Neanderthals and Mesolithic hunter-gathereres shaped European landscapes

 

New research shows that humans left their mark on the landscape through hunting and the use of fire tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture. The research paints a new picture of the past, say co-authors of the new study.

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Imagine Europe tens of thousands of years ago: dense forests, large herds of elephants, bison and aurochs – and small groups of people armed with fire and spears. A new study shows that these people left a much clearer mark on the landscape than previously assumed.

Using advanced computer simulations, an international research team, which includes researchers from Aarhus University, has investigated how climate, large animals, fire and humans affected Europe’s vegetation during two warm periods in the past. By comparing the results with extensive pollen analyses from the same periods, the researchers have calculated how the different factors shaped vegetation cover.

The conclusion is clear: both Neanderthals and the later Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had a strong impact on vegetation patterns in Europe – long before the advent of agriculture.

“The study paints a new picture of the past,” says Jens-Christian Svenning, professor of biology at Aarhus University and one of the researchers behind the study, which was undertaken in collaboration with colleagues in archaeology, geology and ecology from The Netherlands, Denmark, France, and UK.

“It became clear to us that climate change, large herbivores and natural fires alone could not explain the pollen data results. Factoring humans into the equation – and the effects of human-induced fires and hunting – resulted in a much better match”, says Jens-Christian Svenning.

The results have just been published in PLOS One.

Humans displaced large animals

The researchers have focused on two warm periods in the past.

One is the Last Interglacial period around 125,000-116,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were the only humans in Europe. The second period is the time just after the last ice age, the Early Holocene, 12,000-8,000 years ago, at which time Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of our own species, Homo sapiens, lived here.

During the Last Interglacial period, Europe was home to a rich and varied megafauna, with elephants and rhinoceroses living side by side with bison, aurochs, horses and deer.

In the Mesolithic, the picture was different: The largest species had disappeared or their populations had been greatly reduced in size – due to the general loss of megafauna that followed in the wake of the spread of Homo sapiens across the globe.

New view of prehistoric man

“Our simulations show that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers could have influenced up to 47% of the distribution of plant types. The Neanderthal effect was smaller, but still measurable – approximately 6% for plant type distribution and 14% for vegetation openness,” says Anastasia Nikulina .

The human-induced effects on vegetation included both fire effects – burning of trees and shrubs – and a previously overlooked factor: the hunting of large herbivores.

“The Neanderthals did not hold back from hunting and killing even giant elephants. And here we’re talking about animals weighing up to 13 tonnes. Hunting also had a strong indirect effect: fewer grazing animals meant more overgrowth and thus more closed vegetation. However, the effect was limited, because the Neanderthals were so few that they did not do eliminate the large animals or their ecological role – unlike Homo sapiens in later times,” says Jens-Christian Svenning.

Anastasia Nikulina  and Jens-Christian Svenning both believe that the results offer a new perspective on the role of our ancestors in the natural landscape. In fact, it challenges the notion of an ‘untouched landscape’ in Europe before agriculture came along:

“The Neanderthals and the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were active co-creators of Europe’s ecosystems”, says Jens-Christian Svenning. “The study is consistent with both ethnographic studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers and archaeological finds, but goes a step further by documenting how extensive human influence may have been tens of thousands of years ago – that is, before humans started farming the land,” elaborates Anastasia Nikulina .

Interdisciplinary knowledge behind study

She highlights the interdisciplinary collaboration – between ecology, archaeology palynology (knowledge about pollen) – and the development of advanced computer models for simulating past ecosystems as strengths of the study.
“This is the first simulation to quantify how Neanderthals and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers may have shaped European landscapes. Our approach has two key strengths: it brings together an unusually large set of new spatial data spanning the whole continent over thousands of years, and it couples the simulation with an optimisation algorithm from AI. That let us run a large number of scenarios and identify the most possible outcomes”, says Anastasia Nikulina .

Jens-Christian Svenning adds:
“The computer modelling made it clear to us that climate change, the large herbivores such as elephants, bison and deer, and natural wildfires alone cannot explain the changes seen in ancient pollen data. To understand the vegetation at that time, we must also take human impacts into account – both direct and indirect. Even without fire, hunter-gatherers changed the landscape simply because their hunting of large animals made the vegetation denser,” says Jens-Christian Svenning.

