The hunting of large whales goes back much further in time than previously thought. New research from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Prehistory of the UAB reveals that Indigenous communities in southern Brazil were hunting large cetaceans 5,000 years ago, around a thousand years before the earliest documented evidence from Arctic and North Pacific societies.
Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that groups in the region of Babitonga Bay (Santa Catarina) who built sambaquis – monumental shell mounds built by Holocene societies along the coast of Brazil – developed specialized technologies for hunting large whales long before earlier archaeological research had suggested. The study redefines the role of South American communities in the emergence of complex maritime culture as, until now, the origins of large-whale hunting were believed to lie among postglacial societies of the Northern Hemisphere between 3,500 and 2,500 years ago.
Led by ICTA-UAB researchers Krista McGrath and André Colonese and conducted with an international team, the study analysed hundreds of cetacean bone remains and bone tools from sambaquis in Babitonga Bay, now housed at the Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville, Brazil. Many of the sites no longer exist, making this collection a unique archive of a history that otherwise could not have been reconstructed.
The team combined zooarchaeology, typological analysis, and cutting-edge molecular techniques (ZooMS) to study the cetacean bones and objects, identifying remains of the southern right whales, humpback whales, blue whales, sei whales, sperm whales, and dolphins, many showing clear cut marks associated with butchering. Large whale-bone harpoons were also documented among the largest found in South America. Their presence, alongside the abundance of whale bones, their inclusion in funerary contexts and the presence of inshore species, provides strong evidence of active hunting rather than opportunistic use of stranded animals.
“The data reveals that these communities had the knowledge, tools, and specialized strategies to hunt large whales thousands of years earlier than we had previously assumed,” says Krista McGrath, lead author of the study.
The results also offer important ecological insights. The abundance of humpback whale remains suggest that their historical distribution extended much further south than the current main breeding areas off the coast of Brazil. “The recent increase in sightings in Southern Brazil may therefore reflect a historical recolonization process, with implications for conservation. Reconstructing whale distributions before the impact of industrial whaling is essential to understanding their recovery dynamics,” says Marta Cremer, co-author of the paper.
Beyond rewriting the origins of early whale hunting, the study sheds new light on the economies, technologies, and lifeways of postglacial societies along the Atlantic coast of South America. According to André Colonese, senior author of the study, “This research opens a new perspective on the social organization of the Sambaqui peoples. It represents a paradigm shift - we can now view these groups not only as shellfish collectors and fishers, but also as whalers.”
Dione Bandeira, a Brazilian archaeologist with more than 20 years of experience working on sambaquis, adds that “the results reveal a practice that made a significant contribution to the long-term and dense presence of these societies along the Brazilian coast.”
The Sambaqui peoples integrated marine resources into their cultural systems and developed a sophisticated maritime culture characterized by specialized technologies, collective cooperation, and ritual practices associated with the capture of large marine animals. This unwritten Indigenous history has survived through museum collections and through the efforts of those working to preserve the sambaqui sites that have escaped the impact of Brazil’s urbanization over the past centuries.
Ana Paula, director of the Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville, notes that “the collections safeguarded at the Sambaqui Archaeological Museum in Joinville, especially the Guilherme Tibúrtius Collection, highlight the richness and vast potential of information on ancestral peoples that can still be explored in depth.”
Precisely dated fossils: A high-resolution magnetostratigraphic record at Thomas Quarry I captures the Matuyama–Brunhes reversal at around 773,000 years ago, providing one of the most accurate ages for an African Pleistocene hominin assemblage.
Near the root of our lineage: Mandibles and other remains show a mosaic of archaic and derived traits consistent with an African sister population to Homo antecessor, near the divergence of Middle Pleistocene Eurasian and African hominin lineages.
Northwestern Africa’s key role: Decades of Moroccan-French research in the Casablanca coastal formations reveal a uniquely preserved cave sequence and carnivore-den context, highlighting the region’s importance in early Homo evolution.
An international research team led by Jean-Jacques Hublin (Collège de France & Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), David Lefèvre (Université de Montpellier Paul Valéry), Giovanni Muttoni (Università degli Studi di Milano) and Abderrahim Mohib (Moroccan Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine, INSAP) reports the analysis of new hominin fossils from the site of Thomas Quarry I (Casablanca, Morocco). The fossils are very securely dated to 773,000 plus/minus 4,000 years ago, thanks to a high-resolution magnetostratigraphic record capturing in detail the Brunhes/Matuyama boundary, the last main geomagnetic polarity reversal and precise temporal markers of the Quaternary. Published in Nature, this work highlights African populations near the base of the lineage that eventually gave rise to Homo sapiens, providing new insights into the shared ancestry of H. sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans.
