Archaeology and anthropology

• Mexico's transgenic maize under fire - Premium content

  Experimental planting scheme has insufficient controls to prevent gene flow to native crops, critcs say.

  25 November 2009

• Oldest American artefact unearthed - Premium content

  Oregon caves yield evidence of continent's first inhabitants.

  5 November 2009

• Native American culture sowed seeds of its own collapse - Premium content

  Floods brought the Nazca to their knees — but they crippled themselves by over-farming first.

  2 November 2009

• Lions' taste for human flesh dissected - Premium content

  Two maneaters devoured dozens in the late nineteenth century but one ate the lion's share.

  2 November 2009

• Fossil primate challenges Ida's place - Premium content

  Controversial German specimen is related to lemurs, not humans, analysis of an Egyptian find suggests.

  21 October 2009

• Prehistoric Clovis culture roamed southwards - Premium content

  Stone tools and bones of an ancient tusker found at extensive Mexican site.

  21 October 2009

• Darwin's geological mystery solved - Premium content

  Origin of odd South American boulders may have defeated the Origin's author.

  20 October 2009

• Impact theory under fire once more - Premium content

  Archaeologists fail to find evidence for comet explosion.

  14 October 2009

• North America comet theory questioned - Premium content

  No evidence of an extraterrestrial impact 13,000 years ago, studies say.

  12 October 2009

• Fossil rewrites early human evolution - Premium content

  Ethiopian find dates back 4.4 million years.

  7 October 2009

• Oldest hominid skeleton revealed - Premium content

  At 4.4 million years, Ethiopian fossil clarifies human–chimp relationships.

  1 October 2009

• Europe's oldest axes discovered - Premium content

  Sophisticated tool-making skills more widespread than previously thought.

  2 September 2009

• Uproar over Palestinian archaeology congress - Premium content

  Dearth of Israeli researchers attending provokes accusations of bias.

  19 August 2009

• Scientists strive to boost US–Cuban collaboration - Premium content

  Breaking the barriers proves to be a slow process.

  22 July 2009

• Neanderthal census reveals diversity - Premium content

  Sequencing method uses mitochondrial DNA to build up a picture of the species.

  17 July 2009

• Deficit dooms Swedish gene institute - Premium content

  Researchers face cutbacks and lay-offs.

  24 June 2009

• Early man becomes early ape - Premium content

  Author withdraws claim that ancient jawbone is human ancestor.

  17 June 2009

• Traces of paint confirmed on Parthenon sculptures - Premium content

  Pristine white marbles were once a riot of colour.

  15 June 2009

• War and migration may have shaped human behaviour - Premium content

  Demographic factors could be behind diverse aspects of social evolution.

  4 June 2009

• Quaternary geologists win timescale vote - Premium content

  Redefinition rescues once-threatened terminology from extinction.

  3 June 2009

• Earliest evidence for pottery making found - Premium content

  Fragments from a Chinese cave push back the dawn of the craft by more than 1,000 years.

  1 June 2009

• Mercury traces expose Inca mining boom - Premium content

  Peruvian lake sediments reveal extensive activity of past civilizations at 'mine of death'.

  18 May 2009

• Q&A: Mapping the world's oldest submerged town - Premium content

  Underwater archaeologist Jon Henderson is hoping to reveal the secrets of the ancient Greek town of Pavlopetri.

  18 May 2009

• Ancient Venus rewrites history books - Premium content

  Female figure was carved from a mammoth tusk 35,000 years ago.

  13 May 2009

• Making war not love - Premium content

  Fiercest warriors in Amazon tribe left fewer descendants.

  11 May 2009

• IN BRIEF: Fossils protected in US land legislation - Premium content

  1 April 2009

• Scientists in bone battle - Premium content

  Native Americans lay claim to 10,000-year-old skeletons.

  18 March 2009

• Peking Man older than thought - Premium content

  Classic Homo erectus fossils in Zhoukoudian caves are more than 700,000 years old.

  11 March 2009

• Turkish scientists claim Darwin censorship - Premium content

  Science-funding agency accused of removing evolution article #20; and its editor #20; from mainstream magazine.

  10 March 2009

• Genetic test predicts eye colour - Premium content

  Forensic tool could help catch criminals.

  9 March 2009

• Evidence for ancient horse ranch uncovered - Premium content

  Traces of earliest known milking of horses in Kazakhstan.

  5 March 2009

• Rethinking silk's origins - Premium content

  Did the Indian subcontinent start spinning without Chinese know-how?

  17 February 2009

• Darwin 200: The other strand - Premium content

  Geneticists looked to the human genome to understand human evolution. But it's hard to interpret without considering the inheritance of culture, finds Erika Check Hayden.

  11 February 2009

• IN BRIEF: Lucy's museum tour threatens to become a spell in storage - Premium content

  11 February 2009

• Darwin 200: Human nature: the remix - Premium content

  People's mindsets are neither fixed by evolution nor infinitely malleable by culture. Dan Jones looks for the similarities that underlie the diversity of human nature.

  11 February 2009

• Neanderthal genome to be unveiled - Premium content

  Draft sequence opens window on human relatives.

  4 February 2009

• Muse: Friends dis-united? - Premium content

  Models of behaviour are often simplistic but can guard against false assumptions.

  23 January 2009

• Earliest Americans took two paths - Premium content

  Genetic analysis suggests there were at least two migrations into the Americas.

  8 January 2009

• Downturn hits Chicago's natural history museum - Premium content

  Staff and science cut as museum's endowments crash.

  23 December 2008

• Darwin 200: Let's make a mammoth - Premium content

  Evolution assumes that extinction is forever. Maybe not. Henry Nicholls asks what it would take to bring the woolly mammoth back from the dead.

