# neanderthal (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 6 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover neanderthal. Page: Feed: --- ## [The Obsidian Arrows That Told Stories Before Written Language; A New Look at Neolithic Artifacts from Central Anatolia](https://www.anthropology.net/p/the-obsidian-arrows-that-told-stories) _2026-08-21 · Anthropology.net_ A new study begins decoding unexplained marks on ancient Anatolian arrowheads. ## [Two Neanderthal Pelvises Suggest the Obstetrical Dilemma Was Never About Walking](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-neanderthal-pelvises-suggest-ad8) _2026-08-20 · Anthropology.net_ A toddler from Syria and a young woman from Spain, digitally reassembled, point toward pelvic floor stability rather than locomotion as the constraint that shaped the birth canal. ## [Natufian Foragers Butchered Snakes at el-Wad Terrace for Three Thousand Years](https://www.anthropology.net/p/natufian-foragers-butchered-snakes) _2026-08-20 · Anthropology.net_ Cut marks on 82 vertebrae, all in the same anatomical spot, and what they say about diet at the threshold of sedentism ## [A Bronze Age Pottery Kiln in Northwest Arabia and the Question of When a Style Becomes a Brand](https://www.anthropology.net/p/a-bronze-age-pottery-kiln-in-northwest) _2026-08-20 · Anthropology.net_ Chemical and petrographic analysis of Qurayyah Painted Ware traces a thousand-year ceramic tradition and asks whether its fourth iteration crossed a line into something like commercial branding. ## [The Shape of an Edo-Period Storage Jar, Measured 243 Times](https://www.anthropology.net/p/the-shape-of-an-edo-period-storage) _2026-08-20 · Anthropology.net_ A morphometric study of Hizen Ogame finds that burial context structured vessel form more strongly than the passage of time did. ## [Stone Tool Shapes Suggest Neanderthals Reached Northern Arabia by 55,000 Years Ago](https://www.anthropology.net/p/stone-tool-shapes-suggest-neanderthals) _2026-08-19 · Anthropology.net_ New dating at a lakeside site in the Nefud, plus a comparison of 704 Levallois flakes, puts a familiar Levantine population deeper into the desert than any fossil can currently confirm. ## [The Case for Folding Australopithecus and Paranthropus Into Homo](https://www.anthropology.net/p/the-case-for-folding-australopithecus) _2026-08-19 · Anthropology.net_ A new synthesis argues that the three-genus framework at the heart of paleoanthropology is not a phylogenetic hypothesis but a leftover habit, and that the field knows it. ## [Two Neanderthal Pelvises Suggest the Modern Male Pelvis Is the Anomaly](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-neanderthal-pelvises-suggest) _2026-08-18 · Anthropology.net_ A new analysis argues the hip sockets of Homo sapiens males migrated forward, turning the pelvis into a spring, and that nearly every other male-female difference falls out of that one shift. ## [A Painted Stone Reached Wetar Island Before Pottery Did](https://www.anthropology.net/p/a-painted-stone-reached-wetar-island) _2026-08-17 · Anthropology.net_ What a small red plaque from a cave in eastern Indonesia says about what Austronesian voyagers actually carried across the Pacific. ## [A body built for winters that no longer exist](https://www.anthropology.net/p/a-body-built-for-winters-that-no) _2026-08-17 · Anthropology.net_ A genomic study of 42 ancient hunter-gatherers traces cold-survival genes back to an isolated Ice Age population, and finds a “ghost population” in Hokkaido that vanished from the record ## [Fast, secure international transfers (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/CwwTL7wSHNtL) _2026-08-17 · **Sponsored**_ Bank transfer, cash pickup, mobile wallet — low fees and real-time tracking ## [The Inheritors](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/16/the-inheritors-8/) _2026-08-16 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 40.1 – 38.0 thousand years ago “The Inheritors” is a novel by William Golding about the encounter between Neanderthals and modern humans. Like “Lord of the Flies,” it is written with a mid-twentieth century awareness that advanced societies don’t leave behind the potential for cruelty. Neanderthal 1, the first Neanderthal fossil recognized as probably belonging to \[…\] ## [Talk like a post-human](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/14/talk-like-a-post-human-9/) _2026-08-15 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ A followup to Talk Like a Neanderthal Day Thinking about how Neanderthals might have talked is one way to get at language evolution and how language works. Another way to do this is through science fiction. I’m not thinking so much of constructed languages like Quenya, Klingon, or Dothraki. There are whole communities of people out \[ \] ## [Three Small Cups That Rewrite the Map of Medieval Chinese