Despite the new study, there are still gaps in our understanding of the early impact of humans on the landscape, says Jens-Christian Svenning.

Anastasia Anastasia Nikulina  and Jens-Christian Svenning emphasise that it would be interesting to do computer simulations of other time periods and parts of the world. North and South America and Australia are particularly interesting because they were never populated by earlier hominin species before Homo sapiens, and you are therefore able to compare landscapes in the recent past with and without human influence.

“And although the large models paint a broad picture, detailed local studies are absolutely essential to improve our understanding of the way humans shaped the landscape in prehistoric times,” says Jens-Christian Svenning.

 

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Ancient stone tools trace Paleolithic Pacific migration

 A new analysis of stone tools offers strong evidence for the theory that ancient people from the Pacific Rim traveled a coastal route from East Asia during the last ice age to become North America’s First Peoples, according to a paper published this week in the journal Science Advances.

“This study puts the First Americans back into the global story of the Paleolithic – not as outliers – but as participants in a shared technological legacy,” said Loren Davis, professor of anthropology at Oregon State University and one of the study’s lead authors.

“This marks a paradigm shift. For the first time, we can say the First Americans belonged to a broader Paleolithic world—one that connects North America to Northeast Asia,” he said.

For decades, experts have debated whether people migrated across the Siberian land bridge known as Beringia around 13,000 years ago as the last ice age waned or if they followed a Pacific coastal route at a much earlier time, possibly around 20,000 years ago.

The archaeological evidence presented in this study supports the earlier coastal scenario, indicating that early seafarers gradually moved into the Americas from the northwestern Pacific Rim during the last glacial period, from regions that now include Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s islands.

Recent genetics research also supports the narrative that Indigenous Peoples in areas that became the United States and Canada are linked to East Asian and Northern Eurasian ancestry.

Davis and his collaborators analyzed stone tool technologies from North American sites dating between about 20,000 and 13,500 years ago, linked to a period they call the American Upper Paleolithic. They showed that the earliest of this style of projectile points first appear around 20,000 years ago in Hokkaido.

Called bifaces, the projectile tips are flaked on both sides to create a durable, razor-sharp penetrating hunting weapon, which represents a major leap in hunting technology. The study demonstrates that this advanced weapon system was carried into the Americas, where these tools display strong continuity with each other and with artifacts from many Late Upper Paleolithic sites across East Asia.

 “The discovery of this archaeological connection rewrites the opening chapter of human history in the Americas,” Davis said. “It shows that the First Americans were not cultural isolates, but participants in the same Paleolithic traditions that connected people across Eurasia and Asia.”

The earlier stone tools that Davis and his team studied are smaller and lighter than later Paleoindian technologies and were made using distinctly different methods. This dual system of core-and-blade production combined with bifacial point manufacture forms the technological foundation from which later Paleoindian and subsequent American traditions evolved.

This system serves as the technological fingerprint linking the American Upper Paleolithic to its roots in Northeast Asia. Prior papers have suggested this pattern, but this deep dive provides the strongest evidence that’s been assembled to date, Davis said.

Researchers have long known of American Upper Paleolithic sites, but if people had traveled at higher latitudes across Beringia, these earliest sites should be in Alaska and Yukon in Canada. Instead, the five primary sites that Davis and his team studied were in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas and Idaho.

And while tools found at similarly aged sites in Oregon, Wisconsin and Florida follow the pattern, they contain too few artifacts to include in the recent analysis, Davis said. Additional archaeological evidence that could support this model is likely submerged along the eastern Pacific Rim due to rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age, he added.

Many prior papers about human settlement sites of the same era focused on evidence from a single location. This study is the first to connect multiple research sites globally, presenting a coherent model for the initial human occupants of the Americas.

“We can now explain not only that the First Americans came from Northeast Asia, but also how they traveled, what they carried, and what ideas they brought with them,” Davis said. “It’s a powerful reminder that migration, innovation, and cultural sharing have always been part of what it means to be human.”

