This week in anthropology, archaeology, bioarchaeology, bioanthropology news

Skull of homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray 

9 Things you won’t see on display at the American Museum of Natural History 

AAA president defends social science research at NSF 

20 things you didn’t know about hoaxes 

Mausoleum go Augustus to be Restored, Rome 

Evolution of Irrationality in humans, learning from primates 

Pros and cons (and costs!) of taking your graduate studies abroad 

Tomb with pyramid entrance excavated in Egypt 

Looted bone boxes recovered in Jerusalem 

Maya skulls show evidence of wooden-club warfare 

Harvard discovered books bound with human flesh in library 

Illustrated story teaches kids natural selection 

Exhumed bones from Franco period bring crimes of Spanish dictatorship back to surface 

Traumatic skull injuries show that Maya used spiked clubs 

Byzantine monks used asbestos in wall frescos 

Byzantine mosaics uncovered in Israel 

Visit Angkor Wat using Good street view 

Things I wish I had known before beginning my Masters 

Jane Goodall celebrates her 80th birthday this week

Why anthropologists join an ebola outbreak team

10 reasons why everyone should love Jane Goodall 

Neanderthals genetic legacy among modern Europeans and Asians

Prehistoric artifacts found in Nashville ball park 

Tunisia returns stolen Mask of Gorgon to Algeria 

Early humans and saber-tooth cats co-existed 300,000 years ago 

New evidence exonerates rats as bearers of Black Death 

Did modern humans get fat from Neanderthals? Europeans have three times more Neanderthal variants in genes involved in lipid catabolism than Asians and Africans 

(a) Schematic representation of genomic distance calculations between contemporary human populations and Neanderthals. The genomes of out-of-Africa individuals were compared with the genomes of individuals of purely African ancestry (YRI). Single nucleotide differences from the Neanderthal genotype in an African genome were referred to as ‘ABBA’, while sites with the Neanderthal genotype in an out-of-Africa genome were referred to as ‘BABA’. (b) Average proportions of NLS in contemporary African (AF), European (EU) and Asian (AS) populations calculated based on sequence data from the 1,000 genomes project13; blue: genome wide (n=1,158,559 sites), red: LCP genes (n=498 sites). The error bars show the s.d. of the NLS proportion estimates. (c) Genomic distances between 11 contemporary human populations and Neanderthals; blue, genome wide; red, LCP genes. The maximal bar length corresponds to a NLS frequency of 30%. Placement of ASW and CEU individuals in sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe, respectively, reflects their approximate historical geographical origins rather than their present location [Credit: Nature Communications, doi:10.1038/ncomms4584] Read more at: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2014/04/did-europeans-get-fat-from-neanderthals.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+%28The+Archaeology+News+Network%29#.Uz9yw1yRJg2 Follow us: @ArchaeoNewsNet on Twitter | groups/thearchaeologynewsnetwork/ on Facebook

Sensors and satellites deployed to save Pompeii 

Ancient nomads spread earliest domestic grain over Silk Road 

Developers destroy Roman wall in UK 

Homo is the only primate whose tooth size decreases as its brain size increases 

Indigenous societies’ “first contact” typically brings collapse, but rebounds are possible  


Anthropology, Archaeology, Bioarchaeology, and Forensic Anthropology News from this week

Buildings made of bones from around the world

Buildings and walls of archaeological site Pompeii crumbling and collapsing 

Fascinating artifacts from the Viking world 

Graves and inhumations discovered at Late Iron Age/Early Roman site in France 

Rise in birth defect anencephaly, a neural tube defect,  among infants in Washington state puzzles epidemiologists

Mass grave of executed adult Viking males found in Dorset suffered from diseases weren’t warriors but mercenaries or peasants

Collection of 9000 year old Neolithic spirit masks to go on display in Israel 

Heated scientific debate between paleoanthropologist Drs. Tim White and Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo about human evolution on the savanna; when is scientific debate vitriolic?

Chimu-Inca artifacts found in tomb, believed to belong to nobel musicians and weavers, showing that music was important part of life and death in Late Horizon coastal Peru

18th Dynasty tomb found in Luxor 

Evolution useful for explaining human alcohol consumption habits 

Eating insects the new “paleo-diet”? 

JPAC’s methods for identifying and repatriating humans remains from lost military personal outdated ?

Early Pacific Islanders and New Zealanders enjoyed a natural, wild diet 

New section of Inca road discovered outside Arequipa, Peru, may have served as route from Cusco to coast

Genome analysis reveals origins of genetic adaptations for high altitude in Tibetans 

Amazing women in anthropology

Forensic anthropologists uncover mass grave in Somalia 

“Little Pompeii” unearthed 40 miles northeast of Venice: Flood destroyed and preserved Roman funerary complex