New light on Neolithic revolution in south-west Asia
The answer I propose is: (1) only at a certain point in human cognitive evolution did it become possible for Homo sapiens to transcend certain biological limitations of the human brain by cultural means; and (2) this increased mental facility was made necessary by the reliance on larger and more cohesive social groups, itself a product of hominin evolution.
People were making cheese over 7,000 years ago, researchers find
Housekeeping, Neandertal-Style: Hearth Placement and Midden Formation in Kebara Cave (Israel)
The interpretation of Neandertal life ways has probably never been as polarized as it is today. At one extreme are many archaeologists and biological anthropologists, and quite a few geneticists, who see Neandertals as belonging to a species other than our own, most often a decidedly inferior one in terms of both behavior and cognitive wherewithal
Determining the Sexual Identities of Prehistoric Cave Artists using Digitized Handprints
The sexual identities of human handprints inform hypotheses regarding the roles of males and females in prehistoric contexts.
The catastrophic extinction of North American mammoths and mastodonts
Archaeological and theoretical evidence reviewed here indicates that Clovis-era foragers exterminated mammoths and mastodonts in North America around 11,000 radiocarbon years ago.
The Neanderthal dead: exploring mortuary variability in Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia
The question of whether or not Neanderthals buried their dead has received considerable attention over the last few decades and has played a central role in exploring the similarities and differences between Neanderthals and early anatomically modern humans.
Stonehenge and its people: thoughts from medicine
This paper considers the nature of Stonehenge and other Neolithic sites from an unusual perspective, that of medicine.
Early history of wound treatment
The first written records containing medical information date from about 2500 BC. Clay tablets from this time have been discovered in Mesopotamia and the first medical papyri from Egypt are probably some seven hundred years younger…
What Did Our Ancestors Eat?
Until the advent of modern processing technologies, dirt, grit, and fiber constituted a large part of most early diets.
World's oldest leather shoe found in Armenia
A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the…