 

Dating of Egyptian artifacts puts Thera (Santorini) volcanic eruption prior to Pharaoh Ahmose

One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 10,000 years took place at the Greek island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean Sea, but its dating during the late 17th or 16th century BCE remained controversial.  Volcanic ash from the eruption spread over a large area in the eastern Mediterranean region. One of the lingering questions in archeology was how this huge geological event lined up with royal Egyptian chronologies. Now, a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and University of Groningen researchers produced the first radiocarbon dates concerning King Ahmose, the Pharaoh who reunited Upper and Lower Egypt and established the New Kingdom. Their results show that the explosive eruption occurred prior to the New Kingdom during the Second Intermediate Period. The new radiocarbon dates significantly favor a “low” (i.e. younger) chronology for the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, which is of great importance in our understanding of Egyptian relations with neighboring civilizations in the region.

 

Caption

The eastern Mediterranean region and Egypt, showing the location of the Thera (Santorini) volcano and other places mentioned in the text.

Credit

Based on Mapcarta, the open map with CC BY license © OpenStreetMap, Mapbox, and Mapcarta.

Their findings were published in PLOS One last month.

Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at BGU's Sylan Adams Sde Boker Campus and Prof. Johannes van der Plicht of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands received rare permission to select samples of Egyptian artifacts at the British Museum and the Petrie Museum in London for radiocarbon dating. Supervised by museum staff samples were taken of a mudbrick from the Ahmose Temple at Abydos (British Museum), a linen burial cloth associated with Satdjehuty (British Museum), and six wooden stick shabtis from Thebes (Petrie Museum).

They discovered that, contrary to traditional archaeological understandings, the volcanic eruption did not occur during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but occurred earlier, during the Second Intermediate Period. Radiocarbon dates of the Santorini eruption are significantly older than the first-ever radiocarbon dates concerning Pharaoh Ahmose and the other artifacts investigated of the 17th to early 18th Dynasty.

"Our findings indicate that the Second Intermediate Period lasted considerably longer than traditional assessments, and the New Kingdom started later," says Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins.

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DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0330702 

 

Rare evidence of correspondence between the court of the king of Assyria and the king of Judah

 For the first time in Jerusalem, an Assyrian inscription from the First Temple period has been discovered

The rare historical evidence was discovered near the Western Wall, during excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the City of David. It is an inscription in cuneiform on a tiny piece of pottery, telling of a delay in payment by the Kingdom of Judah to the Assyrian Empire. One of the research directions being examined: a tax revolt, such as the one familiar from the biblical description of Hezekiah's revolt against Sennacherib, king of Assyria. The inscription will be presented to the public for the first time at the conference "Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Surroundings"

A tiny, extremely rare pottery shard bearing a cuneiform inscription in the Akkadian language from about 2,700 years ago was discovered in an archaeological excavation near the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, north of the City of David. This is an extraordinary find and the first of its kind; it is the only Assyrian inscription from the First Temple period (8th to 7th centuries BCE) found in the city.

The inscription will be presented to the public for the first time this Thursday, October 23, at the conference "Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Surroundings" by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv University, at the J. and Ginny Schottenstein National Center for Archaeology in Jerusalem.

The seal impression - rare evidence of correspondence between the king of Assyria and the king of Judah. ​​Photo: Eliyahu Yannai, City of David

The rare discovery was uncovered as part of an archaeological excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the City of David and managed by Dr. Ayala Zilberstein of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The excavation is taking place in the Davidson Archaeological Park in Jerusalem, managed by the Society for the Restoration and Development of the Jewish Quarter. The rare inscription was deciphered in collaboration with Dr. Philip Wakusbowitz and Dr. Anat Cohen-Weinberger of the Israel Antiquities Authority, together with Dr. Peter Zilber from Bar-Ilan University.

Researchers examine the rare inscription. From right to left: Dr. Philip Wokosobowitz, Dr. Peter Silberg, Dr. Ayala Silberstein and Dr. Anat Cohen-Weinberger with the rare find. Photo: Yuli Schwartz, Israel Antiquities Authority

The tiny fragment, about 2.5 cm in size, was discovered as part of a wet screening conducted at the "archaeological experience" in Emek Tzurim National Park – a joint project of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the City of David Association.

