Why crying babies are so hard to ignore Ever wondered why it is so difficult to ignore the sound of a crying baby when you are trapped aboard a train or aeroplane? Scientists have found that our brains are hard-wired to respond strongly to the sound, making us more attentive and priming our bodies to help whenever we hear it – even if we're not the baby's parents. "The sound of a baby cry captures your attention in a way that few other sounds in the environment generally do," said Katie Young of the University of Oxford, who led the study looking at how the brain processes a baby's cries. She scanned the brains of 28 people while they listened to the sound of babies and adults crying and sounds of animal distress including cats meowing and dogs whining. Using a very fast scanning technique, called magnetoencephalography, Young found an early burst of activity in the brain in response to the sound of a baby cry, followed by an intense reaction after about 100 milliseconds.
Oldest Javelins Predate Modern Humans, Raise Questions on Evolution Charles Q. Choi The oldest known stone-tipped projectiles have been discovered in Ethiopia. The javelins are roughly 280,000 years old and predate the earliest known fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, by about 80,000 years. These javelins are some 200,000 years older than previous examples of similar weapons, suggesting that modern humans and their extinct relatives had the know-how to create these sorts of complex thrown projectiles much earlier than often thought. Scientists investigated stone tools unearthed at the Gademotta Formation on the flanks of an ancient, large collapsed volcanic crater in central Ethiopia's Rift Valley. "Today, the area represents a ridge overlooking one of the four lakes in the vicinity, Lake Ziway," said researcher Yonatan Sahle, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley. The oldest artifacts at the site are roughly 279,000 years old. Pointed artifacts with damage suggesting they were used in spears are common at the site.
Oldest Human Footprints in North America Discovered The footprints tell the story of a hunter-gatherer who marched through a marshy basin in the Chihuahuan Desert long before the Mesoamerican civilizations like the Mayans dominated the Mexican landscape. “To my knowledge the oldest human prints previously reported in North America are around 6,000 years old,” Nicholas Felstead, a geoarchaeologist at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement, according to Western Digs. Felstead, who spearheaded the new study of the tracks, was able to date the footprints because they were preserved in travertine, a sedimentary rock containing small traces of uranium. Since scientists know the rate at which uranium decays, becoming thorium, researchers were able to determine the footprints’ age by measuring the ratios of the two elements. According to their study, published in the Feb. 2014 edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science, North America’s oldest footprints were made around 10,550 years ago.
Paranthropus boisei: 1.34-Million-Year-Old Hominin Found in Tanzania A 1.34-million-year-old partial skeleton of the Plio-Pleistocene hominin Paranthropus boisei – including arm, hand, leg and foot fragments – found at the Olduvai Gorge site in Tanzania represents one of the most recent occurrences of the hominin before its extinction in East Africa. A forensic facial reconstruction of Paranthropus boisei. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0. Paranthropus boisei was a long-lived species of archaic hominin that first evolved in East Africa about 2.3 million years ago. The first skull of Paranthropus boisei, dated to 1.75 million years old, was discovered in 1959 at Olduvai by the anthropologist Dr Mary Leakey. During Olduvai excavations in 2010-2011, anthropologist Dr Charles Musiba of the University of Colorado Denver with colleagues unearthed the partial skeleton of a large adult individual who is represented by various teeth and skeletal parts. “The size of the arm bones suggests strong forearms and a powerful upper body.
Light skin mutation stems from one ancestor All instances of a gene mutation that contributes to light skin color in Europeans came from the same chromosome of one person who most likely lived at least 10,000 years ago, according to researchers. While the genetics of skin color is largely unclear, past research using zebrafish by Penn State’s Keith Cheng identified a key gene that contributes to lighter skin color in Europeans and differs from West Africans. In 2005, Cheng reported that one amino acid difference in the gene SLC24A5 is a key contributor to the skin color difference between Europeans and West Africans. “The mutation in SLC24A5 changes just one building block in the protein, and contributes about a third of the visually striking differences in skin tone between peoples of African and European ancestry,” says Cheng, professor of pathology. Lighter skin color may have provided an advantage for the better creation of vitamin D in the lesser sunlight characteristic of northern latitudes. Source: Penn State
Jimmy Nelson Photographs Vanishing Tribes in Before They Pass Away Photographer Jimmy Nelson in Papua New Guinea I’ve been fascinated by tribal cultures for over 20 years, ever since I interviewed my grandfather about our family history and learned we had American Indian blood on both sides. In the years since, I’ve traveled to indigenous communities in Dominica, South Africa, Tahiti, the Peruvian Amazon and numerous other destinations in an effort to learn from the tribal cultures there. So you can imagine how much photographer Jimmy Nelson‘s new book, Before They Pass Away, resonated with me on a personal level. The project began in 2009, when the British photographer set out on a journey to visit and photograph 31 secluded, visually unique tribes. “I wanted to witness their time-honoured traditions, join in their rituals and discover how the rest of the world is threatening to change their way of life forever,” Nelson says. A Nenets (a.k.a. Let’s start off talking about the origins of this project. Our world is changing at breakneck speed.
