Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – Something as simple as a grᴀss can fundamentally change the understanding of life in the prehistoric world. Studies published in the journal Science document the earliest evidence for locally abundant C4 grᴀsses in eastern Africa and how C4 grᴀsses and open habitats influenced early ape evolution. Since 2013, Daniel Peppe, Ph.D., ᴀssociate professor of […]

AncientPages.com – Pre-colonial African history is alive with tales of civilizations rising and falling and of different cultures intermingling across the continent. We have now shed more light on some of these societies using the science of genetics. In a study published in Science Advances, my co-authors and I used DNA information from people from the present-day […]

Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – A University of South Florida anthropologist has uncovered the first ancient DNA from the Swahili Civilization, which included prosperous trading states along the coast of East Africa dating back to the 7th century. The site of tombs along the Swahili Coast in East Africa where University of South Florida anthropologist […]

Conny Waters –  Ancientpages.com – Traces of ancient empires that stretched across Africa remain in the DNA of people living on the continent, reveals a new genetics study led by UCL researchers. Published in Science Advances, the collaboration between UCL geneticists working alongside anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and linguists in Africa and beyond found evidence for when […]

Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – People living on the ‘Swahili coast’ – the Indian Ocean coast of eastern Africa – have African and Asian ancestry according to new research on ancient DNA. One of the sites excavated along the coastline. Image credit: University of York. Relationships between Asian merchants and African traders were formed between […]

Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – In their recent publication in the Journal of Human Evolution, UConn Department of Anthropology Professor Christian Tryon and Shara Bailey, Director of the Center for the Study of Human Origins at New York University, detail new findings about 40,000-year-old teeth unearthed in the 1930s from a site called Ksâr ‘Akil in […]

A. Sutherland – AncientPages.com – The so-called Nomoli figures were found in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The Nomoli are mysterious stone figures from 2,500 years to approximately 15,000 BC and even 17,000 BC. They seem to prove the existence of an advanced ancient civilization in West Africa. Nomoli (Musée national de Sierra Leone). Image credit: […]

Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens […]

AncientPages.com – That humans originated in Africa is widely accepted. But it’s not generally recognised how unique features of Africa’s ecology were responsible for the crucial evolutionary transitions from forest-inhabiting fruit-eater to savanna-dwelling hunter. These were founded on earth movements and aided physically by Africa’s seasonal aridity, bedrock-derived soils and absence of barriers to movements between […]