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Feb 26, 2025 | 
nature.com | Eslem Ben Arous |James Blinkhorn |Sarah Elliott |Christopher A. Kiahtipes |Mark Bateman |Mathieu Duval | +5 more
AbstractHumans emerged across Africa shortly before 300 thousand years ago (ka)1,2,3. Although this pan-African evolutionary process implicates diverse environments in the human story, the role of tropical forests remains poorly understood. Here we report a clear association between late Middle Pleistocene material culture and a wet tropical forest in southern Côte d’Ivoire, a region of present-day rainforest.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
nature.com | Julio Mercader |Nicole Boivin |Tristan Carter |Siobhan Clarke |Stephen Hubbard |Jed O. Kaplan | +9 more
AbstractQuestions about when early members of the genus Homo adapted to extreme environments like deserts and rainforests have traditionally focused on Homo sapiens. Here, we present multidisciplinary evidence from Engaji Nanyori in Tanzania’s Oldupai Gorge, revealing that Homo erectus thrived in hyperarid landscapes one million years ago.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
nature.com | Heiko Prümers |Carla Betancourt |Patrick Roberts
Correction to: Nature Human Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02070-9, published online 23 December 2024. In the version of this article initially published, the surname of Tiago Hermenegildo was misspelled (Hermengildo) and has now been amended in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
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Dec 22, 2024 | 
nature.com | Heiko Prümers |Carla Betancourt |Patrick Roberts
AbstractOver the past decade, multidisciplinary research has seen the Amazon Basin go from a context perceived as unfavourable for food production and large-scale human societies to one of ‘garden cities’, domestication, and anthropogenically influenced forests and soils. Nevertheless, direct insights into human interactions with particular crops and especially animals remain scarce across this vast area.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
nature.com | Robert Patalano |Steffen Mischke |Pedro Piñero |Hugues-Alexandre Blain |Patrick Roberts |Alfonso Benito-Calvo | +3 more
AbstractThe earliest archaeological evidence from northern Africa dates to ca. 2.44 Ma. Nevertheless, the palaeoenvironmental setting of hominins living in this part of the continent at the Plio-Pleistocene transition remains poorly documented, particularly in comparison to eastern and southern Africa. The Guefaït-4 fossil site in eastern Morocco sheds light on our knowledge of palaeoenvironments in northern Africa.
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Jun 12, 2024 | 
nature.com | Rodrigo Barquera |Oana Del Castillo-Chávez |Kathrin Nägele |Patxi Pérez-Ramallo |András Szolek |Adam Rohrlach | +5 more
AbstractThe ancient city of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico, was one of the largest and most influential Maya settlements during the Late and Terminal Classic periods (ad 600–1000) and it remains one of the most intensively studied archaeological sites in Mesoamerica1,2,3,4. However, many questions about the social and cultural use of its ceremonial spaces, as well as its population’s genetic ties to other Mesoamerican groups, remain unanswered2.
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Apr 26, 2024 | 
nature.com | Mark Urban |Luc De Meester |Yuyu Zhou |Brian C. Verrelli |Marta Szulkin |Patrick Roberts | +10 more
AbstractClimate change and urbanization are two of the most prominent global drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem change. Fully understanding, predicting and mitigating the biological impacts of climate change and urbanization are not possible in isolation, especially given their growing importance in shaping human society.
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Jan 10, 2024 | 
nature.com | Patrick Roberts |W. Christopher Carleton |Noel Amano |S. Yoshi Maezumi |Manfred D. Laubichler
AbstractWith more people now living in urban areas than outside of them, urbanism is becoming an increasingly important socioeconomic and ecological arena for our species in the twenty-first century. Understanding historical and regional variation in urban trajectories and land use has the potential to provide long-term perspectives on pressing contemporary challenges. Here we review how novel methods and approaches are enabling archeology to shed new light on the past 5,500 years of urban life.
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Jan 10, 2024 | 
nature.com | Yingqi Zhang |Kira E Westaway |Simon G Haberle |Juliën K. Lubeek |Russell Ciochon |Mike Morley | +7 more
AbstractThe largest ever primate and one of the largest of the southeast Asian megafauna, Gigantopithecus blacki1, persisted in China from about 2.0 million years until the late middle Pleistocene when it became extinct2,3,4. Its demise is enigmatic considering that it was one of the few Asian great apes to go extinct in the last 2.6 million years, whereas others, including orangutan, survived until the present5. The cause of the disappearance of G.