  19 November 2008

• Modified genes spread to local maize - Premium content

  Findings reignite debate over genetically modified crops.

  12 November 2008

• Primate researchers ask the big questions - Premium content

  Scientists chart course for studies of humans' closest relatives.

  31 October 2008

• Technological innovation may have driven first human migration - Premium content

  Ancient tools give up their makers' secrets.

  30 October 2008

• No burial for 10,000-year-old bones - Premium content

  University of California denies request for repatriation of remains.

  29 October 2008

• Palaeontology: School of rock - Premium content

  Native Americans want to claim fossil resources found on their lands. Rex Dalton looks at how tribes and palaeontologists are working together to avoid bitter ownership disputes.

  15 October 2008

• Slime and fleas feature in Ig Nobel awards - Premium content

  Tongue-in-cheek prizes recognize improbable research.

  8 October 2008

• An Ig Nobel diary - Premium content

  Nature reports from the awards that celebrate the silliest science around.

  3 October 2008

• Military research: The Pentagon's culture wars - Premium content

  What began several years ago as an attempt to recruit social scientists to help the military has sparked a broader debate about militarizing academia. Sharon Weinberger reports.

  1 October 2008

• Ecology: The heart of the wood - Premium content

  BiaBowie|a is one of the best-preserved woodlands in Europe. But is it a good reference point for what Europe looked like 5,000 years ago? Emma Marris goes deep into the forest to find out.

  17 September 2008

• French university under fire for culling macaques - Premium content

  Death of research monkeys slammed as morally wrong.

  10 September 2008

• Children learn rules of equality by age eight - Premium content

  But those with siblings are more selfish than those without.

  27 August 2008

• Georgian science pays price of conflict - Premium content

  Conflict with Russia puts reforms in jeopardy.

  26 August 2008

• Back when the desert was green - Premium content

  Burial site offers rare glimpse of daily life in the stone-age Sahara.

  14 August 2008

• First complete Neanderthal genome sequenced - Premium content

  Full nuclear sequence, offering clues about our relatives' demise, expected within months.

  7 August 2008

• Rock art carves itself a niche online - Premium content

  6 August 2008

• Complex clock combines calendars - Premium content

  Antikythera Mechanism may have timetabled ancient Olympic Games.

  30 July 2008

• Fossilized feathers may hold a trace of colour - Premium content

  Pigment remains might help to discern colours and patterns in feathered dinosaurs.

  8 July 2008

• Human evolution: Details of being human - Premium content

  A difference in one molecule led physician Ajit Varki to question what sets humans apart from other apes. Bruce Lieberman meets a man who sees a big picture in the finer points.

  2 July 2008

• Online anthropology draws protest from aboriginal group - Premium content

  South African tribe objects to multimedia images of remains.

  25 June 2008

• Muse: Why we should love logarithms - Premium content

  The tendency of 'uneducated' people to compress the number scale for big numbers is actually an admirable way of measuring the world, says Philip Ball.

  29 May 2008

• Language: The language barrier - Premium content

  Some researchers think that the evolution of languages can be understood by treating them like genomes #20; but many linguists don't want to hear about it. Emma Marris reports.

  21 May 2008

• Early Americans had a coastal diet - Premium content

  Settlers travelled to the coast to get their seaweed.

  8 May 2008

• Ancient Buddhas painted in oils - Premium content

  Were painters on the Silk Road way ahead of the Europeans?

  22 April 2008

• Deal for Holy Land artefacts - Premium content

  Israel and Palestine draft an agreement on how to allocate archaeological sites.

  16 April 2008

• Archaeology: Bones, isles and videotape - Premium content

  Old human remains found on the Pacific islands of Palau are caught in the crossfire between entertainment and science. Rex Dalton reports.

  16 April 2008

• Tanzania takes steps to save ancient human prints - Premium content

  9 April 2008

• Fossil faeces pinpoint earliest North Americans - Premium content

  Evidence confirms humans were in the Americas more than 14,000 years ago.

  3 April 2008

• Gold necklace reveals early 'bling' - Premium content

  Oldest gold status symbols from Americas unearthed in Peru.

  31 March 2008

• Whaling scene found in 3,000-year-old picture - Premium content

  Arctic carving shows complexity of ancient hunting groups.

  31 March 2008

• Fossil find is oldest European yet - Premium content

  Spanish jawbone is earliest human remains from Western Europe.

  26 March 2008

• Pacific "dwarf" bones cause controversy - Premium content

  Some researchers think the Palau finds are the remains of youngsters.

  10 March 2008

• Archaeology: Facing up to the past - Premium content

  New York University is trying to establish a world-class archaeological institute #20; with funds from a philanthropist who has been linked to looted artefacts. Rex Dalton reports.

  5 March 2008

• Hobbit was 'a cretin' - Premium content

  Fossil may be early example of hypothyroidism.

  4 March 2008

• How primates crossed continents - Premium content

  Oldest primate fossils in America suggest they came straight from Asia.

  3 March 2008

• Your history is printed in your hair - Premium content

  Chemical imprint from local water leaves an identifiable 'signature'.

  25 February 2008

• When kissing cousins are good for kids - Premium content

  A little inbreeding might boost fertility.

  7 February 2008

• Unravelling carbon's chemical secrets - Premium content

  Nuclear theory aims to explain why carbon dating works.

  1 February 2008

• Syphilis: spoil of the New World? - Premium content

  Genetic study blames Columbus for bringing syphilis to Europe.

  14 January 2008

• Fears for oldest human footprints - Premium content

  Fossilized tracks pose preservation puzzle.

  9 January 2008

• Archaeology: Pieces of the puzzle - Premium content

  After decades of war, looting and destruction, Afghanistan's archaeologists are scrambling to restore their country's cultural heritage. Rex Dalton visited Kabul to see how they are faring.

  12 December 2007