Chimpanzees can learn a new skill by observing each other — a phenomenon known as social learning — according to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings suggest that chimpanzees may have the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution, which was previously considered to be an exclusively human trait.
A team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has analysed nearly 10,000 ancient genomes and found six cases of people with Down's syndrome and one with Edwards' syndrome. Most of them died before or shortly after birth. The findings correspond to different periods up to 5,500 years old and several of them have been found in Navarra. According to the authors, "the care with which the burials were carried out and the objects found with these individuals indicate that ancient societies probably treated people with trisomies 18 and 21 as members of their communities". The findings are published in Nature Communications.
A single amino acid change in a protein (TKTL1) may have given modern humans an advantage over their older contemporaries, such as Neanderthals, by allowing greater neocortical neuronal formation, according to research published in Science.
Compared to Neanderthals and apes, modern humans experience fewer chromosomal inheritance errors when their brains develop, according to a new study published in Science Advances.
A study published in the journal Nature has found that ancient human populations consumed milk during adulthood long before we were able to digest lactose beyond infancy. The genetic variant that allows us to do so was not increased in frequency by milk consumption, but by famine and infection, according to their hypothesis.