Decades of Moroccan-French fieldwork lead to major new discoveries
The results presented here stem from over three decades of continuous archaeological and geological research conducted in the framework of the Moroccan-French Program “Préhistoire de Casablanca”. This program conducts extensive excavations, systematic stratigraphic studies, and large-scale geoarchaeological analyses in the southwest part of the city of Casablanca.
This patient and rigorous fieldwork progressively revealed the exceptional stratigraphic, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological setting of Thomas Quarry I, ultimately leading to the discovery of the hominin remains and geological sequences that underpin the present study.
As Abderrahim Mohib explains: “The success of this long-term research reflects a strong institutional collaboration involving theMinistère de la Jeunesse, de la Culture et de la Communication Département de la Culture of the Kingdom of Morocco (through INSAP) and the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères of France (through the French Archaeological Mission Casablanca)”. The present study was also supported by the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy), the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany), the LabEx Archimède – University of Montpellier Paul Valéry, the University of Bordeaux andthe Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (France).
A unique geological setting: the Moroccan Atlantic coast as a Pleistocene treasure house
Jean-Paul Raynal, co-director of the program throughout the excavation that led to the discovery of fossil remains, emphasizes that “Thomas Quarry I lies within the raised coastal formations of the Rabat–Casablanca littoral, a region internationally renowned for its exceptional succession of Plio-Pleistocene palaeoshorelines, coastal dunes and cave systems. These geological formations, resulting from repeated sea-level oscillations, aeolian phases, and rapid early cementation of coastal sands, offer ideal conditions for fossil and archaeological preservation”. As a result, the Casablanca region has become one of Africa’s richest repositories of Pleistocene palaeontology and archaeology, documenting the early Acheulean and its developments, diverse faunas reflecting environmental change, and several phases of hominin occupation.
Thomas Quarry I, excavated into the Oulad Hamida Formation, is particularly well known for containing the oldest Acheulean industries of north-western Africa dated to around 1.3 million years ago and lies close to other celebrated sites such as Sidi Abderrahmane, a classic reference for Middle Pleistocene prehistory in the Northwest Africa. Within this wider complex, the “Grotte à Hominidés” constitutes “a unique cave system carved by a marine highstand into earlier coastal formations and later filled with sediments that preserved hominin fossils in a secure, undisturbed and undisputable stratigraphic context,” explains David Lefèvre.
A uniquely well-dated hominin assemblage in Africa
Dating Early and Middle Pleistocene fossils is notoriously difficult, due to discontinuous stratigraphies or methods affected by considerable uncertainty. The Grotte à Hominidés is exceptional because rapid sedimentation and continuous deposition allowed to capture a high-resolution magnetic signal recorded within sediments with remarkable detail.
Earth’s magnetic field reverses polarity episodically over geological time. These paleomagnetic reversals occur worldwide and almost instantaneously on geological timescales, leaving in sediments a sharp, globally synchronous signal. The Matuyama–Brunhes transition (MBT), which occurred around 773,000 years ago, is the most recent of these major reversals and constitutes one of the most precise markers available to geologists and archaeologists. As Serena Perini explains: “Seeing the Matuyama–Brunhes transition recorded with such resolution in the ThI-GH deposits allows us to anchor the presence of these hominins within an exceptionally precise chronological framework for the African Pleistocene.”
The Grotte à Hominidés sequence spans the end of the Matuyama Chron (reverse polarity), the MBT itself, and the onset of the Brunhes Chron (normal polarity). Using 180 magnetostratigraphic samples - an unprecedented resolution for a Pleistocene hominin site - the team established the exact position of the reverse-to-normal switch, currently dated at 773,000 years, and even captured the short duration of the transition (8,000 to 11,000 years). It is chronologically valuable that the sediments containing the hominin fossils were deposited precisely during this transition. Additional faunal evidence independently supports this age, affirming the primacy of magnetostratigraphy over other methods for establishing the chronology of this site.
Hominins close to the root of the Homo sapiens lineage
The hominin remains come from what appears to have been a carnivore den, as suggested by a hominin femur showing clear traces of gnawing and consumption. The assemblage includes a nearly complete adult mandible, a second adult half mandible, a child mandible, several vertebrae, and isolated teeth.
High-resolution micro-CT imaging, geometric morphometrics, and comparative anatomical analysis reveal a mosaic of archaic and derived traits. Several characteristics recall hominins from Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, of comparable age – the so-called Homo antecessor - suggesting that very ancient population contacts between north-west Africa and southern Europe may once have existed. However, by the time of the Matuyama–Brunhes transition, these populations appear to have been already clearly separated, implying that any such exchanges must have occurred earlier.
