Paleolithic
Prehistoric period
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We include updates on Homo, Homo erectus, Denisovan, Homo habilis, Early human migrations, Origin of language, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Control of fire by early humans, Homo antecessor, Oldowan, Peking Man, Acheulean, Homo ergaster, Homo luzonensis, Genetic history of East Asians ... and more.
| August 31 2023 |
Homo
Researchers reported a significant human ancestor population bottleneck based on genetic studies, revealing that the population reduced to between 1,000 and 100,000 individuals and lasted approximately 117,000 years, nearly bringing human ancestors to extinction between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago.
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| June 2022 |
Control of fire by early humans
Researchers from Weizmann Institute of Science, University of Toronto, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem published an article using AI-powered spectroscopy to analyze heat exposure of 26 flint tools from the Evron Quarry in Israel, revealing tools were heated up to 600°C.
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| 2021 |
Evolution of human intelligence
Research using polygenic scores found no evidence of divergent selection by race and a statistically insignificant contribution to racial differences in IQ.
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| 2021 |
Homo longi
Chinese geologist Shao Qingfeng and colleagues conducted non-destructive x-ray fluorescence, rare-earth element, and strontium isotope analyses on the skull and mammalian fossils from the Dongjiang Bridge area, determining the fossils were likely deposited around the same time and originated from the Upper Huangshan Formation, dating between 309,000 to 138,000 years ago.
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| 2021 |
Homo
Nesher Ramla Homo discovered in Israel and officially recognized.
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| 2018 |
Homo longi
Before his death, the laborer's third-generation family learned about the skull. Chinese paleoanthropologist Ji Qiang persuaded the family to donate the skull to Hebei GEO University for scientific study. The skull was catalogued with the number HBSM2018-000018(A).
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| 2018 |
Homo longi
The 'Dragon Man' skull was finally brought to paleoanthropologists for scientific examination and study, after being hidden for approximately 85 years.
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| 2018 |
Evolution of human intelligence
A research study proposed the 'transformative cultural intelligence hypothesis' by investigating four-year-old children's problem-solving skills in different social contexts. The experiment involved children attempting to extract a floating object from a tube using water, demonstrating that physical cognition can be significantly influenced by social presentation of tasks.
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| 2018 |
Evolution of human intelligence
Muthukrishna and researchers constructed a model based on the cultural intelligence hypothesis, revealing relationships between brain size, group size, social learning, and mating structures through evolutionary simulation.
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| 2013 |
Homo
H. naledi discovered in South Africa, with official publication of its name in 2015.
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| 2012 |
Evolution of human intelligence
American Psychologist published a review concluding that almost no single-nucleotide genetic polymorphisms were consistently associated with IQ variation.
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| 2011 |
Evolution of human intelligence
Psychologist Earl B. Hunt noted that no genes related to cognitive skill differences across racial and ethnic groups had been discovered.
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| 2010 |
Evolution of human intelligence
Kanazawa argued that g correlated only with performance on evolutionarily unfamiliar problems, proposing the 'Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis'.
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| 2010 |
Evolution of human intelligence
Psychologist David Marks conducted 8 statistical analyses finding that population IQ scores correlated strongly with literacy rates.
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| 2010 |
Homo
A separate South African species, Homo gautengensis, was postulated as a contemporary of Homo erectus.
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This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia articles Control of fire by early humans, Homo longi, Evolution of human intelligence & Homo, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.