Smithsonian's Human Origins Program

02/24/2023

How Darwin's 'Descent of Man' Holds Up 150 Years After Publication

This week's Friday fun reading relates to famous evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, credited with coming up with the idea of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution in his book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" published in 1859. But this book did not address how evolution applied to humans; that was in his later book "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to S*x" published on this day in 1871. Read this 2021 Smithsonian Magazine article about how the ideas in this later book , including the concept of sexual selection as another mechanism of evolution, were received at the time of its publication - and whether they still hold up today.

Questions still swirl around the author’s theories about sexual selection and the evolution of minds and morals

02/23/2023

95% of your behavior is primate behavior

Today we are posting another recent video - this one is by Big Think and features primatologist Frans de Waal talking about the primate roots of human behavior.

He's studied apes for 50 years - here's what most people get wrong.

02/22/2023

Did Neandertals Bury Their Dead?

Check out this recent Eons • PBS video about whether Neanderthals buried their dead - and if so, what that might mean for our understanding of whether Neanderthals used symbolism.

Check out Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/Eons/If we can see ourselves in the way our ancient cousins dealt with death…what else could we have in common?Tha...

02/21/2023

Many people have a little Neandertal in the brain

Check out this great recent blog post by University of Wisconsin-Madison's John Hawks about how introgressed genes from Neanderthals affect brain shape in living people.

Research has started to show the ways that introgressed genes from Neandertals affect brain shape in living people.

02/20/2023

Dog Domestication May Have Begun because Paleo Humans Couldn’t Stomach the Original Paleo Diet

Happy National Love Your Pet Day! Did you know that the earliest animals to be domesticated by humans weren't used for food but for companionship? That's right - it's the dog! Check out this 2021 Scientific American article describing one possible path towards canine companionship: extra protein for puppers in the form of leftover meat scraps from people hunting Arctic and sub-Arctic animals during Ice Age winters.

Unable to digest large amounts of protein, hunters likely left scraps that could have led to the taming of wolves

02/17/2023

It Takes a Village: A Paleoanthropologist’s Journey Leads to Community | Yale Peabody Museum

This week's Friday fun reading is a great post from the Yale Peabody Museum about Yale University paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson's research in Malawi as the leader of the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project (MALAPP). Read about her collaborative research approach, outreach to local teachers and schoolchildren, commitment to capacity building and long-term infrastructure development, and how engaging and hiring local community members have been key to her project’s success.

In 2005, anthropology graduate student Jessica Thompson hopped into her beat-up truck and started north out of Cape Town, South Africa, on a more than 3,000-mile journey. She was headed toward Stone Age field sites and an archaeological project in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. Her trip throu...

02/16/2023

Most humans haven't evolved to cope with the cold, yet we dominate northern climates – here's why

Humans are a tropical species - how have we conquered the cold? Read this piece in The Conversation by Liverpool John Moores University's Laura Buck and Kyoko Yamaguchi to find out.

Hate winter? The answer may lie in our evolutionary history.

02/15/2023

Proof that Neanderthals ate crabs is another ‘nail in the coffin’ for primitive cave dweller stereotypes - Science & research news | Frontiers

A team led by IPHES - Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social's Mariana Nabais recently discovered that Neanderthals were harvesting shellfish to eat at Gruta da Figueira Brava, Portugal, 90,000 years ago. This included brown crabs, preferentially larger ones, which were cooked in fires.

by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Scientists studying archaeological remains at Gruta da Figueira Brava, Portugal, discovered that Neanderthals were harvesting shellfish to eat – including brown crabs, where they preferred larger specimens and cooked them in fires. Archeologists...

02/14/2023

This Skeleton Couple Has Been Holding Hands for 700 Years

For Valentine's Day today, we are sending you the vibes of these two skeletons - lying side by side in a burial ground and 'holding hands' for 700 years. 💓

The couple's remains are just one of the discoveries recently made in the "lost chapel" of St. Morrell

02/13/2023

Remapping the superhighways traveled by the first Australians reveals a 10,000-year journey through the continent

A recent study led by Flinders University's Corey Bradshaw combined movement 'superhighways' with a demographic model to predict the initial peopling of the entire continent of Sahul, the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today. Their model, which included how people interact with terrain, ecology, and potentially other people, provided more realistic results than previous estimates- and concluded that this process took 10,000 years.

New research has revealed that the process of 'peopling' the entire continent of Sahul—the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today—took 10,000 years.

02/10/2023

Who Made the First Stone Tool Kits?

