Latest news with #Neanderthals
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Science
- Indian Express
Bed bugs were likely one of the first pests found in cities, new study finds
Common bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) grew in number when humans started living together in the first cities. These tiny bloodsuckers were likely the first insect pests to thrive in city environments, and maybe even the first urban pests, according to a new study by scientists at Virginia Tech, United States, that was published in Biology Letters on May 28. Bed bugs originally fed on bats. But around 245,000 years ago, one group of bedbugs started feeding on humans, likely beginning with Neanderthals. About a year ago, Lindsay Miles from Virginia Tech began studying bedbug genetic data to see how their populations changed over time. Bedbug numbers dropped around 19,000 years ago, when the Ice Age ended and habitats changed. Both types of bedbugs did decline, but the ones that fed on humans increased sharply some 13,000 years ago, stayed steady for a while, and then rose again 7,000 years ago. In comparison, the population of bedbugs that feed on bats are still decreasing. The big change from fewer to more bedbugs happened around the same time the first cities appeared in western Asia and started to grow, as per the study. Before that, people moved around a lot and didn't often meet other groups, so bedbugs didn't spread much either. But once people began living together in cities, it created a new environment for bedbugs. The study states that the bugs started mating with each other more, their numbers grew quickly, and they adapted to life in cities. The researchers also hypothesised that bed bugs were one of the first pests to adjust to city life and were likely the first insect pests to live in urban areas. Other animals became connected to city life much later. German cockroaches, for instance, started living closely with humans around 2,100 years ago, and black rats around 5,000 years ago. Mark Ravinet, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Oslo in Norway, who said that these findings showed that bedbugs can help scientists learn how species adapt to live with humans. He said the study was important for understanding how quickly animals can adjust to human environments and what changes they make in order to survive.
Mint
a day ago
- Science
- Mint
What does this mysterious 43,000-year-old red dot hint at? Scientists discover the ‘oldest fingerprint' by Neanderthals
Researchers in Spain may have found one of the oldest symbolic objects with a human fingerprint ever recorded in Europe. The small pebble, discovered in the San Lazaro rock shelter in Segovia, could be linked to Neanderthals. Experts believe this shows that Neanderthals may have created symbolic art, like cave paintings. The pebble was found under 1.5 metres of soil during a 2022 excavation. Forensic experts helped study the print. This discovery supports the idea that Neanderthals, who lived over 40,000 years ago, were more like modern humans than we used to believe. Scientists now believe Neanderthals had more imagination than once thought. The pebble with red ochre suggests they could see faces in objects, much like we see shapes in clouds. This shows they may have had symbolic thinking. Experts say the gap between modern humans and Neanderthals is getting smaller. Forensic tools will now help find more hidden clues from the past. 'When we saw (the pebble) the first time … we were looking at the stone, all the team and students, and we were like 'Uh, it looks like a face,'' CNN quoted study coauthor Maria de Andres Herrero as saying. A team led by Herrero found the 43,000-year-old ancient fingerprint on a pebble, likely left by a Neanderthal. It had no clear use but had a strange red dot. Curious, Herrero contacted fingerprint experts from Madrid police. Though doubtful at first, the forensic team confirmed a fingerprint using special cameras and multispectral analysis. It was the first time such modern techniques helped identify a Neanderthal print. This find was surprising even for the experts. They usually work with prints only days or weeks old, not thousands of years. This may be the oldest full fingerprint from an early human ever discovered. The fingerprint had red ocher pigment on it, showing the person might have used the colour on purpose. Experts say the mark was made intentionally, not by accident. This print could also be the oldest one linked to the use of pigment. The hollows may look like a human face with eyes, mouth and chin. The red dot could mark the nose. Researchers believe this pebble might carry a symbolic message. 'A meaning or message exists, however simple the object and action may appear,' the study says.
