Philippa Kaur

A sample of organic glass found inside the skull of a man from HerculaneumPier Paolo Petrone
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius around 2000 years ago caused one man’s brain to explode and turned the fragments to glass. The discovery is the only known instance of soft tissue turning to glass and sheds new light on how eruptions kill – and how we might protect people.
The volcanic disaster struck in AD 79, burying the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae in thick layers of ash that eventually solidified. At least 1500 bodies and thousands of ancient papyrus scrolls have… More

We may live in an age of doomscrolling, but we can keep wild, apocalyptic thinking at bayStephen Taylor/Alamy
A Brief History of the End of the F*cking WorldTom Phillips (Wildfire)
In 1950s Chicago, aliens from the planet Clarion made contact with Dorothy Martin. They warned her of a “holocaust of the coming events” that would begin on 21 December, 1954. Lake Michigan would subsume Chicago, and the rest of the world would follow into oblivion. Martin and her followers would be airlifted to safety on Clarion via flying saucers – but only if they first removed all… More

The Bété I archaeological site in Ivory Coast was overgrown when researchers visited in 2020Jimbob Blinkhorn, MPG
Humans were living in a tropical rainforest in West Africa 150,000 years ago. The finding pushes human habitation of tropical forests much further back in time, suggesting our ancestors were able to live in a wide variety of terrains.
It has generally been thought that humans evolved in open grasslands and savannahs, says Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Instead, she says, our ancestors were highly adaptable. “Ecological diversity is at the heart… More

Rectangular buildings became common from about 10,000 years ago, as seen in this reconstruction of the ancient city of Çatalhöyük in Turkeyselimaksan/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Buildings with corners have a much deeper history than we thought, adding an unexpected twist to a curious architectural mystery from the dawn of village life.
Archaeologists have long been aware of a global trend in early architecture. From south-west Asia to the Americas, the very earliest settlements typically contained buildings with a round or oval-shaped ground plan. Then, usually a few thousand years later, these apparently went out of fashion, becoming… More

Wooden spears from Schöningen, Germany, dated to 300,000 years agoMinkusimages; Matthias Vogel, NLD.
Prehistoric people may have used throwing spears to hunt large animals 300,000 years ago – and perhaps as far back as 2 million years ago. A new analysis of preserved wooden spears indicates they could be thrown over medium distances, as well as used for thrusting.
“Traditionally, you would say thrusting is more simple than throwing, as a technological concept,” says Dirk Leder at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage in Hanover, Germany. “You have to understand aerodynamics for throwing to… More

Illustration of two types of travois, or sledge, that may have been used by ancient people in North AmericaGabriel Ugueto
Drag marks and human footprints made up to 22,000 years ago have been found on several sites at White Sands National Park in New Mexico. These are thought to have been made by people pulling long pieces of wood laden with goods and are the earliest evidence of such activity.
This kind of primitive vehicle is known as a travois. “Basically it’s a wheelbarrow without the wheel,” says Matthew Bennett at the University of Bournemouth in the UK, a member of the team that studied the tracks.
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They were widely used across the world, but this is by far the oldest evidence of their use, says Bennett. “There’s nothing this old.”
An ancient dried-up lake at White Sands has many ancient animal footprints, while human footprints were discovered there in 2017. In 2019, the team found long drag marks in association with human footprints, with several other examples identified since.
“They occur in lots of different areas, so it was widespread,” says Bennett. “It’s not just one inventive family using a travois.”
Some of the drag marks consist of a single line. The team think this was made by a travois consisting of two long pieces of wood joined in a triangle shape, with one end of each piece held in one hand, but only a single contact point with the ground.
Other drag marks consist of two parallel lines. These were probably the result of a travois where two pieces of wood were crossed in an X shape, providing two handles and two ground contact points, which would have been more stable.
The drag marks often go through the footprints of the person assumed to be pulling the travois, as would be expected. In some cases, there are parallel tracks of footprints – often of children – showing other people walking alongside.
Drag marks made by ancient vehicles in White Sands National Park, New MexicoBournemouth University
Elsewhere in the world travois were often pulled by dogs or horses, says Bennett, but there is no evidence that the people at White Sands used animals.
The dating of the footprints, announced in 2021, challenges the conventional idea that humans didn’t move into the Americas until ice sheets began retreating around 15,000 years ago.

“The peopling of the Americas debate is a very controversial one, but we’re fairly confident about the dates,” says Bennett. “The traditional story is that the ice sheets parted and they came, but you can come through before the door closes, too.” Other recent discoveries hint that humans may have reached the Americas as early as 33,000 years ago.
Bennett says there are very likely similar tracks around the world that haven’t been recognised for what they are. In fact, his team has already discovered similar markings elsewhere in the US, he says.

Topics:human evolution More

The more we discover about our species’ family tree, the harder it becomes to pinpoint when exactly Homo sapiens emerged, raising questions over what it really means to be human. “If we look along the sapiens lineage,” says Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, “we see there’s lots of diversity. So it’s not easy to make a cut-off point when we can say, this is Homo sapiens.” Fossils from China may push our common ancestor with Neanderthals back in time, says Stringer. The split is commonly placed at 600,000 years ago, but “the separation may go back even further, towards a million years”, he suggests.

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human evolution More