Latest Anatomically modern humans Stories

Researchers in the US and UK have concluded that tools developed by Homo sapiens were no more sophisticated than those used by the Neanderthals. The team of researchers, whose findings appear in the Journal of Human Evolution, recreated these ancient tools and compared them to each other.Researchers studied wide stone tools called "flakes," which were used by both Neanderthals and early modern humans. Also, they studied the complexity of "blades" "“ a narrower stone tool later...

By Groves, Colin The ancestors of the miniature hominins found on the Indonesian island of Flores may have spread out of Africa even before the ancestors of modern humans. The fossil record of human evolution is extremely well-known, comparable to only a few other large mammals, such as elephants. Fifty years ago, specialists were speaking of a single main line of human evolution, progressing from Australopithecus africanus (small brain, short legs, prominent jaws) through Homo erectus to...

Text of report by Kenyan KTN TV on 9 August Kenyan archaeologists today launched an unprecedented challenge on Charles Darwin's human evolution theory. An archaeologist Fredrick Manthi claims two fossils found around Lake Turkana indicate that man may not have evolved from an inferior human-like creature as suggested by the theory. Manthi, who has been studying the fossils for the last seven years, claims human species named homo habilis and homo erectus lived in the same location at the...

An international research team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (Grenoble, France) has found evidence that some of the earliest members of our species had evolved our characteristically long developmental period, and most likely our extended childhood, over 160,000 years ago. These findings are in contrast to studies that suggest that early fossil hominins possessed short growth...

By David Charters LANGUAGE leaves no bones in the earth for the archaeologists, so we cannot tell when man first spoke. But we can stretch our imaginations back to the edge of a pond, where a young woman completes her ablutions by rubbing a pigment into her cheeks. She smiles at the reflection. "Wow", or "phew", or "mmmm", says the young chap on the far bank, not realising that his utterance changed the world. For this vocal appreciation of colour used as a...

NEW YORK - Neanderthals survived for thousands of years longer than scientists thought, with small lingering bands finding refuge in a massive cave near the southern tip of Spain, new research suggests.The work contends that Neanderthals were using a cave in Gibraltar at least 2,000 years later than their presence had been firmly documented anywhere before, researchers said."Maybe these are the last ones," said Clive Finlayson of The Gibraltar Museum, who reported the findings...

By Michael RoddyREADING (Reuters) - It was a dark and stormy night, and in a cave in what is now southern France, Neanderthals were singing, dancing and tapping on stalagmites with their fingernails to pass the time.Did this Ice-Age rave-up happen, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, on a cold night in the Pleistocene Epoch? Or is it purely a figment of the imagination of Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England?Impossible to know, Mithen, 45,...

By Michael RoddyREADING -- It was a dark and stormy night, and in a cave in what is now southern France, Neanderthals were singing, dancing and tapping on stalagmites with their fingernails to pass the time.Did this Ice-Age rave-up happen, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, on a cold night in the Pleistocene Epoch? Or is it purely a figment of the imagination of Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England?Impossible to know, Mithen, 45, readily...

Their childhoods were as long as modern humans, study showsEnamel deposited on teeth 150,000 years ago suggests that one of our closest evolutionary relatives, the Neanderthals, grew and matured at the same rate as modern humans.The dental evidence does not settle two thornier questions, however: Were the Neanderthals -- who died out 30,000 years ago -- a separate species, and why did they become extinct?Still, the finding that the two groups reached puberty at similarly slow rates...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new analysis of bones unearthed nearly 40 years ago in Ethiopia has pushed the fossil record of modern humans back to nearly 200,000 years ago - perhaps close to the dawn of the species. Researchers determined that the specimens are around 195,000 years old. Previously, the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens were Ethiopian skulls dated to about 160,000 years ago. Genetic studies estimate that Homo sapiens arose about 200,000 years ago, so the new research brings the...