Dissecting the Cave Lion Diet

Dissecting the Cave Lion Diet

A quarter larger than today's lions, the European cave lion was one of the biggest cats around 12,000 years ago. Now, an unusually sophisticated analysis of its bones is revealing what these creatures ate—and why they may have disappeared.

'Earliest' evidence of human violence

'Earliest' evidence of human violence

A healed fracture discovered on an ancient skull from China may be the oldest documented evidence of violence between humans, a study has shown.

The individual, who lived 150,000-200,000 years ago, suffered blunt force trauma to the right temple - possibly from being hit with a projectile

The excavation of buried articulated Neanderthal skeletons at Sima de las Palomas (Murcia, SE Spain) (Walker et al)

Link: The excavation of buried articulated Neanderthal skeletons at Sima de las Palomas (Murcia, SE Spain) (Walker et al)

At Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo (Murcia, Spain) remains of several Neanderthals have been excavated recently. From about 50,000 years ago articulated parts of 3 adult skeletons (including skulls with mandibles, vertebral column, rib cages, shoulder blades, hip bones, upper and lower limbs, hands and feet, often in anatomical connexion) were excavated from the lower part of a cemented accumulation of scree and large stones (éboulis) sloping downwards and inwards into the cavity, along with burnt bones of large mammals and Mousterian implements. The excavation of the skeletons is the subject of this paper (palaeoanthropological skeletal descriptions are soon to be published elsewhere). Behind the cemented scree there accumulated a layer of finer sediment containing burnt animal bones, followed by more fine sediment that filled the cavity up to the overhanging rock roof and contained isolated teeth and unburnt bone fragments of Neanderthals, including 3 mandibles, as well as Mousterian implements and faunal remains, all dating from before 40,000 years ago. Altogether, at least 9 Neanderthals are represented by finds from the site (including 3 unstratified mandibles), ranging from babies to adults. Dating methods include radiocarbon, uranium-series, and optical luminescence. Pollen analysis implies conditions less severe than those of the Heinrich 4 cold oscillation at 40,000 years ago.

¿Ganaría una mujer neandertal al campeón mundial de pulsos?/Could a Neanderthal Woman Win at Arm-wrestling? (in Spanish)

Link: ¿Ganaría una mujer neandertal al campeón mundial de pulsos?/Could a Neanderthal Woman Win at Arm-wrestling? (in Spanish)

This is silly.

But, in his new book Manthropology, Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister says, yes the lady Neanderthal would win against a modern man based on calculations made from upper long bones of a La Ferrassie specimen.

New Dating of Cave Site Upsets Neanderthal History

Link: New Dating of Cave Site Upsets Neanderthal History

Members of our species (Homo sapiens) arrived in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought. This was the conclusion by a team of researchers, after carrying out a re-analyses of two ancient deciduous teeth.

These teeth were discovered in 1964 in the “Grotta del Cavallo”, a cave in southern Italy. Since their discovery they have been attributed to Neanderthals, but this new study suggests they belong to anatomically modern humans. Chronometric analysis, carried out by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, shows that the layers within which the teeth were found date to ~43,000-45,000 cal BP. This means that the human remains are older than any other known European modern humans. The research work was published in the renowned science journal Nature.

Oldest rock art in Egypt discovered

Link: Oldest rock art in Egypt discovered

Using a new technology known as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), a team of Belgian scientists and Professor John Coleman Darnell of Yale have determined that Egyptian petroglyphs found at the east bank of the Nile are about 15,000 years old, making them the oldest rock art in Egypt and possibly the earliest known graphic record in North Africa.

A Question of Style: Reading Rock Art Using Art History

Link: A Question of Style: Reading Rock Art Using Art History

Ancient engravings and drawings are present all around the world. They are witnesses of people’s journeys through time and space. While their original meaning is lost, they still tell stories about their creator, about the content, about the climate and the environment of that time

Professor was right: Mastodon weapon was older than thought, scientists say

Link: Professor was right: Mastodon weapon was older than thought, scientists say

It’s not unusual for an archaeologist to get stuck in the past, but Carl Gustafson may be the only one consumed by events on the Olympic Peninsula in 1977. That summer, while sifting through earth in Sequim, Wash., the young Gustafson uncovered something extraordinary - a mastodon bone with a shaft jammed in it. This appeared to be a weapon that had been thrust into the beast’s ribs, a sign that humans had been around and hunting far earlier than anyone suspected.

Unfortunately for Gustafson, few scientists agreed. He was challenging orthodoxy with less-than-perfect evidence.

Archaeologists Find Ice Age Paintings in Central Europe

Link: Archaeologists Find Ice Age Paintings in Central Europe

Recent excavations conducted by the University of Tübingen at Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany have produced new evidence for the earliest painting tradition in Central Europe about 15,000 years ago.