Matthew Skinner notes: "Using microCT imaging we were able to study a hidden internal structure of the teeth, referred to as the enamel-dentine junction, which is known to be taxonomically informative and which is preserved in teeth where the enamel surface is worn away. Analysis of this structure consistently shows the Grotte à Hominidés hominins to be distinct from both Homo erectus and Homo antecessor, identifying them as representative of populations that could be basal to Homo sapiens and archaic Eurasian lineages."
Shara Bailey confirms the generalized shape and traits of the Grotte à Hominidés teeth, noting that "In their shapes and non-metric traits, the teeth from Grotte à Hominidés retain many primitive features and lack the traits that are characteristic of Neandertals. In this sense, they differ from Homo antecessor, which - in some features - are beginning to resemble Neandertals. The dental morphological analyses indicate that regional differences in human populations may have been already present by the end of the Early Pleistocene".
A new window on the last common ancestor of humans and Neandertals
This discovery highlights that Northwest Africa played a major role in the early evolutionary history of the genus Homo, at a time when climatic oscillations periodically opened ecological corridors across what is now the Sahara. As Denis Geraads notes: “The idea that the Sahara was a permanent biogeographic barrier does not hold for this period. The palaeontological evidence shows repeated connections between Northwest Africa and the savannas of the East and South.”
The hominins from the Grotte à Hominidés are almost contemporaneous with the hominins from Gran Dolina, older than Middle Pleistocene fossils ancestral to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and roughly 500,000 years earlier than the earliest Homo sapiens remains from Jebel Irhoud. In their combination of archaic African traits with traits that approach later Eurasian and African Middle Pleistocene morphologies, the hominins from the Grotte à Hominidés provide essential clues about the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans—estimated from genetic evidence to have lived between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago. Paleontological evidence from the Grotte à Hominidés aligns most closely with the older part of this interval.
Jean-Jacques Hublin concludes that “the fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés may be the best candidates we currently have for African populations lying near the root of this shared ancestry, thus reinforcing the view of a deep African origin for our species.“
Both sides of one of the arrowheads analysed. The left-hand image shows the organic remains in which the arrowhead residues were identified. Photo: Marlize Lombard
Researchers have identified traces of plant poison from the South African plant gifbol on Stone Age arrowheads – the oldest known arrow poison in the world to date. The discovery, published in the scientific journal Science Advances, shows that 60,000 years ago, people in southern Africa had already developed advanced knowledge of toxic substances and how they could be used for hunting.
Researchers from South Africa and Sweden have found the oldest traces of arrow poison in the world to date. On 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, researchers have identified chemical residues of poison from the plant gifbol (Boophone disticha), a poisonous plant still used by traditional hunters in the region.
“This is the result of a long and close collaboration between researchers in South Africa and Sweden. Being able to identify the world's oldest arrow poison together has been a complex undertaking and is incredibly encouraging for continued research,” says Professor Sven Isaksson at the Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, an expert in the analysis of organic residues in archaeological materials who carried out the chemical analyses.
Oldest evidence of arrow poison
“This is the oldest direct evidence that humans used arrow poison. It shows that our ancestors in southern Africa not only invented the bow and arrow much earlier than previously thought, but also understood how to use nature’s chemistry to increase hunting efficiency,” says Professor Marlize Lombard, a researcher at the Palaeo-Research Institute at the University of Johannesburg.
Chemical analyses revealed the presence of the alkaloids buphanidrine and epibuphanisine, substances found in the plant Boophone disticha – also known as gifbol (i.e. poisonous onion). The plant has long been known among local hunters for its highly toxic properties.
Similar substances were also found on 250-year-old arrowheads in Swedish collections, which were collected by travellers during the 18th century. The fact that the same plant poison was used in both historical and prehistoric times indicates a long continuity of knowledge and tradition.
“Finding traces of the same poison on both prehistoric and historical arrowheads was crucial,” says Professor Sven Isaksson. “By carefully studying the chemical structure of the substances and thus drawing conclusions about their properties, we were able to determine that these particular substances are stable enough to survive this long in the ground,” he continues. “It’s also fascinating that people had such a deep and long-standing understanding of the use of plants.”
Advanced planning abilities
Previously, indirect traces of poison have been used to interpret hunting practices, but the findings from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter constitute the first direct evidence of hunting with poisoned arrows. The study shows that these early hunters not only had technical skills but also advanced planning abilities and an understanding of how poisons work over time – characteristics that reflect modern human cognition.
“Using arrow poison requires planning, patience and an understanding of cause and effect. It is a clear sign of advanced thinking in early humans,” says Professor Anders Högberg at the Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University.
