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After excavating a cache of Neandertal fossils about 100 years ago at Krapina Cave in what's now Croatia, researchers concluded that incisions on the ancient individuals' bones showed that they had been butchered and presumably eaten by their comrades. That claim has proved difficult to confirm. A new, high-tech analysis indicates that the Krapina Neandertals ritually dismembered corpses in ways that must have held symbolic meaning for the group-whether or not Neandertals ate those remains. Neandertals apparently possessed a facility for abstract thought that has often been regarded as unique to modern Homo sapiens, says study director Jill Cook of...

Scientists studying the DNA of 52 human groups from around the world have concluded that people belong to five principal groups corresponding to the major geographical regions of the world: Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas. The study, based on scans of the whole human genome, is the most thorough to look for patterns corresponding to major geographical regions. These regions broadly correspond with popular notions of race, the researchers said in interviews. The researchers did not analyze genes but rather short segments of DNA known as markers, similar to those used in DNA fingerprinting tests, that have no...

25,000 B.C. In Europe, arctic glaciers reach as far south as London. Massive predators are on the prowl. Across the continent, two species of primitive man struggle to survive. The Neanderthals are natural hunters, built for brute strength and well-adapted to the cold. However, they lack the understanding of technology and ability to speak in abstract terms that our species has. The Cro-Magnon, Homo sapiens are smarter but more fragile. With exciting new research in anthropology, archaeology and genetics, follow these early humans through a season of survival.

Maybe they just didn't have time to get to know each other. The question of what Neanderthals and Homo sapiens might have done on cold nights in their caves, if they happened to get together and the fire burned down to embers, has intrigued scientists since the 19th century, when the existence of Neanderthals was discovered. A correction in the way prehistoric time is measured using radiocarbon dating, described last week in the journal Nature, doesn't answer the enduring question, but it might at least help explain why no DNA evidence of interbreeding has been found: the two species spent...

Oldest hominid skull in Australia found near Bega Friday, 13 January 2006 THE endocast of a primitive hominid-like skull was recovered from among the rubble of a volcanic plug in the Bega district in May 2005 The find could suggest that a race of ancestral hominids had evolved in Australia from tree-dwelling primate ancestors by seven million years ago. This is well before our primate ancestors supposedly left the trees for a terrestrial existence in Africa around six million years ago! The fossil was discovered by noted prehistory researcher Rex Gilroy of Katoomba NSW, where he operates the 'Australian-Pacific Archaeological...

The Neandertals from Krapina, Croatia represent some of the geologically oldest Neandertals known, and they comprise the largest Neandertal collection from a single site in the world. However, comparisons of the Krapina material with other, later Neandertals have been limited both because of their fragmentary condition and because the sample has a disproportionate number of females and/or young individuals. This paper presents a preliminary description of our new reconstruction of Krapina 5, an adult male, and provides comparisons with females from Krapina and with later Neandertal males from Western Europe. Like other hominid sites with large samples, there is considerable...

Research on human fossils generally proceeds at a leisurely pace. Those who discover new bones sometimes take years to analyze them, while their colleagues and rivals wait impatiently to get a good look. But that's not the case with the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" skeleton of Indonesia. Ever since the Australian- Indonesian team that discovered the bones made the startling claim that they are the remains of a species of small, archaic human, Homo floresiensis (Nature, 28 October, p. 1055), the bones have been analyzed and reanalyzed at a breathtaking pace. For the past 3 months, however, the studies have been directed...

Igniting a scientific furor, scientists say they may have found the genetic mutation that first separated the earliest humans from their apelike ancestors. The provocative discovery suggests that this genetic twist — toward smaller, weaker jaws — unleashed a cascade of profound biological changes. The smaller jaws would allow for dramatic brain growth necessary for tool-making, language and other hallmarks of human evolution on the plains of East Africa. The mutation is reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, not by anthropologists, but by a team of biologists and plastic surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania and the...

October 13, 2003 Stranger in a New Land Stunning finds in the Republic of Georgia upend long-standing ideas about the first hominids to journey out of Africa By Kate Wong We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. --T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: "Little Gidding" In an age of spacecraft and deep-sea submersibles, we take it for granted that humans are intrepid explorers. Yet from an evolutionary perspective, the propensity to colonize is one of the distinguishing characteristics of our...

Theory on origin of man gets genetic overhaul By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Modern man evolved from a mixture of ancient African immigrants and primitive humans elsewhere, suggests a genetic analysis released today that raises new questions about long-held theories of human origins. For decades, archaeologists, paleontologists and genetics experts have argued about the evolution of modern man. While the various disciplines had remained divided, the weight of genetic studies had recently favored the "Out of Africa" theory. It says modern-looking humans originated in Africa and spread worldwide about 100,000 years ago, slowly replacing Neanderthals and other evolutionary dead-end humans ...

A study of DNA from ancient farmers in Europe shows sharp differences from that of modern Europeans — results that are likely to add fuel to the debate over European origins. Researchers led by Wolfgang Haak of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argue that their finding supports the belief that modern residents of central Europe descended from Stone Age hunter-gatherers who were present 40,000 years ago, and not the early farmers who arrived thousands of years later. But other anthropologists questioned that conclusion, arguing that the available information isn't sufficient to support it. Haak's team used DNA from 24...

A high-quality genome sequence obtained from a female Neanderthal toe bone reveals that the individual’s parents were close relatives and that such inbreeding was prevalent among her recent ancestors, according to a paper published today (December 18) in Nature. But the sequence also reveals that interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and other hominin groups, including early modern humans. “Did humans evolve like a constantly branching tree? A lot of people think so,” said Milford Wolpoff, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. “But there’s also been this thread of thought, by some...