Frequent inbreeding may have caused skeletal abnormalities in early humans

By Michael PriceNov. 5, 2018 , 3:05 PM

Early humans faced countless challenges as they fanned out of Africa: icy conditions, saber-tooth cats, and, according to a new study of ancient skeletons, an unusually high number of birth defects, both debilitating and relatively inconsequential. It’s unclear why such abnormalities seem to be so common, but scientists say one strong possibility is rampant inbreeding among small hunter-gatherer groups.

“This paper represents a valuable compilation,” says Vincenzo Formicola, an anthropologist at the University of Pisa in Italy who wasn’t involved in the new work. “Many cases reported in the list were unknown to me and, I assume, to many people working in the field.”

Many human fossils from the Pleistocene (roughly 2.5 million B.C.E. to 9700 B.C.E.) have unusual features. For example, femur bones with abnormal bowing have been found from China to the Czech Republic. The skull of a toddler found in the Qafzeh cave in Israel had a swollen braincase consistent with hydrocephalus, a condition in which fluid floods the skull. And a fossilized man in Liguria in Italy had a bowed right upper arm bone but a normal left one.

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Established story about how humans came from Africa may be wrong, claims controversial new study

A footprint could re-write the entire narrative of human evolution, according to the researchers that discovered it

Andrew Griffin 

The belief that humans came out of Africa millions of years ago is widely believed. But it might be about to be entirely re-written, according to the authors of a new study.

They claim to have found a footprint in Crete that could change the narrative of early human evolution, suggesting that our ancestors were in modern Europe far earlier than we ever thought.

The accepted story of the human lineage has been largely set since researchers found fossils of our early ancestors in South and East Africa, in the middle of the 20th century. Later discoveries appeared to suggest that those that followed remained isolated in Africa for millions of years before finally moving out and into Europe and Asia.

But the new discovery of a footprint that appears to have belonged to a human that trod down in Crete 5.7 million years ago challenges that story. Humans may have left and been exploring other continents including Europe far earlier than we knew.

"This discovery challenges the established narrative of early human evolution head-on and is likely to generate a lot of debate," said Professor Per Ahlberg, who was an author on the study. "Whether the human origins research community will accept fossil footprints as conclusive evidence of the presence of hominins in the Miocene of Crete remains to be seen."

Read more  

Butchered Mammoth Suggests Humans Lived in Siberia 45,000 Years Ago

by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | January 15, 2016 03:52pm ET

The slashed and punctured bones of a woolly mammoth suggest that humans lived in the far northern reaches of Siberia earlier than scientists had previously thought, a new study finds.

Before the surprising discovery, researchers thought that humans lived in the freezing Siberian Arctic no earlier than about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. Now, the newly studied mammoth carcass suggests that people lived in the area, where they butchered the likes of this giant animal about 45,000 years ago.

"We now have an enormous extension of the space that was inhabited at 45,000 years ago," said Vladimir Pitulko, a senior research scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-lead researcher on the study. 

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Cooking skills may have emerged millions of years ago - via Mike Playfair

By Pallab Ghosh

Science correspondent, BBC News

3 June 2015 

New research suggests that chimps have most of the mental capabilities needed to cook food.

This suggests that the ability to cook food is deep seated and may have arisen in human ancestors millions of years ago.

The conclusions also indicate that humans may have developed the ability to cook very soon after they learned how to control fire.

The study has been published in one of the journals of the Royal Society.

Humans must have adopted cooking fairly early in their evolutionDr Felix Warneken, Harvard University

Surprising as it may seem, even boiling an egg requires advanced mental skills. Whereas other animals tend to start eating whatever food they find or hunt straight away, humans can store and cook their food, even if we are fairly hungry, because we know that if we wait what we eventually eat will taste better.

It seems that our ability to smack our lips at the prospect of a delicious, well prepared meal requires a similar inspired leap of the imagination as producing art, developing language and creating the technologies that make us uniquely human.

So when your mind wanders and thinks of a nice meal when you should really be paying attention to something else, be assured that it is this foodie forethought that makes us human.