Metallurgy](https://www.anthropology.net/p/three-small-cups-that-rewrite-the) _2026-08-14 · Anthropology.net_ Crucibles from a government workshop in Guangzhou push the archaeological record of Chinese brass-making back six centuries, and point toward the sea rather than the Silk Road ## [Two Leg Bones from a Drowned Taiwanese Channel Suggest Some Denisovans Were Ice Age Giants](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-leg-bones-from-a-drowned-taiwanese) _2026-08-14 · Anthropology.net_ Proteins extracted from a femur and tibia dredged from the Taiwan Strait indicate that at least one regional Denisovan population grew unusually large, and nobody is quite sure why. ## [Ancient DNA Reveals Two Separate Migrations Shaped the Pacific’s Most Diverse Islands](https://www.anthropology.net/p/ancient-dna-reveals-two-separate) _2026-08-14 · Anthropology.net_ A three-thousand-year genomic record from Fiji, Vanuatu, and Tonga shows how later arrivals, not the first settlers, built the region’s deep cultural diversity. ## [Blood, Lime, and the Chemistry of Memory](https://www.anthropology.net/p/blood-lime-and-the-chemistry-of-memory) _2026-08-14 · Anthropology.net_ How a matriarchal society in Bronze Age China may have used blood to fuse red pigment to limestone cliffs for two thousand years ## [Talk Like a Neanderthal Day](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/13/talk-like-a-neanderthal-day-11/) _2026-08-13 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 47.5 – 45.0 thousand years ago Like “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” but more scientific! Human language is probably more than One Weird Trick. It’s multiple weird tricks. We’ve already posted about phonemes, and how they can be strung together to make words. That’s (at least) one trick. And then words are strung together to make phrases and \[ \] ## [A Cave in the Söğütlü Valley, and a Fireplace 15,000 Years Old](https://www.anthropology.net/p/a-cave-in-the-sogutlu-valley-and) _2026-08-13 · Anthropology.net_ What a single trench in Türkiye’s eastern Black Sea region reveals about a gap in the map of Ice Age hunter-gatherers ## [Creb](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/12/creb-4/) _2026-08-12 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ From 50 thousand years ago, Shanidar 1 is one of the most complete Neanderthal skeletons known, from the famous Shanidar site in Iraqi Kurdistan. He stood about 5’8” tall, on the tall side for a Neanderthal. He died around 40 years old. The poor guy was also a mess. His right arm had been useless \[ \] ## [Votes for Oysters, or The Murder of the Missing Link](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/12/votes-for-oysters-or-the-murder-of-the-missing-link-5/) _2026-08-12 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 50.2 – 47.6 thousand years ago Darwin was a liberal but his theories had consequences in some degrees inimical to traditional liberalism. The doctrine that all men are born equal … was incompatible with his emphasis on congenital differences between members of the same species. There is a further consequence of the theory of evolution, \[ \] ## [Point a Domain, Start a Pit (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/FqQpgVtxZGuH) _2026-08-12 · **Sponsored**_ Point any domain to a blacked-out, poison-green coming-soon page with an email waitlist. ## [Human Centromeres Are the Most Mutable Part of the Genome, and Some Carry Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA](https://www.anthropology.net/p/human-centromeres-are-the-most-mutable) _2026-08-12 · Anthropology.net_ A global study of 2,110 centromeres reveals rapid mutation hotspots, inherited "three-headed" chromosomes, and ancient DNA surviving over 40,000 generations. ## [Rain, Not Selection: What Actually Made the First Cultivated Grains Bigger](https://www.anthropology.net/p/rain-not-selection-what-actually) _2026-08-12 · Anthropology.net_ New isotope evidence from Jordan suggests the earliest “domestic-sized” barley wasn’t bred that way. It just grew somewhere wetter. ## [Neanderthals in a Romanian Cave Were Making Tools From Whatever Bones Were Lying Around](https://www.anthropology.net/p/neanderthals-in-a-romanian-cave-were) _2026-08-11 · Anthropology.net_ A new analysis of over 10,000 bone fragments from the Eastern Carpathians finally closes a geographic gap in the record of Neanderthal bone tool use ## [Two Weeks to Move a Mountain of Mud](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-weeks-to-move-a-mountain-of-mud) _2026-08-11 · Anthropology.net_ What a 500-hectare stretch of Colombian wetland just taught archaeologists about power, planning, and who actually builds big things ## [A Scallop Shell Bead Buried 68 Kilometers from the Sea Rewrites the Timeline of California’s Inland Trade Networks](https://www.anthropology.net/p/a-scallop-shell-bead-buried-68-kilometers) _2026-08-10 · Anthropology.net_ An 8,500-year-old