The origin of human settlement in the Iberian Peninsula during the Lower Pleistocene, Part 2: the European, Asian record and access routes/El origen del poblamiento en la Península Ibérica en el Pleistoceno Inferior Parte 2: el registro europeo, asiático y las rutas de acceso

Link: The origin of human settlement in the Iberian Peninsula during the Lower Pleistocene, Part 2: the European, Asian record and access routes/El origen del poblamiento en la Península Ibérica en el Pleistoceno Inferior Parte 2: el registro europeo, asiático y las rutas de acceso

Google translate this page if need be; it’s worth it. Also, it has a great map of lots of LP sites.

If, in Part One , we looked for  the earliest evidence of settlement in the Iberian Peninsula, now we’ll try to look for the oldest evidence of human presence on the European continent, and answer three important questions: 1) When did humans arrive on the European continent? (2) What was the route taken by humans, or their point of origin? (3) What were the reasons for the expansion and dissemination of the first European populations?

Si en la primera parte buscábamos las evidencias más antiguas del poblamiento en la península ibérica, ahora de lo que se trata es buscar las evidencias de presencia humana más antiguas del continente europeo, y responder a tres cuestiones importantes: 1) ¿En qué momento se produjo la llegada de los seres humanos al continente europeo? 2) ¿Cuál fue la ruta que siguieron los seres humanos, o el punto de origen? 3) ¿cuales fueron las causas que motivaron la expansión y difusión de las primeras poblaciones europeas?.

2012 Interdisciplinary Forum on Human Origins: Behaviour, Environment and Technology

Link: 2012 Interdisciplinary Forum on Human Origins: Behaviour, Environment and Technology

The University of Liverpool will be hosting a conference in January 2012 focusing on the key issues of the study of human origins called the Interdisciplinary Forum on Human Origins: Behaviour, Environment and Technology (HOBET).

Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution

Link: Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution

In a first-of-its kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that suggests humans are biologically adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking, and that cooking played a key role in driving the evolution of man from an ape-like creature into one more closely resembling modern humans.

Conducted by Rachel Carmody, a student in Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), the research also raises important questions about the way modern humans eat.

CT Scans of Baby Mammoths Reveal Ice Age Mystery

Link: CT Scans of Baby Mammoths Reveal Ice Age Mystery

LAS VEGAS—Computed tomography (CT) scans of two extraordinarily well-preserved baby woolly mammoths from Siberia have yielded startling new insights into these iconic Ice Age beasts. Previously examinations of the external features of the mammoths suggested that the two creatures were quite similar, exhibiting the same developmental stage and similar age at death. But the new full-body scans—the first ever obtained for largely intact mammoths—tell a different story. Researchers unveiled the new findings on November 5 at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

What killed off the woolly mammoth still a mystery

Link: What killed off the woolly mammoth still a mystery

The culprits behind the extinctions of a number of Ice Age giants have now been identified — woolly rhinos were apparently done in by climate change, while ancient bison were downed by both climate and human influences.

However, whatever drove woolly mammoths extinct remains elusive.

Humans and climate contributed to extinctions of large ice-age mammals, study finds

Link: Humans and climate contributed to extinctions of large ice-age mammals, study finds

Both climate change and humans were responsible for the extinction of some large mammals, like the musk ox in this photo, according to research that is the first of its kind to use genetic, archeological, and climatic data together to infer the population history of large Ice-Age mammals. The large international team’s research, which will be published in the journal Nature, is expected to shed light on the possible fates of living species of mammals as our planet continues its current warming cycle. Credit: Beth Shapiro lab, Penn State University

Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought

Link: Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought

The fossils seemed hardly worth a second look. The one from England was only a piece of jawbone with three teeth, and the other, from southern Italy, was nothing more than two infant teeth. But scientists went ahead, re-examining them with refined techniques, and found that one specimen’s age had previously been significantly underestimated and that the other’s dating and identity had been misinterpreted.

Palaeolithic Astronomers and Parietal Art (video)

Link: Palaeolithic Astronomers and Parietal Art (video)

(thanks, Klint)

35,000 Years ago in Europe, tribes of hunter gatherers invented a fascinating artform. An art populated with animals, emerging from the depth of the earth. Some 18,000 years later in the heart of Périgueux region in france they created their most fabulous masterpiece: Lascaux.

Prehistorians have offered all sorts of explanations for the paintings. But an independent French researcher has come with an exciting new hypothesis. She thinks the Lascaux cave paintings represent a map of the sky: The sky as seen by the world’s first prehistoric astronomers, 17,000 years ago.