India.com
a day ago
- Science
- India.com
Scientists discover 140000-year-old lost city in..., its history will leave you in fear
Scientists discover 140000-year-old lost city in..., its history will leave you in fear Scientists around the world are constantly exploring the mysteries of the past, and a recent discovery near Indonesia's Java Island has revealed something fascinating. Over 6,000 fossils have been recovered from the ocean floor, including bones of the extinct human ancestor species, Homo erectus. This discovery suggests that there was an unknown population of Homo erectus living in Southeast Asia, possibly interacting with early modern humans. What makes this find even more unique is that it's the first time fossils have been unearthed from the sunken parts of the Indonesian archipelago. Around 140,000 years ago, sea levels were much lower, and islands like Java were connected to the Asian mainland through a region known as Sundaland. This region was rich with grasslands, rivers, and wildlife. Newly found fossils show that those rivers were home to fish, turtles, river sharks, and even hippos. On land, elephants, buffaloes, and a now-extinct elephant-like animal called stegodon roamed the area. Homo erectus likely lived and hunted in these fertile lands, particularly between Java and Madura islands, an area now submerged and known as the Madura Strait. Some of the fossils bear cut marks, indicating that early human relatives in this region hunted turtles and large animals. These marks provide the oldest known evidence of turtle hunting in Southeast Asia. Fossil clues also suggest that these early hominins hunted animals similar to modern cows. Interestingly, this type of hunting was more common among early modern humans living on the Asian mainland. This raises the possibility that Homo erectus may have learned these techniques from other human species they came into contact with. Who Were the Homo Erectus? Homo erectus holds a very important place in the story of human evolution. This ancient species appeared around 2 million years ago and was the first of our ancestors to have a body structure similar to modern humans. They were also the first human species to leave Africa and travel all the way to Southeast Asia. Along the way, other ancient human species like the Neanderthals and Denisovans also appeared in different parts of the world, including parts of Asia. However, scientists still don't know for sure how much interaction happened between these different species. According to research, Homo erectus lived on the Indonesian island of Java until about 117,000 to 108,000 years ago, after which they went extinct. Much later, around 77,000 years ago, our own species Homo sapiens arrived in Southeast Asia.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Farmers Dug Up a 300,000-Year-Old Skull. It's Unlike Any Human Ancestor We've Ever Seen.
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: The fragmented Maba 1 skull, which had previously been described as belonging to a Neanderthal, is not so Neanderthal after all. Researchers reassessed the skull and found resemblances to Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, but it didn't exactly fit into any of these species. It is most similar to other debatable hominin specimens. Maba 1 also suffered trauma before death, but the specific cause of the trauma remains unknown. In 1958, in a narrow trench of an eroded limestone cave near Maba Village in Shaoguan City, China, local farmers were digging up bat guano for fertilizer when they came across something unusual. Fossilized fragments of bone surfaced that looked somewhat human, and were later determined to be part of a skull (and several facial bones). But which of our ancestors this skull belonged to has remained a mystery. At a glance, Maba 1 seems like any other skull fragment—and that is the whole problem. Because no other parts of the skull were ever found, it was nearly impossible to positively identify the fragment as having come from a particular species of hominin. The only thing researchers knew for certain is that the bone dates back to the late Middle Pleistocene and is about 300,000 years old. While it had previously been determined to belong to a Neanderthal, a team of researchers who previously studied the skull have now reevaluated it and found contradictory features that aredifficult to ignore. '[Maba 1] is well-known for the Neanderthal-like face, while its neurocranium shows affinities with many hominin taxa, which makes the taxonomic status of Maba 1 controversial,' they wrote in a study recently published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology. Until now, the skull fragments had been observed externally, but much about their internal structures was still unknown. So, the skull was reconstructed using data from micro-CT scans, which can image the inside of a fossil without damaging the actual specimen. The scans made one thing very clear: the skull probably wasn't from a Neanderthal. Channels in the sinuses that veins once used to ferry blood through spongy diploid bone were connected to the parietal foramen towards the back of the skull by tubular structures—a very rare occurence in Homo neandertalensis. The inside of the skull's