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First ancient human DNA found from key Asian migration route
Sulawesi has some of the world’s oldest cave art, but ancient human remains have been scarce — now a fossil with DNA hints at a mysterious lineage of people.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Research Highlight |
Found: the world’s oldest known mint and its jumbo product
A mint discovered in China was churning out 14-centimetre-long ‘spade coins’ more than 2,500 years ago.
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Research Highlight |
How old is Machu Picchu? The dead whisper a hint
Analysis of human bones suggests that historical records about the iconic site in Peru are inaccurate.
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long-read: How ancient people learned to love carbs
Archaeological evidence shows that ancient people ate bread, beer and other carbs, long before domesticated crops.
- Andrew Curry
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Research Highlight |
The guts of a ‘bog body’ reveal sacrificed man’s final meal
Tollund Man, who lived more than 2,000 years ago, ate well before he was hanged.
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Research Highlight |
When digging up the dead was decorous
Death cults in early medieval Europe included inspections of mortal remains.
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Article
| Open AccessPleistocene sediment DNA reveals hominin and faunal turnovers at Denisova Cave
Ancient mitochondrial DNA from sediments reveals the sequence of Denisovan, Neanderthal and faunal occupation of Denisova Cave, and evidence for the appearance of modern humans at least 45,000 years ago.
- Elena I. Zavala
- , Zenobia Jacobs
- & Matthias Meyer
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News Feature |
How ancient people fell in love with bread, beer and other carbs
Well before people domesticated crops, they were grinding grains for hearty stews and other starchy dishes.
- Andrew Curry
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Matters Arising |
Clusters of flowstone ages are not supported by statistical evidence
- Philip Hopley
- , Pieter Vermeesch
- & Alfred Latham
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News Feature |
How did Neanderthals and other ancient humans learn to count?
Archaeological finds suggest that people developed numbers tens of thousands of years ago. Scholars are now exploring the first detailed hypotheses about this life-changing invention.
- Colin Barras
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Nature Podcast |
On the origin of numbers
The cross-discipline effort to work out how ancient humans learned to count.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News |
Palaeontologists hope Biden will restore protections on fossil-rich US lands
Trump’s shrinking of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante reserves may be reversed — ensuring archaeological and fossil treasures are preserved for study.
- Freda Kreier
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Research Highlight |
Pyramid made of dirt is world’s oldest known war memorial
Grave goods suggest that some of the people whose bones are buried in the Syrian monument were charioteers.
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Research Highlight |
Extraordinary final feast of the sacrificial llamas
The animals ate a highly unusual meal, including cooked foods, before they were ceremonially killed some 600 years ago.
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Comment |
Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
Universities and museums must catalogue the remains of Black Americans in their collections, and pause research pending consultation with descendant communities.
- Justin Dunnavant
- , Delande Justinvil
- & Chip Colwell
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News & Views |
A child’s grave is the earliest known burial site in Africa
The discovery of the burial of a young child in a cave in Kenya around 78,000 years ago sheds new light on the role of symbolism in the treatment of the dead during the Middle Stone Age.
- Louise Humphrey
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Nature Podcast |
Oldest African burial site uncovers Stone Age relationship with death
The earliest evidence of deliberate human burial in Africa, and a metal-free rechargeable battery.
- Benjamin Thompson
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Article |
Earliest known human burial in Africa
The earliest known human burial in Africa, that of a young child, is dated to around 78,000 years ago.
- María Martinón-Torres
- , Francesco d’Errico
- & Michael D. Petraglia
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Research Highlight |
Forget Stonehenge: the first known massive monuments are much older
The Arabian Peninsula is dotted with hundreds of mysterious structures dating to the sixth millennium BC.
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Article |
Genomic insights into population history and biological adaptation in Oceania
Genomic analyses of human populations in the Pacific provide insights into the peopling history of the region and reveal episodes of biological adaptation relating to the immune system and lipid metabolism through introgression from archaic hominins and polygenic adaptation.
- Jeremy Choin
- , Javier Mendoza-Revilla
- & Lluis Quintana-Murci
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News |
Oldest DNA from a Homo sapiens reveals surprisingly recent Neanderthal ancestry
Ancient human lineages interbred commonly in Europe, as well as the Middle East.
- Ewen Callaway
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News & Views |
Early humans far from the South African coast collected unusual objects
Ostrich eggshells and crystals gathered more than 100,000 years ago shed light on the cultural evolution of early humans. Found in South Africa’s interior, they reveal that technological innovations occurred beyond its coast.
- Pamela R. Willoughby
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Research Highlight |
Why mummified tropical parrots are buried in one of the world’s driest deserts
Scarlet macaws and other birds plucked from distant jungles lived out their lives as pets in oasis communities.
