January/February 2022 Issue

NEW GUINEA: Thousands of years before humans domesticated chickens, hunter-gatherers in the rain forests of New Guinea may have been raising cassowaries for their meat, feathers, and bones. Analysis of eggshell fragments from 2 rock shelters, called Yuka and Kiowa, suggests that 18,000 years ago people may have been collecting eggs in the later stages of incubation from wild nests. When the chicks hatched, the huge, irascible, flightless birds would have readily imprinted on humans, who may have raised them to adulthood.

CHINA: Genome sequencing has revealed the surprising genetic origins of the enigmatic mummies found in the Tarim Basin. Because of the mummies’ distinctive Western appearance and clothing, researchers believed they were part of a population that migrated to the area more than 4,000 years ago, perhaps from the Eurasian steppe. But the new results show that the people were actually indigenous to the region and were direct descendants of a group known as the Ancient North Eurasians, who were thought to have largely disappeared toward the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,500 years ago.

RUSSIA: Our ancient ancestors sometimes traveled thousands of miles and braved harsh climates to secure essential resources. They even stalked woolly mammoths hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle. Cut marks on the bones of a mammoth on Kotelny Island indicate that a hunting party caught and butchered the beast with stone tools 26,000 years ago. This makes Kotelny the northernmost Paleolithic site ever recorded. Today the island lies 150 miles off the Siberian coast, but at the time it was connected to the mainland.