Migration into England was continuous from the Romans through to the Normans and men and women moved from different places and at different rates, a study finds.
The researchers found early medieval migrants came to England from the Mediterranean and from the Arctic Circle and beyond.
The major bioarchaeological study gives a new perspective to early medieval texts and ancient DNA, researchers say.
The study of human tooth enamel also showed climate events such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
The study by researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge is the first large scale analysis of isotopic and ancient DNA data in cemeteries from early medieval England to assess movement.
Researchers traced the roots of population movements to England during what is known as the early medieval period – the period spanning from the end of Roman rule in Britain, around 1600 years ago, through to the arrival of the Normans more than 900 years ago.
Analysis of chemical signatures found in the teeth of ancient skeletons show that population movement was a consistent feature of England between the 4th and the 11th centuries, the study found.
Researchers used bioarchaeological techniques to study more than 700 chemical signatures from the teeth of human skeletal remains of people buried in England from around AD 400 to 1100.
The team compared this with ancient DNA from 316 individuals to compare movement versus ancestry.
Evidence from tooth enamel – which can show if a person consumed food or water which was chemically different from food and drink from their place of burial – also captured climate fluctuations such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a period of rapid cooling in the 6th and 7th centuries, and evidence of newcomers from colder regions.
The team found that migration appeared to be continuous – rather than tied to one off events – with a significant spike in the seventh and eighth centuries.
Male migration appeared to be more prominent – although there was also notable female mobility particularly into the North East, Kent and Wessex.
The researchers found evidence of migration into England from Wales and Ireland. The data also offered evidence of migration and settlement from northwest Europe and the Mediterranean, the researchers say.
The researchers looked at how the main documented sources of mobility – such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – aligned with the bioarchaeological findings sourced from the study of human skeletal remains.
The use of biomolecular data provides new evidence to answer questions about the nature and scale of early medieval migration, the researchers say.
Dr Sam Leggett of the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, said: “The study took a ‘big data’ approach to assess the narratives around early medieval migration. We see here that migration was a consistent feature rather that just tied to one off events, with evidence of communities in continual cross-cultural contact, tied into large scale networks which may have contributed to the major socio-cultural changes we see throughout the period.”
Dr Susanne Hakenbeck, of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, said: “Our study shows that migration to Britain was fairly continuous throughout the first millennium. We didn’t expect to see a spike in mobility in the 7th and 8th centuries – well after the period of the so-called Anglo-Saxon migrations. This study – incidentally co-authored by two migrants – also shows that Britain was never isolated from the continent.”
Credit: Scott Williams/NYU and Jason Heaton/University of Alabama Birmingham
In recent decades, scientists have debated whether a seven-million-year-old fossil was bipedal—a trait that would make it the oldest human ancestor. A new analysis by a team of anthropologists offers powerful evidence that Sahelanthropus tchadensis—a species discovered in the early 2000s—was indeed bipedal by uncovering a feature found only in bipedal hominins.
Using 3D technology and other methods, the team identified Sahelanthropus’s femoral tubercle, which is the point of attachment for the largest and most powerful ligament in the human body—the iliofemoral ligament—and vital for walking upright. The analysis also confirmed the presence of other traits in Sahelanthropus that are linked to bipedalism.
“Sahelanthropus tchadensis was essentially a bipedal ape that possessed a chimpanzee-sized brain and likely spent a significant portion of its time in trees, foraging and seeking safety,” says Scott Williams, an associate professor in New York University’s Department of Anthropology who led the research. “Despite its superficial appearance, Sahelanthropus was adapted to using bipedal posture and movement on the ground.”
The study, which included researchers from the University of Washington, Chaffey College, and the University of Chicago, appears in the journal Science Advances.
Sahelanthropus was discovered in Chad’s Djurab desert by University of Poitiers’ palaeontologists in the early 2000s, with initial analyses focusing on its skull. Two decades later, studies on other parts of that discovery—its forearms, or ulnae, and thigh bone, or femur—were reported. This prompted debate over whether the species was bipedal or not, leaving open the question on its status: Is Sahelanthropus a hominin (a human ancestor)?
In the Science Advances study, the scientists took a closer look at the ulnae and femur using two primary methods: a multi-fold trait comparison with the same bones of living and fossil species and 3D geometric morphometrics—a standard method for analyzing shapes in greater detail in order to illuminate areas of particular interest. Among the compared fossil species was Australopithecus—an early human ancestor, well-known through the discovery of the “Lucy” skeleton in the early 1970s, who lived an estimated four to two million years ago.