The discovery of the find in an organized archaeological excavation was accompanied by great excitement.

Moriah Cohen, who works at the "Archaeological Experience" in Emek Tzurim , described the moments of the discovery: "I was sifting through the dirt and suddenly I noticed pottery with a strange decoration. I looked at it closely, and it looked like cuneiform writing to me, but it seemed so illogical because even though so many fascinating finds have been discovered here, we've never found anything like this. I examined the pottery again and after realizing that it wasn't decoration but really cuneiform writing - I screamed with excitement. Everyone gathered around me and I called Ayla - the director of the excavation, who was very excited by the find. The thought that after 2,700 years, I am the first person to actually touch this pottery with my hands - is a very exciting thought. This is a once-in-a-lifetime find."

Right: The drainage canal next to which the rare find was discovered. Left:  Dr. Ayala Zilberstein, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in the drainage canal. Photos: Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority; Emil Aljam, Israel Antiquities Authority

The find was discovered in dirt that had been swept to the edge of the central drainage canal from the Second Temple period, likely from the collapse of an earlier structure from the First Temple period that was discovered in an area where the drainage canal was not preserved.  

The site, located at the foot of the eastern slope of Jerusalem's western hill, is one of the closest points to the temple complex that has been excavated so far, a fact that gives the find great importance for understanding the urban and political development of the period.

According to Dr. Ayala Zilberstein, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority : "The inscription provides direct evidence of official correspondence between the Assyrian Empire and the Kingdom of Judah. ​​The discovery strengthens our understanding of the depth of the Assyrian foothold in Jerusalem, and the extent of its influence on the conduct of the city. In addition, it expands knowledge about the status of the new neighborhood that developed at that time on the slopes of the hill west of the Temple. It appears that this area served as a focus for the activities of ministers and high-ranking figures."

Dr. Peter Silberg and Dr. Philip Wokosbowitz believe that the fragment of the inscription was part of a royal stamp - a seal impression intended to sign a letter or official dispatch on behalf of the Assyrian royal court. "Stamps of this type bore an impression that was sometimes accompanied by a short inscription, which explained the contents of the dispatch or its destination in Assyrian cuneiform, and they differ in size and shape from the local stamps known in Judea," the Assyrian scholars explain.

Analysis of the inscription fragment and its content reinforces the hypothesis that the signed document deals with a delay in paying a tax or other obligation. The inscription specifies a due date – the first of the month of Av, and explicitly mentions a chariot officer (“one who holds the reins” in the Assyrian language). This title indicates a high-ranking personality, responsible for conveying official messages on behalf of the royal house, and such a figure is well known from the archives of the Assyrian administration.

Right:  Dr. Philip Wokosobowitz and the Assyrian inscription. Left:  Dr. Peter Zilberg of Bar-Ilan University with the rare inscription. Photo: Yuli Schwartz, Israel Antiquities Authority

Although the inscription fragment does not explicitly mention the name of the king of Judah to whom the shipment was intended, the chronological context and the partial text allow us to assume that it was sent to the court of one of the kings of Judah, Hezekiah, Manasseh, or Josiah early in their reigns, during which Judah was a protectorate of Assyria. Items of this type served as a means of communication between the envoys of the Assyrian government and the rulers of Judah, conveying official instructions and tax demands.

"Although we cannot determine whether this was a technical delay or a deliberate step with political significance, the very existence of such an official appeal may indicate a certain point of friction between Judah and the imperial government," say the researchers. One of the directions of research being examined is that the royal seal impression was sent to Judah during the time of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, since the characteristics of the inscription, and its dating to the reign of this king or one of his descendants, may perhaps echo a story of a tax revolt, such as the biblical description of Hezekiah's revolt, which is told in 2 Kings (18:7): "And he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and did not serve him."

A petrographic examination of the bulla indicated that it was not produced in Jerusalem, but was sent here from a long distance, most likely from one of the administrative centers of Assyria such as Nineveh, Ashur, or Nimrod.

