Neandertals
Neandertal populations existed in the western part of Eurasia between 500,000 and around 40,000 years ago. They are among the best known fossil relatives of humans, and DNA evidence shows that some Neandertals were among the ancestors of people today.
Seeing Neandertal teeth as art
The photography of Luka Mjeda brought a new way of looking at the teeth of the Krapina people.
The circumstances of the Taung discovery
The textbook story of the fossil leaves out a wider context in which scientists interpreted the first evidence of Australopithecus.
A look at the fossil skull from Steinheim
The skull provides some of the best evidence for the ancestral population of Neandertals, and had a tumultuous history in the decades after its discovery.
Did scientists miss a fake Neandertal for 25 years?
An investigation claims dozens of cases of misdated bones in Rheinland-Pfalz, including the purported Ochtendung Neandertal.
A look at the Neanderthal from Altamura
The exceptional skeleton encased in calcite has started to yield insights about early Neanderthals.
Late Neandertals: more diverse than most scientists thought
The new “Thorin” genome from Grotte Mandrin represents a previously-unknown Neanderthal deep history.
Eclipses for the ancestors
Culture shapes our experience of these astronomical events, and would have done so for Neanderthals and other ancestral hominins.
Vagrant birds and ancient human habitats
People killed the Carolina parakeet. An inquiry into their historic population range helps illustrate the challenges of understanding ancient human populations.
Top 10 discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2023
This year's highlights include ways of finding ancient relatives, how some phenotypes evolved in ancient people, and trace evidence from artifacts.
Climate models, Neandertals, and Denisovans
A new paper on biogeography of Neandertals and Denisovans raises ideas about the interactions of these groups.
Debates about Neandertal cave art miss the point of their visual culture
Humans today live in visually rich environments, and it's increasingly clear that Neandertals shaped their visual environments also.
New evidence is revealing the ages of death, birth, and menarche in Neandertals
Analysis of dental cementum is yielding new insights into the ages when ancient people faced significant physiological stresses.
Many people have a little Neandertal in the brain. Does it matter?
Research has started to show the ways that introgressed genes from Neandertals affect brain shape in living people.
When did our ancestors start looking up to the stars?
Changes in the sky have been important to peoples throughout the world. That connection may go back much further than our species.
Ancient amputations tell remarkable stories of survival and care
A 33,000-year-old case of an amputated leg prompts comparisons to earlier Neandertal instances of amputation.
The Nesher Ramla site: a third way between Neandertals and modern humans?
Fragments representing people who lived just before Skhūl and Qafzeh seem outside the expectations for these “early modern humans” or for Neandertals.
A Neandertal recipe that tasted like the foods of later people
Looking at a fascinating new study that finds mixtures of different plants within ancient morsels of charred foods.
Bison bones show butchery practices 400,000 years ago
In the Gran Dolina cave site, ancient people left a bone bed of bison killed in two seasons and butchered at the site with expedient tools.
Neandertals hunted dangerous prey. How they killed them.
With deep experience in the hunt, Neandertals could anticipate the behavior of many of the most dangerous prey animals.
Different transport strategies for different large prey species at Abric Romaní
Interpreting the record of prey exploitation at a rock shelter site over thousands of years provides a window into past economics.
Lecture: Are we the last Neanderthals?
At this event, I shared new insights about the humanity of our extinct human relatives.
Neandertals got 6% of their genomes from Africa
An analysis by Melissa Hubisz and coworkers finds that mtDNA is not all that Neandertals received from our African ancestors
How much Neandertal DNA do today's African peoples have?
New research shows that today's populations in Africa have around one third the Neandertal ancestry as people in Eurasia.
A mid-century observer wrote about hybridization and Neandertals
A quote from Loren Eiseley, one of the best known writers about anthropology and human origins.
How will ancient proteins change paleoanthropology?
Paleoproteomic methods may provide exciting avenues toward understanding pieces of fossils and their relationships.
Lecture: Who were the ancestors of the Neandertals?
Looking at what we know about Neandertal origins and how our understanding has changed in the last decade.
Should we be surprised if Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans didn’t form stable hybrid zones?
A geneticist asks why we don't see more persisting hybrid populations, and I find an answer in the theory of population source-sink dynamics.
Neandertals built a circle out of stalagmites deep underground. What does it mean?
Examining the work of Jacques Joubert and coworkers that describes this mysterious structure and the possible intention behind it.
How much sex did it take for Neandertal DNA to enter modern populations?
Addressing a widespread misconception about what geneticists are really measuring when they look at population mixture.
What is the ‘braided stream’ analogy for human evolution?
A discussion of the way that reticulation has manifested across human evolution, with reference to an essay by Clive Finlayson.
