inks used in the controversial text. The disclosure, which sheds new light on the intensive scientific efforts to validate the gospel, was made here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.
Analyses of clam shells used in ancient funeral ceremonies offer additional evidence as to how climate change may have contributed to the gradual collapse of an early South-American civilization, according to research publishing earlier this month.
The maxillary sinuses, those pouches on either side of the human nose, have a purpose after all: They act as cushions to allow noses to assume different shapes. The study by a University of Iowa-led research team explains the relationship for the first time. Results appear in the journal The Anatomical Record.
One of literature’s oldest mysteries is a step closer to being solved. A new study dates Homer's The Iliad to 762 BCE and adds a quantitative means of testing ideas about history by analyzing the evolution of language.
Hundreds of thousands of ancient artifacts, chronicling 12 thousand years of human history, will be housed at a new centre designed to solve a problem which has troubled researchers for decades: how to track and preserve vast collections.
DNA preserved in calcified bacteria on the teeth of ancient human skeletons has shed light on the health consequences of the evolving diet and behaviour from the Stone Age to the modern day.
As we humans evolved over the millennia to walk on two legs, grow larger brains and shorter jaws, bear big babies and live longer, we’ve also experienced some negative consequences. But keeping our evolutionary history in mind can help us better deal with issues from obesity to difficult childbirth in a much more productive way, according to UD anthropologist Karen Rosenberg.
A fossilized bone fragment found buried deep in the soil of a Serbian cave is causing scientists to reconsider what happened during a critical period in human development, when the strands of modern humanity were still coming together.
Earlier this week, a team of historians and archaeologists concluded on the basis of DNA and other evidence that skeletal remains found underneath a parking lot in England last fall were those of King Richard III, who died in 1485. Indiana University has several faculty experts who are available to comment on the discovery's impact on the long-dead king's place in history, his depiction by Shakespeare and the effect on actors.
New ancient DNA research show Aztec empire altered genetics of the Otomí inhabitants of Xaltocan. It is the first study to provide genetic evidence for the anthropological cold case.
A massive earthen mound constructed about 3,200 years ago by Native Americans in northeastern Louisiana was built in less than 90 days, and perhaps as quickly as 30 days, according to new research in the journal Geoarchaeology. The site was recently nominated for a place on the UNESCO list of Word Heritage sites.
A Kansas State University researcher is studying how religion -- particularly Buddhism -- fits into new forms of virtual reality, such as Second Life.
End-of-the-world predictions are common in human history, but believers in the Mayan Doomsday claim don’t understand the Mayan calendar system, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis professor Larry Zimmerman said.
Rusty Barrett, an expert on Mayan culture, weighed in on how the Mayan calendar works, discussed his research with the Mayan population, and shared his observations of the Maya's reactions to the idea that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012.
Research by a Santa Fe Institute researcher and his collaborators at the University of Missouri seeks better data that could help preserve the threatened landscapes on which indigenous human groups depend.
Using archaeological expertise and modern technology, a University of Kentucky team recently discovered a Roman settlement and possible prehistoric site in northern Italy.
Sarah Parcak’s remote-sensing expertise uncovered lost sites, unlocked mysteries into the success of the Roman Empire.
Did different species of early humans interbreed and produce offspring of mixed ancestry?
Using genetic analyses, scientists have discovered that Northern European populations descend from a mixture of two very different ancestral populations, and one of these populations is related to Native Americans.
A Boise State University professor in anthropology studies behavioral and evolutionary ecology in small-scale societies. Her latest project looks at the honey-gathering Jenu Kuruba tribe in South India and how its cultural knowledge is being preserved, or lost, in our modern world.
A University of Utah study produced new mathematical support for a theory that explains why men in some cultures often feed and care for their sisters’ children: where extramarital sex is common and accepted, a man’s genes are more likely to be passed on by their sister’s kids than by their wife’s kids.
A University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists has found evidence that human ancestors used stone-tipped weapons for hunting 500,000 years ago – 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Portions of Albert Einstein’s brain have been found to be unlike those of most people and could be related to his extraordinary cognitive abilities, according to a new study led by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk.
A collaborative study involving researchers at Arizona State University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Cape Town found that human ancestors were making stone-tipped weapons 500,000 years ago at the South African archaeological site of Kathu Pan 1 – 200,000 years earlier than previously thought. This study, “Evidence for Early Hafted Hunting Technology,” is published in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Science.
Early findings from a new University of Cincinnati study will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.
Soil scientists and archeologists have uncovered evidence that the Maya grew corn sustainably in the lowlands of Tikal, Guatemala, but that they may also have farmed erosion-prone slopes over time.
A new anthropology study from UT-Austin is the first to provide a large-scale body of evidence for the “nocturnal bottleneck theory,” which suggests that mammalian sensory traits have been profoundly influenced by an extended period of adaptation to nocturnality during the Mesozoic Era.
Computer simulations provide new mathematical support for the “grandmother hypothesis” – a famous theory that humans evolved longer adult lifespans than apes because grandmothers helped feed their grandchildren.
Troy, the palatial city of prehistory, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a fabled wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced today (Monday, Oct. 15).
A scientist at the University of South Carolina is continuing to build the case that natural wetlands, rather than irrigated fields, are the fertile ground from which cities initially emerged in Mesopotamia. And her conclusions about the importance of wetlands have particular resonance in southern Iraq. That area is both the site of her studies and the region where Saddam Hussein forcibly drained marshes to drive out the local populace after the first Gulf war.
Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the tomb of Lady K’abel, a seventh-century Maya Holy Snake Lord considered one of the great queens of Classic Maya civilization. The tomb was discovered during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, by a team of archaeologists led by Washington University in St. Louis’ David Freidel, co-director of the expedition.
Papua New Guinea’s Enga tribes fought with bows and arrows until 1990, when their young people and mercenary “Rambos” began using shotguns and semiautomatics, igniting 20 years of warfare that killed 4,816 people. A new study shows how traditional tribal courts restored peace.
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