Right: Researchers examine the rare find. Left: Dr. Ayala Zilberstein, director of the excavation, with the rare inscription. Photo: Yuli Schwartz, Israel Antiquities Authority; Emil Aljam, Israel Antiquities Authority

According to Dr. Anat Cohen-Weinberger of the Israel Antiquities Authority , "Examination of the composition of the inscription fragment clearly showed that the material from which it was made is completely different from the local raw materials used to produce pottery, bullae and clay certificates in Jerusalem and the southern Levant. In addition, the mineral composition of the bulla generally matches the geology of the Tigris Basin region, where the central cities of the Assyrian kingdom were located, such as Nineveh, Ashur or Nimrod. A chemical analysis of the bulla's composition is currently being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Yehudit Harleben of the Geological Institute, with the aim of precisely determining the source of production."

The researchers add that "this is a small fragment of great significance. The find opens a window into understanding the political and administrative ties between Judah and Assyria, and is the first evidence of its kind of the official, and perhaps even tense, communication that took place between Jerusalem and the most powerful power during the period we are discussing."

According to the Minister of Heritage, Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu , "The Assyrian inscription from the First Temple period that was discovered in the heart of Jerusalem is a moving and extremely impressive testimony to the city's status as the capital of the Kingdom of Judah some 2,700 years ago. This rare discovery, once again, illustrates our deep roots in Jerusalem - which has been the spiritual and national center of the Jewish people for thousands of years."

The inscription will be presented to the public for the first time this Thursday, October 23, at the conference "Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Surroundings" by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv University, at the J. and Ginny Schottenstein 

Why Classic Maya cities rose and fell

New study reveals the forces that built and collapsed ancient urban centers — and how they echo in today’s urban challengesFacebook

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Why move to a city? And why leave? Urban centers today see populations ebb and flow for a multitude of reasons — the economy, crowds, lifestyle considerations, air quality, the odd pandemic perhaps.

Turns out it’s sort of always been that way.

The earliest cities worldwide were born of country folk. Farmers, that is, agriculturists. They were agrarian populations, reliant on land-extensive economies, which incentivized them to live dispersed across the landscape in small settlements, to minimize the time and travel costs between their residences and farm plots.

Then as now, though, city living was more expensive in all the ways: greater susceptibility to crowd diseases, greater competition for land and resources and rising levels of systemic inequality. And still farmers chose to bear these seemingly paradoxical costs.

What gives?

That question has been the source of a long-standing debate, according to UC Santa Barbara archaeologist Douglas Kennett, who has conducted extensive research into urbanization in Classic Maya cities. The answer, he said, is complicated, suggesting there are multiple, often overlapping factors for both the rise and the fall of these ancient urban centers.

Kennett and collaborators from several institutions explore and elucidate that complexity in a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research leverages population ecology theory and quantifies the drivers of urbanism across the Classic Maya Lowlands.

“We determined that the rise and expansion of Classic Maya cities resulted from the interaction of climate downturns, intergroup conflict and the presence of strong economies of scale realized through capital investments in agricultural infrastructure,” Kennett said. “These factors promoted the coevolution of urbanism, systemic inequality and patron-client relationships in cities.”

Using that same framework, he added, the researchers also determined that deurbanization set in “when the benefits of urban living no longer outweighed the costs, as environments were degraded near cities and climate amelioration improved the livability of rural areas where people would have more freedom and autonomy.”

Indeed, the team’s initial interest was centered on the role of climate change — specifically drought — in the decline of Classic Maya cities. Since 2012 the group has been amassing archaeological data on changing population sizes, conflict and investments in agricultural infrastructure. Then they came into some newly available high-resolution climatic data. 

“We also capitalized on major developments in computational modeling that allowed us to look at the relationships between these datasets in ways not previously possible,” Kennett said. 

Their results integrate previously contentious and separate theories of urbanization — such as environmental stress, warfare and economic factors — into a single, dynamic model based on concepts from population ecology. The study also resolves the paradox of why agrarian populations — whose land-extensive economy incentivizes dispersal — would aggregate despite the high costs of urbanization.