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Evidence of 430,000-year-old human violence found

By Victoria GillScience reporter, BBC News

28 May 2015 

From the sectionScience & Environment

Human remains from a cave in northern Spain show evidence of a lethal attack 430,000 years ago, a study has shown.

Researchers examined one skull from a site called the Pit of Bones, which contains the remains of at least 28 people.

They concluded that two fractures on that skull were likely to have been caused by "multiple blows" and imply "an intention to kill".

The findings are published in the journal PLOS One.

As well as providing a clue as to why the bodies were in the cave, scientists say the study provides grisly evidence that violence is an intrinsic part of the earliest human culture.

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A 45,000-Year-Old Leg Bone Reveals The Oldest Human Genome Yet - via D R Shoop

Researchers have successfully decoded the genes of a 45,000-year-old man from Siberia. The results offer clues about early human life outside of Africa as well as how humans interacted with Neanderthals and other groups around at the time.

The complete set of genes is the oldest genome of its kind, according to Svante Pääbo, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. "It's almost twice as old as the next oldest genome that has been sequenced."

The work of Pääbo and his colleagues was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The bone was found along the Irtysh River in Siberia, which was pretty far north to live 45,000 years ago.Bence Viola/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

The DNA came from a human femur found in 2008 by a collector scouring the Irtysh River in western Siberia. The femur was handed over to a local paleontologist who in turn gave it to Pääbo's team in Leipzig.

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100,000-year-old art kit found in South Africa

Researchers investigating Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa uncovered the oldest known evidence of painting by early humans. Archaeologists discovered two “kits,” for mixing and forming ocher – a reddish pigment believed to be used as a dye. The find pushes back the date by which humans were practicing complex art approximately 40,000 years, all the way back to 100,000 years ago.

http://www.utaot.com/2012/11/12/100000-year-old-art-kit-found-in-south-africa/

Stone-Tipped Spears Pre-date the Human Race -via Andy Cobley

Spears feel very much like a human weapon of war—so it's surprising to find out that, in fact, the stone-tipped projectiles pre-date our species by a bewildering 85,000 years.

A team of archaeologists from University of California at Berkeley have uncovered remains of the oldest known stone-tipped throwing spears, and their analysis suggests they're 280,000 years old. They were found at an Ethiopian Stone Age site known as Gademotta, and are reported in PLoS One.

But that age means that they're far older than Homo sapiens—which either suggests we're wrong about how long our race has existed, or that our predecessor species were smart enough to make weapons. Yonatan Sahle, one of the researchers, explains:

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Giant Prehistoric Elephant Slaughtered by Early Humans

Sep. 19, 2013 — Research by a University of Southampton archaeologist suggests that early humans, who lived thousands of years before Neanderthals, were able to work together in groups to hunt and slaughter animals as large as the prehistoric elephant.

Dr Francis Wenban-Smith discovered a site containing remains of an extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in 2003, in an area of land at Ebbsfleet in Kent, during the construction of the High Speed 1 rail link from the Channel Tunnel to London.

Investigation of the area was carried out with independent heritage organisation Oxford Archaeology, with the support of HS1 Ltd.

Excavation revealed a deep sequence of deposits containing the elephant remains, along with numerous flint tools and a range of other species such as; wild aurochs, extinct forms of rhinoceros and lion, Barbary macaque, beaver, rabbit, various forms of vole and shrew, and a diverse assemblage of snails. These remains confirm that the deposits date to a warm period of climate around 420,000 years ago, the so-called Hoxnian interglacial, when the climate was probably slightly warmer than the present day.

Since the excavation, which took place in 2004, Francis has been carrying out a detailed analysis of evidence recovered from the site, including 80 undisturbed flint artefacts found scattered around the elephant carcass and used to butcher it. The pre-historic elephant was twice the size of today's African variety and up to four times the weight of family car.

Dr Wenban-Smith comments: "Although there is no direct evidence of how this particular animal met its end, the discovery of flint tools close to the carcass confirm butchery for its meat, probably by a group of at least four individuals.

