The archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, in present-day Turkey, is one of the most significant early Neolithic villages to have been excavated. It was occupied between around 7100 and 6000 BC, and at its height was occupied by more than 3500 people. An array of human skeletal remains have been found at the site. Many of them were buried in the floors...

A neat paper by Naomi Martisius and coworkers in Scientific Reports: “Non-destructive ZooMS identification reveals strategic bone tool raw material selection by Neandertals”. The introduction of the paper presents the problem that the researchers set out to solve. How can we get biological identifications of modified bone fragments without drilling...

A new paper from Thomas Cucchi and coworkers in Scientific Reports probes the early history of the house mouse: “Tracking the Near Eastern origins and European dispersal of the western house mouse”. A quick taxonomy of house mouse subspecies: Although often overlooked compared with commensal rats (Rattus rattus, R. norvegicus and R. exulans),...

Goat domestication may provide another example in which introgression brought new genetic variations conferring advantages for immunity into a population. A new paper in Science Advances by Zhuqing Zheng and collaborators looks at modern domesticated goats and wild relatives from several species, and also a handful of ancient goat genomes: “The origin...

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about how to help students transition more effectively to online learning. Obviously this is a topic on the minds of many teachers and professors this year. I was pointed to a post where Martin Weller reacts to some conversations he’s seeing in his Ed Techie blog: “It’s forever 1999 for online learning...

The biological anthropologist Rebecca Sear looks at the evolution of human twinning in a post for This View of Life: “Solving the Evolutionary Puzzle of Twinning”. She reviews the results of a recent paper modeling the fitness costs and benefits of multiple ovulation in a cycle, or polyovulation. Twinning is a relatively rare event, varying from...