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Research Highlight |
Prehistoric workers dined on takeaway three millennia before Uber Eats
Ancient detritus hints that hungry labourers reached for convenience foods such as pre-hulled barley.
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News Round-Up |
Australia’s oldest rock painting and a prestigious mathematics prize
The latest science news, in brief.
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Research Highlight |
Shades of Middle-earth: ancient fortresses loom over the Himalayas
A survey reveals clusters of mountainside forts that could have relayed signals to each other by fire or smoke.
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Research Highlight |
A breathtaking treasure reveals the power of the woman buried with it
The silver diadem and other bling interred with a woman some 3,700 years ago mark her high status.
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Review Article |
Origins of modern human ancestry
A Review describes the three key phases that define the origins of modern human ancestry, and highlights the importance of analysing both palaeoanthropological and genomic records to further improve our understanding of our evolutionary history.
- Anders Bergström
- , Chris Stringer
- & Pontus Skoglund
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Research Highlight |
The recipe for China’s oldest known face cream: beef fat and ground ‘moonmilk’
A pot of 2,700-year-old goo, found in an aristocratic man’s grave, hints at the rise of manufactured beauty-care products.
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Research Highlight |
An Egyptian mummy wears an unprecedented suit of mud
The unique carapace was probably designed to support the deceased person’s bid for immortality.
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Research Highlight |
Found at last: the ‘Sapling Fort’ where Native Alaskans made a stand
The stout palisaded structure helped Sitka Tlingit people to force a Russian retreat in 1804.
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Nature Podcast |
Our podcast highlights of 2020
The Nature Podcast team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.
- Benjamin Thompson
- , Dan Fox
- & Nick Howe
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Book Review |
Wood — the vein that runs through human history
Why do stone, bronze, iron, oil and data get all the attention?
- Josie Glausiusz
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Research Highlight |
Babies buried under a mammoth-bone lid are the oldest known identical twins
Prehistoric grave contains the remains of a baby who died at birth and those of his twin, who survived for an additional six to seven weeks.
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Research Highlight |
The big-game hunter buried in an ancient grave: a female teenager
The burial and others like it suggest that female hunters were common in the Americas thousands of years ago.
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Research Highlight |
Pet cemeteries show faith that good dogs go to heaven
Canines bark at the pearly gates, according to inscriptions on gravestones installed since the Second World War.
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Article |
Environmental drivers of megafauna and hominin extinction in Southeast Asia
Stable isotope data for Southeast Asian mammals across the Quaternary period shed light on environmental change from the Early Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch, contextualizing hominin evolution and megafauna extinction in the region.
- Julien Louys
- & Patrick Roberts
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Research Highlight |
A bustling town’s annihilation is frozen in time
Ruins and human bones in Spain capture a prosperous market town on the day when it was burnt and its inhabitants slaughtered.
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Matters Arising |
Reevaluating bipedalism in Danuvius
- Scott A. Williams
- , Thomas C. Prang
- & Liza J. Shapiro
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Matters Arising |
Reply to: Reevaluating bipedalism in Danuvius
- Madelaine Böhme
- , Nikolai Spassov
- & David R. Begun
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Research Highlight |
Ancient tax collectors amassed a fortune — until it went up in smoke
Grain stored in a burnt silo came from multiple farms in an empire in the sixteenth century BC.
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Research Highlight |
An ancient whistle was crafted from a human thigh bone
Prehistoric people kept the bones of relatives and friends for generations as relicts.
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Correspondence |
Bolsonaro’s hostility has driven Brazil’s Indigenous peoples to the brink
- Renato Antunes dos Santos
- , Denise Osorio Severo
- & Maria da Graça Luderitz Hoefel
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Book Review |
Horse eyeballs and bone hammers: surprising lives of the Neanderthals
Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s book paints a vivid portrait of our adaptable ancient relatives.
- Josie Glausiusz
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Where I Work |
Sifting through half a million years of human history
Archaeologist Mina Weinstein-Evron explains how one of the world’s most ancient burial sites yields ‘exquisite’ discoveries.
- James Mitchell Crow
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Research Highlight |
This temple was equipped with accessibility ramps more than 2,000 years ago
Features at ancient Greek sanctuary would have aided visitors with impaired mobility.
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News & Views |
Evidence grows that peopling of the Americas began more than 20,000 years ago
The long-debated timing of the peopling of the Americas comes into focus, thanks to some archaeological findings. What are the implications of a revised timeline for our understanding of these earliest inhabitants?
- Ruth Gruhn
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News |
Controversial cave discoveries suggest humans reached Americas much earlier than thought
Archaeologists say stone artefacts point to occupation more than 30,000 years ago — but not everyone is convinced.
- Colin Barras