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Report: Early humans dined on antelope brains

According to a recent article from Science News, early humans enjoyed dining on antelope brains. 

Science News reports that the findings came from recently discovered fossils in Kenya. Via the publication: 

Three sets of butchered animal bones unearthed at Kenya’s Kanjera South site provide the earliest evidence of both long-term hunting and targeted scavenging by a member of the human evolutionary family, anthropologist Joseph Ferraro of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and his colleagues conclude. 

Experts believe the "hominids" were trying to "add a side of fatty, nutrient-rich brain tissue to their diets." Research cited in Science News argues that human scavengers likely waited for big cats to feed on the carcasses before hammering at the skulls to access the brain tissue. 

Newser writes that "this nutrient-rich brain tissue may have helped homo erectus support larger bodies, bigger brains, and travel longer distances." 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/report-early-humans-dined-antelope-brains-182618370.html;_ylt=ApU5XfNpKeVXVMw_LI4PQqftiBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNxdjlucWtvBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBPZGRVU1NGBHBrZwNkOWFkMTI1NS01YzM5LTM5MTEtYThhMi1hMjMzNjZjMjg0YmEEcG9zAzMEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDOTk1MWRkZjAtYjY3ZS0xMWUyLTg3ZjYtNjc5MzYzMDRjNzY3;_ylg=X3oDMTIzN3JkdHBwBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lfG9kZARwdANzZWN0aW9ucwR0ZXN0A1FFX1Rlc3Q-;_ylv=3

Skulls of Early Humans Carry Telltale Signs of Inbreeding

Mar. 18, 2013 — Buried for 100,000 years at Xujiayao in the Nihewan Basin of northern China, the recovered skull pieces of an early human exhibit a now-rare congenital deformation that indicates inbreeding might well have been common among our ancestors, new research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis suggests.

The skull, known as Xujiayao 11, has an unusual perforation through the top of the brain case -- an enlarged parietal foramen (EPF) or "hole in the skull" -- that is consistent with modern humans diagnosed with a rare genetic mutation in the homeobox genes ALX4 on chromosome 11 and MSX2 on chromosome 5.

This is a view of the Xujiayao site (below) and internal 

and external view of the Xujiayao 11 skull piece

 with its position indicated on the drawing of a complete

 skull (above). (Credit: Erik Trinkaus/WUSTL)

These specific genetic mutations interfere with bone formation and prevent the closure of small holes in the back of the prenatal braincase, a process that is normally completed within the first five months of fetal development. It occurs in about one out of every 25,000 modern human births.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130318180411.htm

Early human ancestor chewed bark

An early relative of humans chewed on bark and leaves, according to fossil evidence.

Analysis of food trapped in the teeth of the two-million-year-old "southern ape" suggests it existed on a unique diet of forest fruits and other woodland plants.

The study, in Nature, gives an insight into the evolution of what could have been a direct human ancestor.

Other early African contemporaries had a diet suggesting a grassland habitat.

The first fossils of Australopithecus sediba, discovered in South Africa in 2008, were hailed as a remarkable discovery.

Teeth from two individuals were analysed in the latest research, focussing on patterns of dental wear, carbon isotope data and plant fragments from dental tartar.

The evidence suggests the ape-like creature ate leaves, fruit, bark, wood and other forest vegetation.

Dr Amanda Henry of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led the research.

"We've for the first time been able to put together three quite different methods for reconstructing diet and gotten one cohesive picture of the diet of this ancient species and that picture is really quite different from what we've seen in other hominins (human ancestors)," she said.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18603558

Dogs may have helped Humans beat the Neanderthals

One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along. 


They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away. 

What happened? What went so wrong for the Neanderthals -- and what went so right for us humans? 

The cause, some theories go, may have been environmental, with Neanderthals' decline a byproduct of -- yikes -- climate change. It may have been social as humans developed the ability to cooperate and avail themselves of the evolutionary benefits of social cohesion. It may have been technological, with humans simply developing more advanced tools and hunting weapons that allowed them to snare food while their less-skilled counterparts starved away. 


