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A milk-tooth found in the vicinity of "Riparo del Broion" on the Berici Hills in the Veneto region bears evidence of one of the last Neanderthals in Italy. This small canine tooth belonged to a child between 11 and 12 that had lived in that area around 48,000 years ago. This is the most recent Neanderthal finding in Northern Italy... The genetic analysis reveals that the owner of the tooth found in Veneto was a relative, on their mother's side, of Neanderthals that had lived in Belgium. This makes this site in Veneto a key-area for comprehending the gradual extinction...

Spy pics reveal ancient settlements August 03, 2006 06:51pm AUSTRALIAN researchers studying declassified spy satellite images have found widespread remains of ancient human settlements dating back 130,000 years in Syria. The photographs were taken by United States military surveillance satellites operating under the CIA and defence-led Corona program in the late 1960s. The team of researchers travelled to the Euphrates River Valley in April and June and searched sites they had painstakingly identified using the images, which were only declassified in the late 1990s. Group leader Mandy Mottram, a PhD student at the Australian National University's School of Archaeology and...

The two researchers investigated artefacts from one of the most important Neanderthal sites in Central Europe, the Sesselfelsgrotte cave in Lower Bavaria... 'The technical repertoire used to create Keilmesser is not only direct proof of the advanced planning skills of our extinct relatives, but also a strategical reaction to the restrictions imposed upon them by adverse natural conditions,' says Uthmeier, FAU professor for Early Prehistory and Archaeology of Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers. What Uthmeier refers to as 'adverse natural conditions' are climate changes after the end of the last interglacial more than 100,000 years ago. Particularly severe cold phases during...

[Ghost] DNA from an unknown ancient ancestor of humans that once bred with Denisovans still exists among the genomes of people today, a study has revealed. The different branches of the human family tree have interbred and swapped genes -- a processes known as 'introgression' -- on numerous occasions... Experts from the US found that some three per cent of the Neanderthal genome came from interbreeding with another ancient human group 300,000 years ago... The researchers used the algorithm to look at genomes from two Neanderthals, a Denisovan and two African humans. Alongside finding that a small proportion of the...

The last 10 years have transformed the evidence concerning the early origins and evolution of Neanderthal populations. Genetic comparisons of Neanderthal and Denisovan ancient DNA suggest that the common ancestor of these populations separated from African ancestors of modern humans prior to 600,000 years ago, followed by a rapid differentiation in Eurasia. Later, additional episodes of gene flow brought genes into Neanderthal populations, including the mtDNA clade carried by all later Neanderthals. Yet, a number of western Eurasian fossil samples from the time between 600,000 and 100,000 years ago are difficult to accommodate within the category of "Neanderthals", including European...

Homo Neanderthaliensis did not become extinct because of changes in climate. At least, this did not happen to the several Neanderthals groups that lived in the western Mediterranean 42,000 years ago. A research group of the University of Bologna came to this conclusion after a detailed paleoclimatic reconstruction of the last ice age through the analysis of stalagmites sampled from some caves in Apulia, Italy. The researchers focused on the Murge karst plateau in Apulia, where Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens coexisted for at least 3,000 years, from approximately 45,000 to 42,000 years ago... Data extracted from the stalagmites showed that...

"After a decade of studying the cultural evidence yielded from the three seasons of archeological excavations at Kaldar Cave, the recent results show that a Paleolithic layer in the middle of this the cave is more than 63,000 years old," CHTN quoted Iranian archaeologist Behrouz Bazgir as saying on Sunday. Kaldar is a key archaeological site that provides evidence of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Iran. The cave is situated in the northern Khorramabad valley of Lorestan province and at an elevation of 1,290 m above sea level. It measures 16 meters long, 17 meters wide, and seven...

A stretch of DNA linked to Covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study. Scientists don’t yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history. “This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years ago is still having an impact today,” said Joshua Akey, a geneticist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study. This piece...

The University of Victoria paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger explains that a DNA test, which would reveal genetic mutations due to evolution, could help pinpoint the time period a painting was made and may help determine if the art was actually the handiwork of humans or Neanderthals — who lived about 130,000 to 40,000 years ago. "It would just be so fascinating to see the identity. The million dollar question is, did Neanderthals paint?" There is already some indication, according to von Petzinger, that this extinct species was, in fact, artistic. Von Petzinger said that a few years ago, some of...