“The biggest surprise for me was that the abandonment of cities occurred under improving climatic conditions,” Kennett noted. “We have long thought that the decline of Classic Maya cities partially resulted from an extended period of drought. It turns out to be a much more complicated and interesting story.”

All told, the new work offers critical insights for understanding and managing contemporary and future urban evolution by establishing timeless, universal principles for how populations aggregate and disperse.

 

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2512325122 

 

Analysis of 4.4-million-year-old ankle exposes how earliest ancestors moved, evolved

 For more than a century, scientists have been piecing together the puzzle of human evolution, examining fossil evidence to understand the transition from our earliest ancestors to modern humans.

A new study from Washington University in St. Louis, published October 15 in Communications Biology, presents compelling evidence to support the hypothesis that humans evolved from an African ape-like ancestor. With this discovery, which challenges previous findings, researchers are able to narrow the range of explanations for the origin of human lineage. In doing so, scientists are one step closer to answering one of life’s greatest questions, “where do we come from?”

The research, led by Thomas (Cody) Prang, assistant professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences at WashU, revisits the breakthrough discovery of the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus — nicknamed “Ardi” — which was discovered in 1994.  

Ardi is one of the oldest and most complete skeletons to ever be discovered. Approximately 1 million years older than “Lucy,” another well-known early human ancestor skeleton, Ardi represents an earlier stage of human evolution, according to Prang.

“One of the surprises in this discovery was that Ardi walked upright, yet retained a lot of ape-like characteristics, including a grasping foot,” Prang said.

“Apes, like chimpanzees and gorillas, have a big toe that’s divergent, which allows them to grip tree branches as part of a climbing lifestyle. Yet it also had features that align with our lineage. That makes Ardipithecus a true transitional species.”

Researchers initially proposed that Ardi demonstrated a generalized form of locomotion rather than behavior typical of African apes, leading them to conclude that this very early human ancestor was not similar to apes after all, Prang said. That came as a big surprise to the paleoanthropology community.

“Based on their analysis, they concluded that living African apes — like chimpanzees and gorillas — are like dead ends or cul-de-sacs of evolution, rather than stages of human emergence,” Prang said. “Instead, they thought that Ardi provided evidence for a more generalized ancestor that wasn’t similar to chimps or gorillas.”

Rethinking Ardi

By studying chimpanzees’ and gorillas’ talus — the large bone in the ankle that joins with the tibia of the leg and the calcaneus (heel) of the foot —  researchers can decipher how they move — specifically, how they climb trees vertically. This important bone also offers insight into how early species transitioned to bipedal (two-legged) locomotion.

For this study, Prang and colleagues compared Ardi’s ankle to the ankles of apes, monkeys and early humans. Their analysis showed that Ardi’s ankle is the only one in the primate fossil record that shares similarities with African apes.

According to Prang, these apes are known for their adaptations to vertical climbing and terrestrial plantigrade quadrupedalism — a form of locomotion where an animal moves on four limbs on the ground with the entire soles of its feet, including the heel, touching the surface — hinting that Ardi might have used its feet similarly. In addition to these primitive features, Ardi’s talus also exhibited characteristics suggesting an enhanced push-off mechanism in the foot. This complexity indicates a blend of climbing and walking behaviors in this early hominin species, which is pivotal in understanding the evolution of bipedalism.

“The finding is both controversial and also aligned with what people thought originally,” Prang said.

“Nobody disputes the importance of the discovery (of Ardi), of course, but many people in the field would say the initial interpretation was probably flawed. And so, this paper is a correction of that initial idea that distanced Ardi from chimpanzees and gorillas.”

It’s important to note that this paper does not imply that humans evolved from chimpanzees. However, the research adds more evidence to the hypothesis that the common ancestor humans share with chimpanzees was probably quite similar to the chimpanzees living today, Prang explained.

Contributing to the study are Matthew W. Tocheri at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Canada; Biren A. Patel at University of Southern California; Scott A. Williams at New York University; and Caley M. Orr at the University of Colorado Anschutz.

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Journal

Communications Biology

DOI

10.1038/s42003-025-08711-7