Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

CategoryPaleontology

tribe-of-prehistoric-hunter-gatherers-wearing-animal-skins-stand-around-bonfire-outside-of-cave-at-night-portrait-of-neanderthal-homo-sapiens-family-doing-pagan-religion-ritual-near-fire-stockpack-adobe-stock
Tribe of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Wearing Animal Skins Stand Around Bonfire Outside of Cave at Night. Portrait of Neanderthal / Homo Sapiens Family Doing Pagan Religion Ritual Near Fire

Our Ancestors Are Constantly Evolving, Just to Keep Up!

Negative biases about our forebears have long been part of science, education, and popular culture. Why?

Recently, archeologists came up with an interesting find from 30,000 years ago in what is now Moravia, part of the Czech Republic: Ravens lived among humans. over 30,000 years ago, during the Pavlovian culture, ravens helped themselves to people’s scraps and picked over mammoth carcasses left behind by human hunters. This took place in the region known today as Moravia, in the Czech Republic. Ravens live in human settlements today, of course, with one notable difference: The archeologists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution noted that “The large number of raven bones found at the sites suggests that the birds, in turn, were a supplementary source of food, and may have become important in Read More ›

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Primeval Caveman,Neanderthal Family , ai generated

Researchers: Neanderthals Invented Process to Produce Birch Tar

The tar can be used for glue, bug repellent, and killing germs. This finding tracks growing recognition of Neanderthals as intelligent

Many of us grew up with “Neanderthal!” used as a term of abuse for a stupid person. A 2021 study from the University of Tübingen and others, dusted off at ScienceAlert, paints quite a different picture, in connection with Neanderthals’ manufacture of birch tar. The tar from burnt birch wood can be used as glue, insect repellent, and antiseptic. It can be scraped from a fire naturally or it can be produced in a controlled way. Which method Neanderthals used says something about the development of their culture. The study authors, Patrick Schmidt et al., went to a lot of potentially messy trouble to try to answer the question: Some think of black tar as a happy accident that Neanderthals Read More ›