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In a cave in northern Spain a team of scientists has retrieved the remains of 28 prehistoric humans, members of an enigmatic species that could be described as a little bit Neanderthal.They had Neanderthal faces, with heavy brows and protruding noses. They had powerful mandibles and mouths that could open extremely wide, indicating they used their teeth as gripping tools. But they didn't have the large skulls or other robust skeletal features seen in the prototypical Neanderthals who, hundreds of millennia later, roamed Ice Age Europe. These were apparently ancestors of Neanderthals, inhabitants of a line that many thousands of...

...The statement I made that the ethnic groups of all the types at the Upper Cave does not mean they are adjacent on the chart: instead I was drawing attemtion to the fact that skull "B" of the robust series is one such out of the ethnic groups represented at the Upper cave Choukoudian, the (male) Capelinha skull separted out of the bottom row at right represents another group, represented by a (female) Upper Cave skull (The "Melanesian" one) and one of the CroMagnon-mixes is closest to the Upper Cave male skull (The skull C here is just a bit...

A rare haul of picks, flakes and hand axes recovered from ancient sediments in Kenya are the oldest remains of advanced stone tools yet discovered. Archaeologists unearthed the implements while excavating mudstone banks on the shores of Lake Turkana in the remote north-west of the country. The largest of the tools are around 20cm long and have been chipped into shape on two sides, a hallmark of more sophisticated stone toolmaking techniques probably developed by Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans. Trenches dug at the same site revealed remains of long-gone species that shared the land with those who...

ANSA) - Florence, October 26 - A new study of Neanderthal bones in Italy and Spain claims to have proved they did not breed with humans - potentially settling one of the biggest riddles in anthropology. The DNA study, which involved Italian, Spanish and German scientists, examined fossilised bones found in the northern Italian mountains near Verona and a cave in Asturia, Spain. Analysing a gene involved in the production of the skin pigment melanin, the team concluded that Neanderthals were predominantly fair-skinned and red-headed - like many people in countries like Ireland, Scotland and Wales today. This was consistent...