frontal lobe turned out to be morphologically closer to Homo erectus than Neanderthals or Homo sapiens (though Homo erectus had a smaller brain than its two counterparts), and the cranial capacity of Maba 1 was more like that of Neanderthals and modern humans. But while the researchers agreed that Maba 1 seemed closest to H. erectus, differences from the morphological standards of the species were too obvious to ignore. The frontal lobe was short in comparison, and the bregma—where the coronal (lengthwise) and sagittal (crosswise and perpendicular to the coronal) sutures meet—was thicker than that of H. erectus. Maba 1 also shows signs of trauma—a dark, semicircular lesion on the external right side of the frontal bone, which spans the area from the middle of the head to the bridge of the nose. Signs of healing suggest that the individual suffered this injury while still alive, though it is unclear whether the lesion healed completely and what exactly caused it. There were no signs of infection. While it could have been left behind by an impact such as a fall, it is also possible that such a lesion was the result of anemia, or even a tumor. Strangely enough, the researchers concluded that Maba 1 is more similar to other debatable hominin skulls, such as the LH18 specimen found in Tanzania, which is thought to be an early Homo sapiens skull. There are also resemblances to the Djebel Irhoud skulls from Morocco (first assumed to be Neanderthal remains but now thought to be from some of the earliest known Homo sapiens) and Zambia's Broken Hill skull (a Homo heidelbergensis specimen now at the Natural History Museum in London). 'The internal structures of Maba 1 show a combination of morphological features found in various species,' the researchers concluded. 'These findings further evidence the high morphological variability among Asian hominins in the late Middle Pleistocene. Maba 1 currently cannot be definitely classified in any known hominin taxon.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Science
- The Herald Scotland
Pebble with finger print suggests Neanderthal may have created art
The quartz-rich granite pebble included indentations resembling a face, its nose a Rudolph-like red dot visible at center. Significantly, the spot didn't appear to be random, instead bearing evidence indicating it was the product of someone's imagination. "The ocher dot does not appear as a shapeless addition or a mere stain," wrote lead author David Alvarez-Alonso of Madrid's Complutense University. "Rather, it contains a fingerprint that implies the pigment has been applied specifically with the tip of a finger soaked in pigment." The authors consider the artifact a nonutilitarian visual symbol - in other words, not a tool but an altered or marked object with possible symbolic significance. While its age makes it impossible to draw any definitive conclusions, they wrote, the stone could "represent one of the oldest known abstractions of a human face in the prehistoric record." ????Hemos resuelto un caso de 43.000 anos de antiguedad Se trata de la????huella dactilar mas antigua del mundo y nuestra Policia Cientifica ha logrado el hito de su identificacion por procedimientos no invasivos de teledeteccion junto a la @unicomplutense Ha sido fundamental el... — Policia Nacional (@policia) May 27, 2025 "The fact that the pebble was selected because of its appearance and then marked with ocher shows that there was a human mind capable of symbolizing, imagining, idealizing and projecting his or her thoughts on an object," they wrote. An expanding Neanderthal portfolio This isn't the first time a Neanderthal fingerprint has been pinpointed, the authors noted. A partial one, likely made by a thumb, was found on resin discovered in Germany in 1963. However, the discovery offers yet another dab of evidence suggesting that Neanderthals made art. In 2018, The Guardian reported archaeological findings in Spain indicating that Neanderthals used red ocher to produce shapes and symbols on cave walls 65,000 years ago. The species flourished from roughly 350,000 to 40,000 years ago, and studies indicate they and modern humans may have gone their separate ways as long as 800,000 years ago. Increasing evidence has indicated that Neanderthals were more advanced than once thought. In 2020, a paper published in the journal Science said evidence found in a coastal cave in Portugal suggested Neanderthals were skilled fishermen who regularly consumed seafood as part of their diet. Until then, only humans (Homo sapiens) had been thought to look to the sea as a food source. Meanwhile, the discovery of 176,000-year-old structures deep within a French cave hinted at Neanderthals' ability to use fire and work in groups. A 2016 article in Nature described strange, circular edifices constructed in an interior space 360 yards removed from daylight; the formations were made from uniform stalagmites, many of them cut to size. With the earliest known human-built structures 40,000 years old, the cave formations not only predate such activity by Homo sapiens but also show Neanderthal utilization of deep caves began much earlier as well. According to the study, the earliest indications of modern humans using deep caves are less than 42,000 years old.