Archaeologists discover the earliest complete example of a human with cancer (17 March 2014) Lytic lesion in the spinous process of the 5th thoracic vertebra Archaeologists have found the oldest complete example in the world of a human with metastatic cancer in a 3,000 year-old skeleton. The findings are reported in the academic journal PLOS ONE. The skeleton of the young adult male was found by a Durham University PhD student in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013 and dates back to 1200BC. Analysis has revealed evidence of metastatic carcinoma, cancer which has spread to other parts of the body from where it started, from a malignant soft-tissue tumour spread across large areas of the body, making it the oldest convincing complete example of metastatic cancer in the archaeological record. The researchers from Durham University and the British Museum say the discovery will help to explore underlying causes of cancer in ancient populations and provide insights into the evolution of cancer in the past.
The Jarawa, Onge and Sentinelese of the Andaman islands Picture by Salome. Two women from the Jarawa people. These near pygmy sized ‘Negrito’ people live on the Andaman and Nicobar islands south of Myanmar. there are thought to be less then 300 of them now, and possibly even fewer, as a recent measles epidemic devasted their population. They live in groups of about 40 to 50 people, in a hunter gatherer lifestyle, eating berries, pig, monitor lizard, fish and other wild foods. They look very out of place in the Indian ocean, physically they look a lot like pygmies, with jet black black skin, peppercorn hair and ocassionally steatopygous buttocks on the women. They are thought to have been living in more or less isolation from the rest of the world on their islands for about 60,000 years. They seem to live their lives at a faster pace than the rest of us, the women hiting menopause in their thirties. This site on the Andamanese is well worth a look. There have been some DNA studies involving the Jarawa and Onge. Dr. Dr. Like this: Like Loading...
Morning Edition Altamura Man Altamura Man, surrounded by limestone deposits. Altamura Man is the 400,000-year-old calcified remains of hominid species believed to be Homo heidelbergensis. Altamura Man was discovered in a limestone cave, called grotta di Lamalunga, near the city of Altamura, Italy. Characteristics[edit] Discovery[edit] The discovery happened in a karst borehole, composed of a complex system of caves of Lamalunga, next to an elongated valley secluded by numerous hills, typical of the Altamura Murgia in Apulia. The fossil skeleton[edit] The team - led by Prof. Morphology[edit] The reference to an archaic version of Homo neanderthalensis also implies the find must show antedating morphological features and so directly recalling typical features of Homo neanderthalensis. Some characteristics match features typical of Homo sapiens, among which in particular the convexity of the occipital bone scale. Importance[edit] Recent studies[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit]
Ötzi Ötzi (German pronunciation: [ˈœtsi] ( ); also called Ötzi the Iceman, the Similaun Man, the Man from Hauslabjoch, Homo tyrolensis, and the Hauslabjoch mummy) is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived around 3,300 BCE.[2][3] The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence Ötzi, near the Similaun mountain and Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy.[4] He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic Europeans. His body and belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy. Discovery Ötzi the Iceman while still frozen in the glacier, photographed by Helmut Simon upon the discovery of the body in September 1991 46°46′45.8″N 10°50′25.1″E / 46.779389°N 10.840306°E / 46.779389; 10.840306.[7] The province of South Tyrol therefore claimed property rights, but agreed to let Innsbruck University finish its scientific examinations. Scientific analyses Body Blood
Human Ancestor May Put Twist in Origin Story Known as the ancient human ancestor was discovered in the Malapa region of South Africa in 2008 and was described for the first time last April. (See "'Key' Human Ancestor Found: Fossils Link Apes, First Humans?" ) Now a suite of five studies, published in this week's issue of the journal is delving deeper into the species' unusual mix of human and apelike traits to help refine s place in the time line of human evolution . After examining s anatomy, for instance, scientists think they may have evidence that the species was capable of making and using tools. In addition, the team thinks it may have found samples of fossilized skin. "We've started an open-access experiment"—called the Malapa Soft Tissue Project —"to determine if we do in fact have skin," said study leader Lee Berger , an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. "We are enlisting the entire scientific community in exploring this possibility." (See pictures of the fossils .)
Ancient Hunter-Gatherers Kept in Touch Until about 8500 years ago, Europe was populated by nomadic hunter-gatherers who hunted, fished, and ate wild plants. Then, the farming way of life swept into the continent from its origins in the Near East, including modern-day Turkey. Within 3000 years most of the hunter-gatherers had disappeared. Little is known about these early Europeans. But a new genetic analysis of two 8000-year-old skeletons from Spain suggests that they might have been a remarkably cohesive population both genetically and culturally—a conclusion that other researchers find intriguing but possibly premature. The first modern human hunter-gatherers occupied Europe at least 40,000 years ago. Yet, while researchers have intensively studied the ancient farmers who followed them, relatively little is known about Europe's Mesolithic people. The team was able to extract mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from both sets of remains, and to completely sequence the mtDNA from the La Braña 1 skeleton.
Big brains, no fur, sinuses - were our ancestors 'aquatic apes'? It is one of the most unusual evolutionary ideas ever proposed: humans are amphibious apes who lost their fur, started to walk upright and developed big brains because they took to living the good life by the water's edge. This is the aquatic ape theory and although treated with derision by some academics over the past 50 years, it is still backed by a small, but committed group of scientists. Next week they will hold a major London conference when several speakers, including David Attenborough, will voice support for the theory. "Humans are very different from other apes," said Peter Rhys Evans, an organiser of Human Evolution: Past, Present and Future. Standard evolutionary models suggest these different features appeared at separate times and for different reasons. Scientists have since added other human attributes of claimed aquatic origin – a recent addition being the sinus, said Rhys Evans, an expert on head and neck physiology at the Royal Marsden hospital, London.