This week's Friday fun reading is a Smithsonian Magazine piece about exciting new discoveries from the site of Nyayanga, Kenya published yesterday, co-authored by our own Dr. Rick Potts! The research team, led by The City University of New York Queens College's Thomas Plummer, who is also a research associate of ours, found the now-earliest Oldowan stone tools, and butchered fossil hippo bones, and 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘴 teeth, dating to between 2.58 and 3 million years old (most likely ~2.9 million years old). The finds raise questions about which early human species made Oldowan tools.

A nearly three-million-year-old butchering site packed with animal bones, stone implements and molars from our early ancestors reignites the debate

02/09/2023

Hot off the presses - research published in Science Magazine less than an hour ago, co-led by our own Dr. Rick Potts!

02/09/2023

From Ancient Teosinte to Modern Corn: The Domestication of Plants and People

Join us for our first Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History HOT (Human Origins Today) Topic free online event of 2023! We'll kick off this year on Thursday, February 23rd, from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm with Texas A&M University's Heather Thakar talking about how we got from ancient teosinte to modern corn: the domestication of plants and people. Preregistration required.

Modern corn is a food staple, animal feed, biofuel, industrial sweetener, alcohol base, and even a source for bio-plastics. But what do we really know about how corn came to be so ubiquitous in ancient and modern societies? Heather Thakar is an archaeobotanist at Texas A&M University and an expert i...

02/08/2023

The surprising chemicals used to embalm Egyptian mummies

A recent study led by Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen's Maxime Rageot and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München's Philipp Stockhammer determined the organic contents of 31 ceramic vessels labeled with their ingredients recovered from a 2,500-year-old underground embalming workshop at Saqqara, Egypt. They found that some of the plant and animal extracts used to prepare ancient Egyptian mummies originated hundreds or even thousands of miles away, suggesting the importance of trade networks that provided ancient Egyptian embalmers with the substances required for mummification.

Resins used to prepare bodies for the afterlife are found in vessels in an ancient workshop.

02/08/2023

For over 25 years National Museums of Kenya has made medical CT scans of our fossil humans available for scientific research. A new large addition of available microCT scans can now be viewed at https://human-fossil-record.org/

02/07/2023

Altruism towards other species may have helped humans thrive, study finds

A team led by Duke University's Rachna Reddy recently found that children as young as two years old went out of their way to help dogs get toys and tasty treats that were placed beyond their reach, despite never having met the animals before. They suggest that this evidence for altruism towards animals at such a young age may help us understand the domestication of animals by humans.

How toddlers interact with dogs helps explain how humans came to domesticate animals, scientists say

02/06/2023

Neanderthals lived in groups big enough to eat giant elephants

A recent study led by Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie's Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser concluded that the evidence for the butchery of more than 70 huge straight-tusked elephants (𝘗𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘦𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘹𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘶𝘴) from the site of Neumark-Nord in Germany indicated that Neanderthals hunted these massive animals 125,000 years ago. That this behavior occurred over more than 2000 years suggests that these Neanderthals lived in far bigger social groups than previously thought.

Meat from the butchered beasts would have fed hundreds

02/04/2023

Is War Inevitable? Consider the Ancient Maya

This week's Friday fun reading seeks to answer the question: is war inevitable? This essay in SAPIENS shows how investigating tactics, weaponry, and the logistics of battle helps answer questions about social conflict in the human experience.

Two archaeologists show how investigating tactics, weaponry, and the logistics of battle help answer questions about social conflict.

02/02/2023

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: How Humans Lost Their Body Hair

A team led by The University Of Utah's Nathan Clark recently compared genetic codes from 62 animals to understand how humans and some other mammals (including rhinos, naked mole rats, and dolphins ) have significantly less body hair. They discovered that humans have the genes for a full coat of body hair, but these genes have been deactivated - as they have at least nine times on other branches of the mammal evolutionary tree.

Orangutans, mice, and horses are covered with it, but humans aren’t. Why we have significantly less body hair than most other mammals has long remained a mystery. But a first-of-its-kind comparison of genetic codes from 62 animals is beginning to tell the story of how people—and other mammals—...

02/01/2023

Six libraries selected to host traveling exhibition on human evolution from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

We're so excited to partner again with the American Library Association, who recently announced that six public libraries were selected to host our traveling exhibition "Exploring Human Origins: Promoting a National Conversation on Human Evolution" between December 2023 and December 2026!

CHICAGO – The American Library Association (ALA), in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s (NMNH) Human Origins Program, is pleased to announce six public libraries selected to host the traveling exhibition Exploring Human Origins: Promoting a National Conversat...

