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Cultures News -- ScienceDaily
Cultures of the World. News and findings about early human cultures. Learn about trading, colonization, early language development and the showoff hypothesis.

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First human culture lasted 20,000 years longer than thought
'); document.write('Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300 thousand years ago, where their fossils are found with the earliest cultural and technological expressions of our species. This repertoire, commonly referred to as the \'Middle Stone Age\', remained widely in use across much of Africa until around 60-30 thousand years ago. New research in Senegal shows this \'first human culture\' persisted until 11 thousand years ago - 20 thousand years longer than previously thought.'); document.write('
Oldest hominins of Olduvai Gorge persisted across changing environments
'); document.write('An approximately 2.0- to 1.8-million-year-old archaeological site demonstrates that early humans had the skills and tools to cope with ecological change.'); document.write('
Ancient DNA retells story of Caribbean\'s first people, with a few plot twists
'); document.write('The history of the Caribbean\'s original islanders comes into sharper focus in a new study that combines decades of archaeological work with advancements in genetic technology.'); document.write('
Ancient DNA sheds light on the peopling of the Mariana Islands
'); document.write('Compared to the first peopling of Polynesia, the settlement of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, which happened around 3,500 years ago, has received little attention. Researchers have now obtained answers to long debated questions regarding the origin of the first colonizers of the Marianas and their relationship to the people who initially settled in Polynesia.'); document.write('
Neanderthals buried their dead: New evidence
'); document.write('Was burial of the dead practiced by Neanderthals or is it an innovation specific to our species? Researchers have demonstrated, using a variety of criteria, that a Neanderthal child was buried, probably around 41,000 years ago, at the Ferrassie site (Dordogne, France).'); document.write('
Fatty residues on ancient pottery reveal meat-heavy diets of Indus Civilization
'); document.write('New lipid residue analyses have revealed a dominance of animal products, such as the meat of animals like pigs, cattle, buffalo, sheep and goat as well as dairy products, used in ancient ceramic vessels from rural and urban settlements of the Indus Civilisation in north-west India, the present-day states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.'); document.write('
Ancient blanket made with 11,500 turkey feathers
'); document.write('New research sheds light on the production of an 800-year-old turkey feather blanket and explores the economic and cultural aspects of raising turkeys to supply feathers in the ancient Southwest.'); document.write('
Middle Stone Age populations repeatedly occupied West African coast
'); document.write('Researchers reveal evidence of Middle Stone Age occupations of the West African coast. Ranging from 62 to 25 thousand years ago, the largest well-dated assemblages from the region clearly document technological continuity across almost 40,000 years in West Africa.'); document.write('
Population dynamics and the rise of empires in Inner Asia
'); document.write('Researchers seek to understand the genetic, sociopolitical and cultural changes surrounding the formation of the eastern Eurasian Steppe\'s historic empires. The study analyzes genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years and discusses the genetic and cultural changes that preceded the rise of the Xiongnu and Mongol nomadic pastoralist empires.'); document.write('
Population dynamics and the rise of empires in Inner Asia
'); document.write('Researchers sought to understand the genetic, sociopolitical and cultural changes surrounding the formation of the eastern Eurasian Steppe\'s historic empires. The study analyzed genome-wide data for 214 ancient individuals spanning 6,000 years and discussed the genetic and cultural changes that preceded the rise of the Xiongnu and Mongol nomadic pastoralist empires.'); document.write('
Early big-game hunters of the Americas were female, researchers suggest
'); document.write('For centuries, historians and scientists mostly agreed that when early human groups sought food, men hunted and women gathered. Not so, say researchers.'); document.write('
Just like us - Neanderthal children grew and were weaned similar to us
'); document.write('Neanderthals behaved not so differently from us in raising their children, whose pace of growth was similar to Homo sapiens. Thanks to the combination of geochemical and histological analyses of three Neanderthal milk teeth, researchers were able to determine their pace of growth and the weaning onset time. These teeth belonged to three different Neanderthal children who have lived between 70,000 and 45,000 years ago in a small area of northeastern Italy.'); document.write('
Resilience in the face of climate change: Archaeological investigations reveal human adaptability in ancient Turkey
'); document.write('An examination of two documented periods of climate change in the greater Middle East, between approximately 4,500 and 3,000 years ago, reveals local evidence of resilience and even of a flourishing ancient society despite the changes in climate seen in the larger region. The study demonstrates that human responses to climate change vary at the local level, and highlights how challenge and collapse in some areas were matched by resilience and opportunities elsewhere.'); document.write('
Study of ancient dog DNA traces canine diversity to the Ice Age
'); document.write('A global study of ancient dog DNA presents evidence that there were different types of dogs more than 11,000 years ago in the period immediately following the Ice Age.'); document.write('
Denisovan DNA in the genome of early East Asians
'); document.write('Researchers analyzed the genome of the oldest human fossil found in Mongolia to date and show that the 34,000-year-old woman inherited around 25 percent of her DNA from western Eurasians, demonstrating that people moved across the Eurasian continent shortly after it had first been settled by the ancestors of present-day populations. This individual and a 40,000-year-old individual from China also carried DNA from Denisovans, an extinct form of hominins that inhabited Asia before modern humans arrived.'); document.write('