Monterey ornament reveals coastal luxury goods reached inland trade routes 5,000 years earlier than known. ## [Legs of the last Denisovans](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/legs-of-the-last-denisovans) _2026-08-08 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ Two bones from the floor of the Penghu Strait reveal some of the latest evidence of Denisovan survival. ## [Sorta outa Africa](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/07/sorta-outa-africa/) _2026-08-08 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ We’re around 15,000 years – almost a week on the Logarithmic History scale – away from the really sweeping expansion of Homo sapiens throughout Eurasia, the expansion that replaced Neanderthals and Denisovans. (Maybe it’s time to call the latter Homo longi.) But there are suggestions that by today’s date, a precursor Out Of Africa expansion is already underway. \[ \] ## [A Hunter-Gatherer's Genome Explains Why the Yayoi Rice Farmers Weren't the Whole Story](https://www.anthropology.net/p/a-hunter-gatherers-genome-explains) _2026-08-07 · Anthropology.net_ High-coverage ancient DNA from two skeletons buried five thousand years apart shows Japan's deepest dietary adaptations predate agriculture entirely ## [The Brain Ran on Fruit Long Before It Ran on Meat](https://www.anthropology.net/p/the-brain-ran-on-fruit-long-before) _2026-08-06 · Anthropology.net_ A new modeling study suggests glucose from fruit and honey, not protein from meat, was the real fuel behind four million years of human brain evolution. ## [How Neanderthal ancestry affects growth and muscle](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/how-neanderthal-ancestry-affects) _2026-08-06 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ Study of a Neanderthal-derived haplotype of GHR show effects on height and lean body mass ## [Non-custodial Crypto Payments & Escrow (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/OeRw92bupjCW) _2026-08-06 · **Sponsored**_ Accept multi-chain crypto with trustless escrow, instant confirmations, and no KYC ## [Growth Hormone, Faster Growth, and a Neanderthal in the Gym](https://www.anthropology.net/p/growth-hormone-faster-growth-and) _2026-08-05 · Anthropology.net_ A Neanderthal-derived receptor variant makes cells grow faster, and some people alive today are still carrying it around ## [Toba? or the sperm whale effect?](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/05/toba-or-the-sperm-whale-effect-7/) _2026-08-05 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 74 thousand years ago, a big chunk of the island of Sumatra blew up. It was the biggest volcanic explosion in the past two million years, expelling 2800 times as much debris as the Mount Saint Helens eruption in Washington State in 1980. Ash from the super-eruption is found all the way from Lake Malawi \[ \] ## [Blombos](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/04/blombos-8/) _2026-08-04 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 78.8 – 74.6 thousand years ago The period before the time when H. sapiens leaves Africa and spreads far and wide through Eurasia, replacing Neanderthals and others sees episodes of increasing cultural complexity in Africa. One of these occurs at Blombos cave, at the southern tip of South Africa. There, over tens of thousands of years, people \[ \] ## [What the Inside of an 850,000-Year-Old Skull Can Tell You](https://www.anthropology.net/p/what-the-inside-of-an-850000-year) _2026-08-03 · Anthropology.net_ Three parietal fragments from Gran Dolina just gave Homo antecessor its first adult cranial profile, and the layers inside its skull look surprisingly familiar ## [Two Infants, a Sewer, and What Counts as Care in Byzantine Ephesos](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-infants-a-sewer-and-what-counts) _2026-08-03 · Anthropology.net_ A grave built inside an abandoned Roman latrine turns out to be one of the gentlest funerary arrangements archaeologists have found from the period. ## [On the Origin of Our Species](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/08/02/on-the-origin-of-our-species-5/) _2026-08-02 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 88.1 83.4 thousand years ago One of the Big Questions we run into on Logarithmic History is: To what extent do big changes result from internal causes versus external shocks? Sometimes external shocks are clearly the answer. With the extinction of the dinosaurs, for example, it was a big rock hurtling out of the sky that \[ \] ## [The big feet of Paranthropus boisei](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/the-big-feet-of-paranthropus-boisei) _2026-08-02 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ New analysis of footprint trackways suggest a larger body size than previously thought for this Early Pleistocene human relative. ## [Teaching a Machine to Sort Five Thousand