01/31/2023

Neanderthals stashed dozens of animal skulls in a cave — but why?

A team led by Museo Arqueológico Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid's Enrique Baquedano recently concluded that the fossil assemblage dominated by dozens of skulls of large mammals is the result of deliberate collection by Neanderthals at Cueva Des-Cubierta in Spain in central Spain. They suggest that the skulls were hunting trophies, and the cave was a shrine in which they were kept - a unique example of complex “symbolic” behavior.

Remnants of ancient bison and other large mammals might have been kept as hunting trophies.

01/30/2023

Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2 million years ago discovered in Ethiopia

A team led by Sapienza Università di Roma's Margherita Mussi recently unearthed a 1.2 million years old obsidian handaxe-making workshop at the site of Simbiro III, Melka Kunture, Ethiopia.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain, working with two colleagues from France and another from Germany has discovered an Obsidian handaxe-making workshop from 1.2 million years ago in the Awash valley in Ethiopia. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology....

01/27/2023

What If Neanderthals Had Outlived Homo Sapiens?

For this week's Friday fun reading, check out this essay in SAPIENS that asks the question: what would the world be like if Neanderthals had outlived us?

An anthropologist imagines a world in which Neanderthals—and their relationships with the environment and one another—survived evolution.

01/26/2023

Recently found 'Neanderthal footprints' in the South of Spain could be 275,000 years old

A team led by Universidad de Huelva's Eduardo Mayoral recently re-dated early human footprints found in Matalascañas, Spain optically-stimulated luminescence techniques - and concluded that the footprints date back to ~295,800 years ago, about 200,000 years older than previously thought. This is the first palaeoanthropological evidence (fossils or footprints) from this time period in the Iberian Peninsula - indicating that these footprints represent a crucial record for understanding early human occupations in Europe in the Middle Pleistocene.

The first Neanderthal footprints from the Iberian Peninsula discovered last year may have belonged to other members of the genus ‘Homo’.

01/25/2023

What Actually Happened To The Species Of The Ice Age - Grunge

What actually happened to Ice Age species? Read what experts, including our own Dr. Rick Potts, thinks in this Grunge.com essay.

Some animals adapted well to the last ice age, while others died out entirely. What exactly happened to woolly mammoths, gray wolves, and ancient humans?

01/24/2023

Annual DNA Day Essay Contest

It's that time of year: the annual ASHG - American Society of Human Genetics DNA day essay contest for students in grades 9-12 worldwide is now open! Submissions are due March 1.

ASHG is proud to support National DNA Day every April, through our annual DNA Day Essay Contest open to all high school students.

01/23/2023

Ancient Siberian genomes reveal genetic backflow from North America across the Bering Sea

A team led by University of Tübingen's Cosimo Posth recently analyzed genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old and identified a previously unknown hunter-gatherer population in the Altai-Sayan region (near to where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together) from this time. Their analysis shows gene flow from people moving from North America to North Asia - in the opposite direction from the well-known movements of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America.

The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from th...

01/20/2023

Svante Pääbo: ‘It’s maybe time to rethink our idea of Neanderthals’

This week's Friday fun reading is a recent story in The Guardian about recent Nobel laureate, paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo.

The Swedish geneticist on winning the Nobel prize, his laureate father and early man’s sensitive side

01/19/2023

Stone Age tool-making lab rocks for ASU students

Did you know? The Institute of Human Origins has an Ancient Technology Lab directed by Arizona State University archaeologist Kathryn Ranhorn, where students can engage in “experimental” archeology — replicating ancient technology.

If you walk by the glass windows of ASU’s Ancient Technology Lab at 10 a.m. on a Friday morning, chances are you will see two graduate students smashing rocks — sometimes with an antler hammer, other times with a large stone. The students are making stone tools, or what is more accurately called...

01/18/2023

Human gene linked to bigger brains was born from seemingly useless DNA

A recent study led by Peking University's Chuan-Yun Li identified mutations that transform seemingly useless DNA sequences into potential genes by endowing their encoded RNA with the skill to escape the cell nucleus—a critical step toward becoming translated into a protein. Li's team found 74 human protein genes that appear to have arisen in this de novo way—more than half of which emerged after the human lineage branched off from chimpanzees. These de novo human genes may have a role in brain development and have been a driver of cognition during human evolution.

