Topic description and stories

BaYaka camp in Congo. Image courtesy of Nikhil Chaudhary

Hunter-gatherer childhoods may offer clues to improving education and wellbeing

07 Mar 2023

Hunter-gatherers can help us understand the conditions that children may be psychologically adapted to because we lived as hunter-gatherers for 95%...

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Hadza children engaged in cooking play

Gendered play in hunter-gatherer children strongly influenced by community demographics

26 Sep 2019

The gendered play of children from two hunter-gatherer societies is strongly influenced by the demographics of their communities and the gender roles...

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Agta family relaxing in the late afternoon

Farmers have less leisure time than hunter-gatherers, study suggests

21 May 2019

Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who convert to farming work around ten hours a week longer than their forager neighbours, a new study suggests...

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Australopithecus afarensis reconstruction

Opinion: No giant leap for mankind: why we’ve been looking at human evolution in the wrong way

14 Jun 2016

Robert Foley (Department of Archaeology and Anthropology) discusses the cumulative processes by which we became human.

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Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica, Libya. The cave’s entrance.

Let’s go wild: how ancient communities resisted new farming practices

06 Jan 2016

Analysis of grinding stones reveals that North African communities may have moved slowly and cautiously from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to more...

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Millet: the missing piece in the puzzle of prehistoric humans’ transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers

14 Dec 2015

New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in...

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DNA was extracted from the molar teeth of this skeleton, dating from almost 10,000 years ago and found in the Kotias Klde rockshelter in Western Georgia.

‘Fourth strand’ of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age

16 Nov 2015

Populations of hunter-gatherers weathered Ice Age in apparent isolation in Caucasus mountain region for millennia, later mixing with other ancestral...

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Running

Distance running may be an evolutionary ‘signal’ for desirable male genes

08 Apr 2015

New research shows that males with higher ‘reproductive potential’ are better distance runners. This may have been used by females as a reliable...

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Spatula to poison darts, Malaysia

Poisons, plants and Palaeolithic hunters

21 Mar 2015

Dozens of common plants are toxic. Archaeologists have long suspected that our Palaeolithic ancestors used plant poisons to make their hunting...

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Hunter-gatherer bone mass (left) compared with agriculturalist bone mass (right)

Hunter-gatherer past shows our fragile bones result from physical inactivity since invention of farming

22 Dec 2014

Latest analysis of prehistoric bones show there is no anatomical reason why a person born today could not develop the skeletal strength of a...

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Diagram showing spread of humans from Africa.

Scientists use genetics and climate reconstructions to track the global spread of modern humans out of Africa

17 Sep 2012

Research indicates the out-of-Africa spread of humans was dictated by the appearance of favourable climatic windows.

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The traditional image of Neanderthals as gritty people who spent most of their time out hunting might not be entirely accurate, according to a new study revealing that they may have had to devote hours to daily subsistence tasks instead.

Caveman about the house

19 Jul 2012

The traditional image of Neanderthals as gritty people who spent most of their time out hunting might not be entirely accurate, according to a new...

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