Anthropology News

Bolzano - When police heard about the frozen corpse up in the Alps in September 1991, they opened a criminal probe. Murder it was, but the crime was rather old -- and the ultimate cold case.

Paris - Strong fists for defending ourselves and opposable thumbs for work as fine as threading a needle -- hand specialisation is widely believed to have given humans a major evolutionary advantage.

Washington - Threatened by disease and deforestation, the world's last isolated tribes in the Amazon are on a collision course with modern society like never before, experts say.

A 2.8 million-year-old jaw bone and five teeth found on a rocky slope in the Afar region of Ethiopia, are the oldest known human fossils, beating the previous discovery by 400,000 years.

Montreal - From the depths of the African rainforest to the bustling streets of a North American metropolis, music cuts through cultures and produces the same moods and physiological responses in humans, according to a brand new study.

Paris - The silhouette of a hand on a cave wall in Indonesia is 40,000 years old, showing that Europe was not the birthplace of art as long believed, researchers said on Wednesday.

Sydney - Six years ago the 1,000-year-old skull of a toddler aged 3 to 5 washed up on a beach in Australia. Now the jawbone that matches the skull has also washed up, and scientists are still trying to find out who the child was and where the remains came from.

Montreal - Newly released photos depict how ancient Egyptian mummies actually looked prior to death, even going so far as to give a detailed look at the "hair styles" of the day.

A new discovery in South Africa has turned up evidence that our ancestors had a grasp on how to use fire much earlier than previously thought.

A new study supports the hypothesis that interbreeding with modern humans contributed significantly to the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Auckland - A study carried out on the diversity of speech units or phonemes in 504 languages around the world has concluded that human speech has a single origin located in central and southern Africa.

Lima - The first batch of archaeological pieces taken from the iconic pre-Columbian site known as Machu Picchu, and held “on loan” at Yale University, will return to Peru later this month after a century-long controversy about ownership.

Washington - Researchers from George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institute discovered sufficient evidence disproving the accepted theory that the extinction of the Neandertals was partly due to their diet.

Cleveland - Meet Lucy's great-grandfather Kadanuumuu, who was found in Ethiopia recently. Scientists say the early hominid skeleton confirms human-like walking is more ancient then we had previously known. Have we found another piece of the missing link?

J.R.R. Tolkien is considered by many to be the father of modern fantasy writing. His tales of middle earth, of hobbits, orcs, trolls, wizards, and men have become classic literature and best selling movies. Could there have actually been real hobbits?

This has some way to go before being called a definitive finding. Researchers have been studying the Hadza people in Tanzania, largely because their culture doesn’t practice birth control, so there is “no bias” in the figures.