Researchers discover how DNA sequences must mutate to free their RNA to make proteins

01/17/2023

Study shows how Viking age left mark on genetics of Scandinavians

A recent study led by Stockholm University's Ricardo Rodriguez-Varela determined that the Viking age, spanning the 8th to 11th centuries AD, left a lasting mark on the genetics of today's Scandinavians.

The Viking age, spanning the 8th to 11th centuries AD, left a lasting mark on the genetics of today's Scandinavians, according to scientists who also documented the outsized genetic influence of women who arrived in the region amid conquests by Norsemen in Europe.

01/13/2023

Anthropologist Sheela Athreya Uncovers India’s Voice in the Human Origin Story

This week's Friday fun reading is an AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science member spotlight on Texas A&M University paleoanthropologist Sheela Athreya, and her research on reconstructing human evolutionary history in central India.

AAAS Member Sheela Athreya, Ph.D.AAAS Member Sheela Athreya is an anthropologist, mother, wife and Indian American – all labels that make it tempting to associate her with others who share similar traits and life experiences. While broad generalizations help us navigate a complex world, not everyo...

01/12/2023

Tiny New Genes Appearing in Human DNA Show How We're Still Evolving

A team led by Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Center's Nikolaos Vakirlis and Trinity College Dublin's Aoife McLysaght ercently identified 155 genes in our genome that emerged from small, non-coding sections of DNA. Many appear to play a critical role in our biology, revealing how completely novel genes can rapidly evolve to become essential.

We may have parted ways with our primate cousins millions of years ago, but a new study shows just how human beings continue to evolve in ways we never imagined.

01/11/2023

A recent study led by amateur archaeologist Ben Bacon analyzed Ice Age cave paintings and deduced that the number of marks on these ancient artworks was a record, by lunar month, of the animals' reproductive cycles and mating seasons. https://www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2023/01/new-study-reveals-evidence-of-early-ice-age-writing-and-what-it-meant/

01/10/2023

It's and our awe is focused on the unknown artisan from Central Africa who crafted this harpoon point around 80,000 years ago.

With a barbed point like this, a person could spear a huge prehistoric catfish weighing as much as 68 kg (150 lb)–enough to feed 80 people for two days. Later, humans used harpoons to hunt large, fast marine mammals.

Tonight online at 7pm ET, Smithsonian paleoanthropologist Richard Potts will take audiences back to a period of climate change that occurred 400,000-300,000 years ago. Potts and Smithsonian Magazine senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz will talk about how our ancestors responded and what their experience can teach us about our future. Richard Potts is the director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program. Learn more about tonight's program here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-prehistoric-humans-survived-in-turbulent-times-tickets-483147084937

(More about this object: This harpoon point was discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1988 by Alison Brooks and John Yellen and is on display in our Hall of Human Origins.)

01/10/2023

Human and Neanderthal brains have a surprising 'youthful' quality in common, new research finds

A recent study led by University of New England, AU's Gabriele Sansalone and Università di Pisa's Antonio Profico tracked changes in brains over deep time across dozens of primate species. They found that humans and Neanderthals had particularly high levels of brain integration, especially between the parietal and frontal lobes. This result suggests that what distinguishes us from other primates is not just that our brains are bigger, but that the evolution of the different parts of our brain is more deeply integrated, and, unlike any other living primate, we retain this integration right through into adult life - likely playing a powerful role in the evolution of human intelligence.

The way human brains develop is special – but not quite as special as you’d like to think, if we consider Neanderthals as well.

01/09/2023

Out of Africa: my lifelong mission to trace the origins of humanity

Congratulations to Natural History Museum, London's Chris Stringer, who recently received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for his work on human evolution.

Chris Stringer, who has just received a CBE for his work on human evolution, tells how his remarkable quest as a young researcher transformed understanding of our species

01/06/2023

The earliest humans swam 100,000 years ago, but swimming remains a privileged pastime

For this week's Friday fun reading, check out this piece in The Conversation by Macquarie University's Jane Messer about the history and prehistory of human (and even Neanderthal!) swimming.

Neanderthals living in Italy swam confidently and In early Egyptian, Greek and Roman images people are shown swimming overarm. But today, only one in four people in low income countries can swim.

01/05/2023

Humans have been using bear skins for at least 300,000 years

A team led by University of Tübingen's Ivo Verheijen recently examined traces on bones from the archaeological site of Schöningen, Germany and determined that humans have been using bear skins to protect themselves from cold weather for at least 300,000 years

Humans have been using bear skins to protect themselves from cold weather for at least 300,000 years. This is suggested by cut marks on the metatarsal and phalanx of a cave bear discovered at the Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, Germany. This makes it one of the oldest examples...