Page 33 - Upper Paleolithic News Today

Apr 28, 2021 11:58 PM EDT When studying ancient DNA, researchers typically use teeth or bones found in fossils. However, while fossils are useful, they only include a snapshot of an individuals DNA within a genus, not the genetics of the whole population, according to Caroline Delbert of Popular Mechanics. (Photo : Brett Sayles) A research team has sequenced the complete genomes of two ancient bears using only urine and feces contained in soil samples from the Chiquihuite Cave in Northern Mexic...

The dirt scattered across the floor of an ancient, remote cave in Mexico has yielded a new source of viable ancient DNA.

Bison depicted at the Altamira cave in northern Spain Thom Quine The evocative Upper Paleolithic art (dating from roughly 44,000 to 12,000BC) found in caves in France and Spain has long intrigued art historical and scientific researchers. But one facet has stumped many scholars: Why are so many of these paintings found in remote, narrow, hard-to-reach halls or passages that cannot be navigated without artificial light? A team of Israeli researchers suggests the answer: th...

Abstract The orientation of artifacts and faunal remains within archaeological deposits are useful for understanding past processes that led to the formation of these deposits. This is because post-depositional processes move clasts in particular ways, causing non-random patterning in clast orientation arrangements. On the other hand, when assemblages exhibit a randomly distributed bearing orientation and minimal tilt, it is commonly assumed that the remains are of a primary depositional contex...

Sursa foto: Foto Agerpres Researchers Oana Teodora Moldovan and Silviu Constantin from the "Emil Racovita" Institute of Speleology of the Romanian Academy recently signed an article in Nature journal, together with an international team of archaeologists and speleologists, that shows that there was a genetic transfer, resulting from the interbreeding between the Neanderthals and the first anatomically modern humans to arrive in Europe, agerpres.ro confirms. Titled "Initial Upper Palaeolithic hu...

Interactions between early modern humans and Neanderthals were a lot more common than we thought The Neanderthal DNA in East Asians today can be traced back to interactions between Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe 45,000 years ago. The oldest known remains of modern humans in Europe have been identified in the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, according to new research published last week in the journal Nature. These remains, which belong to five individuals, were radiocarbon dated bet...

Apparently, tripping while creating art isn’t new.

Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images Prehistoric cave dwellers living in Europe starved themselves of oxygen to make art, researchers say. An Israeli study found that cavemen purposefully did this to help them interact with the cosmos. The study explains why so many ancient paintings are deep inside cave systems. Prehistoric cave dwellers living in Europe purposefully starved themselves of oxygen to hallucinate while creating their decorative wall paintings, a groundb...

A final flyby for asteroid Bennu and 5 other top space and science stories this week Coming soon: Watch out for the upcoming launch of Wonder Theory, the first-ever CNN space and science newsletter. Welcome to Wonder Theory, your weekly space and science digest. In a matter of days, robots achieved milestones across our solar system as researchers here on Earth uncovered windows into the early days of humanity. These contrasting advancements amaze us here at the CNN Space and Science team, esp...

Welcome to Wonder Theory, your weekly space and science digest. In a matter of days, robots achieved milestones across our solar system as researchers here on Earth uncovered windows into the early days of humanity. These contrasting advancements amaze us here at the CNN Space and Science team, especially because they happen so often. Learning how our ancestors created cave art and engraved prehistoric stone maps transforms these early humans from unrelatable figures to relatives with common g...