Continued:  http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/dogs-may-have-helped-humans-beat.html#.T7jcd9xfEbA

'Inhabitants of Madrid' Ate Elephants’ Meat and Bone Marrow 80,000 Years Ago

ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Humans that populated the banks of the river Manzanares (Madrid, Spain) during the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) fed themselves on pachyderm meat and bone marrow. This is what a Spanish study shows and has found percussion and cut marks on elephant remains in the site of Preresa (Madrid).

In prehistoric times, hunting animals implied a risk and required a considerable amount of energy. Therefore, when the people of the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) had an elephant in the larder, they did not leave a scrap.

Humans that populated the Madrid region 84,000 years ago fed themselves on these prosbocideans' meat and they consumed their bone marrow, according to this new study. Until now, the scientific community doubted that consuming elephant meat was a common practice in that era due to the lack of direct evidence on the bones. It is still to be determined whether they are from the Mammuthus species of the Palaleoloxodon subspecies.

The researchers found bones with cut marks, made for consuming the meat, and percussion for obtaining the bone marrow. "There are many sites, but few with fossil remains with marks that demonstrate humans' purpose" Jose Yravedra, researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and lead author of the study published in theJournal of Archaeological Science said.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120424121740.htm

Where's the Beef? Early Humans Took It

PALISADES, NEW YORK—When human ancestors began scavenging for meat regularly on the open plains of Africa about 2.5 million years ago, they apparently took more than their fair share of flesh. Within a million years, most of the large carnivores in the region—from saber-toothed cats to bear-size otters—had gone extinct, leaving just a few "hypercarnivores" alive, according to a study presented here last week at a workshop on climate change and human evolution at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Humans have driven thousands of species extinct over the millennia, ranging from moas—giant, flightless birds that lived in New Zealand—to most lemurs in Madagascar. But just when we began to have such a major impact is less clear. Researchers have long known that many African carnivores died out by 1.5 million years ago, and they blamed our ancestor, Homo erectus, for overhunting with its new stone tools. But few scientists thought there were enough hominins—ancestors of humans but not other apes—before that to threaten the fierce assortment of carnivores that roamed Africa, or that the crude stone tools that our ancestors began to wield 2.6 million years ago could be used for hunting. Besides, it was probably much more dangerous for the puny hominins alive then, such as Australopithecus afarensis, whose brain and body were only a bit bigger than a chimp's, to grab carcasses than it was for supersized carnivores such as giant hyenas, cats, and otters to devour hominins. "One of my favorite images is of an Au. afarensis being dragged down by a giant otter," says vertebrate paleontologist Lars Werdelin at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

Continued:  http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/04/wheres-the-beef-early-humans-took.html

Pass me another mammoth rib: Why eating meat was the secret of human success and separated us from the apes

Tucking into meat for dinner helped early humans to spread more quickly across the world and had a profound effect on human evolution, scientists say.

The high-quality diet allowed mothers to wean babies earlier and have more children, meaning that human communities grew faster, according to researchers from Lund University in Sweden.

The research compared 67 species of mammals, including humans, apes, mice and killer whales, and found a clear correlation between eating meat and earlier weaning.

They found young of all species stop suckling when their brains have developed to a particular stage, but that carnivores reached this point more quickly than herbivores or omnivores.

'Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened,' said Elia Psouni, lead author of the study.

'This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution.'

Among natural fertility societies, the average duration of breast-feeding is 2 years and 4 months. This is not much in relation to the maximum lifespan of our species, around 120 years.

It is even less if compared to our closest relatives: female chimpanzees suckle their young for 4 to 5 years, whereas the maximum lifespan for chimpanzees is only 60 years.

Read on:   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2131933/Pass-mammoth-rib-Eating-meat-helped-early-man-spread-quickly-profoundly-affected-evolution.html

Woolly mammoth carcass may have been cut into by humans

The discovery of a well-preserved juvenile woolly mammoth suggests that ancient humans "stole" mammoths from hunting lions, scientists say.

