The 6th Shanghai Archaeological Forum has just drawn to a close, and it is time to reflect on its many highlights. This year, the field trip was scheduled on the first day, and we were given the choice of visiting freshly uncovered shipwrecks and the new Shanghai Museum, or to take the bus south to visit two key sites: Jingtoushan and Hemudu.
Human beings may have suddenly doubled their age thanks to some recent research on a group of fossilised skulls from China, known as Yunxian 1 and 2. Previously classified as Homo erectus, they have now been designated as belonging to the Denisovan group, based on skull shape.
‘Dragon Man’ was Denisovan? New palaeoproteomic and DNA evidence suggests that ‘Dragon Man’ – a hominin cranium first discovered in the 1930s near Harbin in north-east China – is not a new species as had previously been hypothesised but is…
New analysis of a hominin skull previously believed to represent a new species of ancient human suggests that it may in fact be a Denisovan. The Denisovans were first discovered in 2010, when ancient DNA from a finger bone in…
In this slim and accessible volume, Palaeolithic archaeologist Paul Pettitt writes with confidence about the recent history of history, or, rather, prehistory. A prologue introduces us to the immersive world of Palaeolithic archaeology, introduces its intent, and from there we…
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.
The molar has been dated to between 164,000 and 131,000 years ago.
Discovered at Denisova Cave in Siberia, the bones have been dated to 200,000 years ago
Over the last decade, revolutions in the scientific analysis of archaeological material have allowed us to delve deeper into the origins and migrations of modern humans. Through the lens of Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary…
After decades of slowly piecing together the puzzle of our human origins, the last ten years have seen a gigantic leap forward in our knowledge, spurred by advances in aDNA (see CA 338), radiocarbon dating, and other areas of archaeological…