One of these Neanderthal genomes was from an individual (Vindija 33) found in Vindija Cave in Croatia, whereas the other Neanderthal genome (Denisova 5 or the Altai Neanderthal) and the Denisovan genome (Denisova 3) both came from specimens discovered in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains... The researchers found that Chagyrskaya 8 lived 80,000 years ago, about 30,000 years after the Denisova 5 Neanderthal and 30,000 years before the Vindija 33 Neanderthal. They also found that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal was a female and that she was more closely related to Vindija 33 and other Neanderthals in western Eurasia than to...

Ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology... The long history of matings between Neanderthals, humans, and Denisovans has only recently been demonstrated through the analysis of ancient genomes. The ability of mammalian species, including ancient humans, to produce fertile hybrid offspring has been hard to predict, and the relative fertility of the hybrids remains an open question. Some geneticists have even said that Neanderthals and humans were...

One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals -- a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. This is according to a study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden... Progesterone is a hormone that plays an important role in the menstrual cycle and in pregnancy. Analyses of biobank data from more than 450,000 participants -- among them 244,000 women -- show that almost one in three women in Europe have inherited...

Neanderthals selected rib bones from specific animals to make the lissoirs (French for 'smoothers'), which are bone tools that have been intentionally shaped and used on animal hides to make them softer and more water resistant, according to new research led by paleoanthropologists from the University of California, Davis. Scientists know that some Neanderthals produced bone tools. These include the discovery of five nearly identical fragments of lissoirs from two Paleolithic sites in southwest France: Pech-de-l'Azé I (Pech I) and Abri Peyrony. These specialized tools are often worn so smooth that it's impossible to tell which animal they came from...

In 2015, a research team led by archaeologists from the National Archaeological Institute of Bulgaria and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology resumed work at Bacho Kiro Cave with the goals of clarifying the chronology and the biological nature of the makers of the artifacts. The researchers uncovered thousands of animal bones, stone and bone tools, beads and pendants and the remains of five human individuals... Using a state-of-the-art technology called Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), they identified human bone fragments and concluded that they were at least 45,000 years old -- a period coinciding with the arrival of...

Britons '200,000 years earlier than first thought' Man could have settled in Britain up to 200,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to new studies. Prehistorians had thought the predecessors of modern humans began living in Britain between 450,000 and 500,000 years ago. But recent discoveries in eastern and south western England suggest that is wrong, according to an article in the magazine New Scientist. Researchers working in conjunction with the Natural History Museum are basing their new theories on analysis of a flint axe and other tools found on the East Anglian coast and investigation of butchery marks ...

When the ancestors of modern humans left Africa 50,000 years ago they met the Neandertals. In this encounter, the Neandertal population contributed around two percent of the genome to present day non-African populations. A collaboration of scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark, deCODE Genetics in Iceland, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have conducted the most comprehensive study to date using data obtained from 27,566 Icelanders, to figure out which parts of our genomes contain Neandertal DNA and what role it plays in modern humans. Every person of non-African decent shares around two percent of...

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on Crete Island in Greece. It is an incredibly important discovery that is given little attention, despite the fact that it reached the top ten discoveries of 2010. Their research is forcing scholars to rethink the maritime capabilities of early human and pre-human cultures. The team of archaeologists were carrying out excavations in a gorge on the island of Crete when they discovered a Palaeolithic site in...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Stone tools and other artifacts unearthed from an archaeological dig at the Cooper’s Ferry site in western Idaho suggest that people lived in the area 16,000 years ago, more than a thousand years earlier than scientists previously thought. The artifacts would be considered among the earliest evidence of people in North America. The findings, published today in Science, add weight to the hypothesis that initial human migration to the Americas followed a Pacific coastal route rather than through the opening of an inland ice-free corridor, said Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University and...

An Ice Age site in San Diego, Calif., preserves 130,000-year-old bones and teeth of a mastodon that show evidence of modification by early humans. Analysis of these finds dramatically revises the timeline for when humans first reached North America, according to new research. The fossil remains were discovered by Museum paleontologists during routine paleontological mitigation work at a freeway expansion project site managed by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). The bones, tusks, and molars, many of which are sharply broken, were found deeply buried alongside large stones that appeared to have been used as hammers and anvils, making this...

With a few exceptions such as the Schöningen spears and the recent finds of wooden tools at Pogetti Vecchi, almost all of our knowledge about the Middle Paleolithic comes from durable materials (bones and stone tools). We know from observations of our own surroundings, ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts that most of the material culture of humans (and Neanderthals) is comprised of perishable materials... Obviously, differential preservation of materials contributes to this bias. Previously, researchers have demonstrated that the microenvironment immediately surrounding a stone tool can preserve microscopic fragments of what is otherwise invisible archaeologically. This is also true for the...