Bernard Buigues of the Mammuthus organisation acquired the frozen mammoth from tusk hunters in Siberia.

Scientists completed an initial assessment of the animal, known as Yuka, in March this year.

Wounds indicate that both lions and humans may have been involved in the ancient animal's death.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

These are remarkably rare finds and have huge significance”

Kevin CampbellUniversity of Manitoba

"Already there is dramatic evidence of a life-and-death struggle between Yuka and some top predator, probably a lion," says leading mammoth expert, Daniel Fisher, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Michigan.

"Even more interesting, there are hints that humans may have taken over the kill at an early stage."

If further investigation by Mr Buigues, Professor Fisher and fellow scientists at the Sakha Academy of Sciences in Yakutsk confirms this analysis, it will be the first carcass to show signs of interaction with ancient humans found in this part of the world.

Read on:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17525070

Hot Find! Humans Used Fire 1 Million Years Ago

Ash and charred bone, the earliest known evidence of controlled use of fire, reveal that human ancestors may have used fire a million years ago, a discovery that researchers say will shed light on this major turning point in human evolution.

Scientists analyzed material from Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, a massive cavern located near the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Previous excavations there had uncovered an extensive record of human occupation.

Microscopic analysis revealed clear evidence of burning, such as plant ash and charred bone fragments. These materials were apparently burned in the cave, as opposed to being carried in there by wind or water, and were found alongside stone tools in a layer dating back about 1 million years. Surface fracturing of ironstone, the kind expected from fires, was also seen.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/19425-earliest-human-fire.html

Humans skilled anglers 42,000 years ago

Fish hooks and fishbones dating back 42,000 years found in a cave in East Timor suggest that humans were capable of skilled, deep-sea fishing 30,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers in Australia and Japan said on Friday.

The artefacts — nearly 39,000 fishbones and three fish hooks — were found in a limestone cave in Jerimalai in East Timor, 50 metres (165 feet) above sea level, said Sue O’Connor from the Australian National University’s department of archaeology and natural history.

“There was never any hint of (what) maritime technology people might have had in terms of fishing gear 40,000 years ago,” O’Connor, the study’s lead author, told Reuters by telephone from Canberra.

“(This study showed) you got ability to make hooks, you are using lines on those hooks. If you can make fibre lines, you can make nets, you are probably using those fibres on your boats.”

“It gives us a lot of information on how people subsisted on these very small islands on their way to Australia,” she said.

Modern humans were capable of long-distance sea travel 50,000 years ago as they colonised Australia, but evidence of advanced maritime fishing has been rare.

Researchers until now have only been able to find evidence of open-ocean fishing up to 12,000 years ago.

HOOKS MADE FROM SHELL

O’Connor and her colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Science, found the bones and hooks in a 1 sq metre “test pit” in the cave, 300 metres (985 feet) from the coast.

“All the bones we got inside were just the result of human meals, 40,000 years ago,” said O’Connor.

“They were living in that shelter and we are fortunate that all the materials are preserved so well in that limestone cave, which preserves bone and shell really well,” she said.

The fish hooks were apparently made from the shells of the Trochus, a large sea snail.

“They are very strong shell … we think they just put bait on and dropped the hook in the water from a boat (at the) edge of a reef,” O’Connor said.

The fish bones were traced to 23 species of fish, including tuna, unicornfish, parrotfish, trevallies, triggerfish, snappers, emperors and groupers.

“Parrotfish and unicorn were probably caught on baited hooks … but tuna are deepwater, fast-moving fish. Tuna and trevallies were probably caught by lure fishing,” O’Connor said.

http://www.discoveryon.info/2012/01/humans-skilled-anglers-42000-years-ago.html

Prehistoric bear skulls found underwater in Mexico

The ancient remains of four prehistoric bears have been uncovered by archaeologists diving in underwater caves in Mexico.

Scientists think the extinct species lived in the caves in the ice age before they became filled with water.

Human remains were also found.

David Cuen reports.

Watch video at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16632419