Years of Charred Seeds](https://www.anthropology.net/p/teaching-a-machine-to-sort-five-thousand) _2026-08-01 · Anthropology.net_ An AI system trained on 8,340 charred seed images now does in seconds what took archaeobotanists years to learn ## [Two Ghosts in the Genome](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-ghosts-in-the-genome) _2026-07-30 · Anthropology.net_ How a new method for reading DNA’s family tree found evidence of ancient human relatives who left no bones behind ## [Two Bodies From Chile Just Rewrote the Genetic History of Smallpox in the Americas](https://www.anthropology.net/p/two-bodies-from-chile-just-rewrote) _2026-07-30 · Anthropology.net_ A now-extinct viral lineage, recovered from a mummified Inca-colonial community, gives colonization-era disease history its first direct molecular anchor ## [The first humans to venture north](https://nebula.tv/videos/stefanmilo-the-first-humans-to-venture-north/) _2026-07-27 · Stefan Milo · Stefan Milo_ What are the oldest archaeological sites in Europe? Often when talking about important sites in human evolution the focus on Africa but there are some extremely ancient sites in Europe and they show some of our oldest, smallest ancestors were capable of leaving Africa. ## [Putting on the Ritz](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/07/21/putting-on-the-ritz-4/) _2026-07-22 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ 171 – 162 thousand years ago. It’s fancy dress day on Logarithmic History. Between 170 and 80 thousand years ago, people started wearing clothes. We know this from recent genetic studies showing that sometime during that period, probably closer to 170 kya, pubic lice and body (=clothing) lice diverged into two separate species. This is \[ \] ## [Learn This One Weird Trick (Part Two)](https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/learn-this-one-weird-trick-part-two-9/) _2026-07-20 · logarithmichistory · Logarithmic History_ … that humans use, and now you can too! (Continued from the previous post.) 3) Recursion. What if you have one mirror facing a second mirror, so the first mirror shows what’s in the second mirror, which shows what’s in the first mirror …? What if you take a chameleon, which tries to take on \[ \] ## [Traces of insect DNA in dental calculus may reveal bug-eating past](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/traces-of-insect-dna-in-dental-calculus) _2026-07-18 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ A study finds that Neanderthals had comparable insect trace evidence as gorillas and western chimpanzees. ## [The first molecular data from Homo naledi](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/the-first-molecular-data-from-homo) _2026-06-24 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ Protein data from the Rising Star cave system show the known sample of this species is entirely female. ## [How many Denisovan ancestors?](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/how-many-denisovan-ancestors) _2026-06-19 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ New studies magnify the observation that three groups of Denisovans may have contributed to many living people's genomes, but I find some unanswered questions. ## [What really happened to the last Neanderthals?](https://nebula.tv/videos/stefanmilo-what-really-happened-to-the-last-neanderthals/) _2026-06-15 · Stefan Milo · Stefan Milo_ What happened to the last Neanderthals? When did they go extinct? How long did we live alongside them? Those are the questions we're trying to answer today based on some interesting new research that just came out. Iberia may just be the most interesting place to study neanderthals! Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1df7nuanp6HL762xsBiRTMv79oqPBL1qS6BeMckxdVvI/edit?usp=sharing ## [The ancient mixture in cave lion genomes](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/the-ancient-mixture-in-cave-lion) _2026-06-06 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ Introgression is widespread among lineages of big cats. Our ancestors encountered one of the biggest products. ## [Rethinking Homo erectus and Denisovans with ancient proteins](https://www.johnhawks.net/p/rethinking-homo-erectus-and-denisovans) _2026-05-15 · John Hawks · John Hawks_ Mixture demonstrated for old fossil teeth hints that anthropologists may have mixed ideas. ## [What did Stone Age people actually do on a Saturday night 100,000 years ago?](https://www.zavesti.com/what-did-stone-age-people-actually-do-on-a-saturday-night-100000-years-ago/) _2026-05-14 · Orla Connors · zavesti.com_ A Saturday Night 100,000 Years Ago Makeup, firelight, and a prehistoric world richer than you were told The oldest Saturday night in the world Think about what you do when you go out for an evening. You wash your face. You look in a mirror. You smooth something coloured onto your cheeks or your lips.…