The analysis revealed three features that point to bipedalism in Sahelanthropus:
The presence of a femoral tubercle, which provides attachment for the iliofemoral ligament linking the pelvis to the femur and has so far been identified only in hominins
A natural twist, specifically within the range of hominins, in the femur—or femoral antetorsion—that helps legs to point forward, thereby aiding walking
The presence, drawn from the 3D analysis, of gluteal, or butt, muscles similar to those in early hominins that keep hips stable and aid in standing, walking, and running
The latter two traits—femoral antetorsion and gluteal complex—had previously been identified by other scientists; the Science Advances study affirmed their presence.
The authors also found that Sahelanthropus had a relatively long femur relative to its ulna—additional evidence of bipedalism. The researchers note that apes have long arms and short legs, whereas hominins have relatively long legs. And while Sahelanthropus had much shorter legs than do modern humans, these were distinct from apes and approached Australopithecus in relative femur length, suggesting another adaptation to bipedalism.
“Our analysis of these fossils offers direct evident that Sahelanthropus tchadensis could walk on two legs, demonstrating that bipedalism evolved early in our lineage and from an ancestor that looked most similar to today’s chimpanzees and bonobos,” concludes Williams.
For the first time, scientists have reconstructed ancient genomes of Human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) from archaeological human remains more than two millennia old. The study, led by the University of Vienna and University of Tartu (Estonia) and published inScience Advances, confirms that these viruses have been evolving with and within humans since at least the Iron Age. The findings trace the long history of HHV-6 integration into human chromosomes and suggest that HHV-6A lost this ability early on.
HHV-6B infects about 90 percent of children by the age of two and is best known as the cause of roseola infantum – or "sixth disease" – the leading cause of febrile seizures in young children. Together with its close relative HHV-6A, it belongs to a group of widespread human herpesviruses that typically establish lifelong, latent infections after an initial mild illness in early childhood. What makes them exceptional is their ability to integrate into human chromosomes – a feature that allows the virus to remain dormant and, in rare cases, to be inherited as part of the host's own genome. Such inherited viral copies occur in roughly one percent of people today. While earlier studies had hypothesized that these integrations were ancient, the new data from this study provide the first direct genomic proof.
Recovering viral DNA from the distant past
An international research team led by the University of Vienna and the University of Tartu (Estonia) – in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and University College London – screened nearly 4,000 human skeletal samples from archaeological sites across Europe. Eleven ancient viral genomes were identified and reconstructed – the oldest from a young girl of the Iron Age Italy (1100–600 BCE). The remaining individuals covered a wide geographic and temporal range: Both types of HHV were found in medieval England, Belgium and Estonia, while HHV-6B also appeared in samples from Italy and early historic Russia. Several of the English individuals carried inherited forms of HHV-6B, making them the earliest known carriers of chromosomally integrated human herpesviruses. The Belgian site of Sint-Truiden yielded the largest number of cases, with both viral species circulating within the same population.
"While HHV-6 infects almost 90% of the human population at some point in their life, only around 1% carry the virus, which was inherited from your parents, in all cells of their body. These 1% of cases are what we are most likely to identify using ancient DNA, making the search for viral sequences quite difficult", said the lead researcher of the study, Meriam Guellil, University of Vienna, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. "Based on our data, the viruses' evolution can now be traced over more than 2,500 years across Europe, using genomes from the 8th-6th century BCE until today."
Ancient integrations, lasting consequences
The recovered genomes allowed the researchers to determine where in the chromosomes the viruses had integrated. Comparisons with modern data revealed that some integrations happened a very long time ago and passed down through generations for millennia. One of the two viral species (HHV-6A) appears to have lost its ability to integrate into human DNA over time – evidence that these viruses have evolved differently while coexisting with their human hosts.
"Carrying a copy of HHV6B in your genome has been linked to angina–heart-disease", says Charlotte Houldcroft (Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge). "We know that these inherited forms of HHV6A and B are more common in the UK today compared to the rest of Europe, and this is the first evidence of ancient carriers from Britain."
A new chapter in virus–host evolution
The discovery of these ancient HHV-6 genomes provides the first time-stamped evidence for the long-term co-evolution of this virus with humans at the genomic level. It also shows how ancient DNA can reveal the long-term evolution of infectious diseases – from short-lived childhood infections to viral sequences that became part of the human genome. Discovered only in the 1980s, HHV-6A and HHV-6B can now be traced back to the Iron Age, offering direct genomic evidence for an ancient, shared history between viruses and humans. "Modern genetic data suggested that HHV-6 may have been evolving with humans since our migration out of Africa," says Guellil. "These ancient genomes now provide first concrete proof of their presence in the deep human past."
