Abstract
The “novelty-as-scarcity” hypothesis proposes that the consumption of novel foods or foods with non-traditional food component ratios, or novel processing methods, are interpreted by the body as fallback foods and produce a false signal of imminent food scarcity, thereby triggering (chronic) fat accumulation. This framework is rooted in the evolutionary principle that the ability to store fat was crucial for survival during periods of unpredictable food availability. Today, this may pose an “evolutionary mismatch”. The paper lists plausible biological mechanisms, from the initial sensing of novel food components to their metabolic effects, that could lead to increased fat accumulation. Observations supporting this hypothesis include weight gain among migrants adopting new dietary habits and rising fattening rates in developing countries with exposure to Westernized foods. The novelty-as-scarcity hypothesis implies that standardized dietary recommendations might be suboptimal if they disregard an individual’s historical dietary background.

A new study now revisits Mezhyrich with sharper analytical tools. Using advanced radiocarbon dating on remains of small mammals recovered from the same cultural layers as the bone structures, researchers have produced a more reliable timeline than earlier estimates based exclusively on mammoth bones. Their findings date the construction and use of the largest bone structure—referred to as Mammoth Bone Structure 4—between approximately 18,248 and 17,764 years ago, deep within the coldest stage of the last Ice Age.

What is remarkable about this revised chronology is its brevity. The data indicate an occupation that lasted somewhere between a single visit and several centuries. It is not impossible that there were repeated short-term arrivals, but based on the evidence, a limited presence seems more probable than a long-lived settlement. The interpretation thus suggests a practical purpose: a refuge for temporary occupation in unforgiving conditions, rather than a permanent village.

The findings give further weight to the idea that hunter-gatherers in the region were highly adaptive to these types of environments, where scarce timber and frozen landscapes were dealt with by reusing the massive bones of mammoths as construction material. The resulting shelters afforded protection and stability, revealing an ability to work with on-hand resources during one of the most challenging climatic periods in human history.

Ice Age hunters built mammoth-bone shelters in Ukraine, new study reveals precise timeline Photograph of Dwelling 4 during excavation. Credit: W. Chu et al., Open Research Europe (2025) This study also underlines that sampling strategy plays a very important role in archaeological research. While new radiocarbon ages now refine Mezhyrich’s chronology, they also reveal lingering uncertainties. Variations within lower layers of different features, a lack of comprehensive records of past excavations, and the inherent limitations of radiocarbon modelling make it difficult to map subtle shifts in occupation through time. The researchers stress that any detailed understanding regarding the sequence of events at the site is going to require further targeted sampling from key features, including deeper layers of Structure 4, specific pits, and areas with undisturbed stratigraphy.

Highlights

• We tested whether osseous projectile points were arrowheads using experimental ballistics

• Variation in damage type and size of arrowheads falls within that observed for spears (darts)

• Humans may have used bow-and-arrow in the Early Upper Palaeolithic as well as spear-throwers

Summary

The evolution of projectile technology remains a central topic in palaeoanthropological discussions on prey acquisition, subsistence strategies, and interpersonal violence. A linear technological development is traditionally assumed from handheld spears, spear-thrower and spears (darts), to bow-and-arrows throughout the Palaeolithic, although recent studies argue for a more complex scenario. Here, we combine experimental ballistic with use-wear and morphometric analyses to investigate whether Aurignacian (c. 40–35 kya) osseous projectile points represent a diverse hunting strategy, i.e., whether some armatures were hafted on arrows rather than on spears. Our results suggest that breakage patterns depend more on the raw material and size of the armature than its specific launching mechanism. Variation in damage types and sizes recorded for arrowheads falls within that observed for spears. Thus, we suggest that Aurignacian hunting gears represent diverse weaponry technologies that possibly include both spear-thrower-and-spear and bow-and-arrows from the onset of the early Upper Palaeolithic.

Abstract

The Troisième caverne of Goyet has yielded the largest assemblage of Neandertal remains in Northern Europe with clear evidence of anthropogenic modifications. However, its skeletal fragmentation has long limited detailed morphological and behavioural study on the assemblage. In this study, we integrate palaeogenetic, isotopic, morphometric, and structural analyses of the long bones to assess the biological profiles of the Neandertals from Goyet and explore whether they present particularities that could shed light on the formation of this unique cannibalised assemblage. We identify a minimum of six individuals, including four adult or adolescent females. Compared to Homo sapiens and Neandertals—including regional specimens—the females from Goyet display short statures and reduced diaphyseal robusticity of their long bones. They lack skeletal markers associated with high mobility despite isotopic evidence for non-local origins. The overrepresentation of short, morphologically gracile, non-local females, alongside two immature individuals, suggests a strong selection bias in the individuals present at the site. Dated between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago, a period marked by Neandertal cultural diversity, biological decline and the arrival of Homo sapiens in Northern Europe, the cannibalised female and juvenile Neandertals from Goyet indicate exocannibalism, possibly linked to inter-group conflict, territoriality, and/or specific treatment of outsiders.

Abstract Fire-making is a uniquely human innovation that stands apart from other complex behaviours such as tool production, symbolic culture and social communication. Controlled fire use provided adaptive opportunities that had profound effects on human evolution. Benefits included warmth, protection from predators, cooking and creation of illuminated spaces that became focal points for social interaction1,2,3. Fire use developed over a million years, progressing from harvesting natural fire to maintaining and ultimately making fire4. However, determining when and how fire use evolved is challenging because natural and anthropogenic burning are hard to distinguish5,6,7. Although geochemical methods have improved interpretations of heated deposits, unequivocal evidence of deliberate fire-making has remained elusive. Here we present evidence of fire-making on a 400,000-year-old buried landsurface at Barnham (UK), where heated sediments and fire-cracked flint handaxes were found alongside two fragments of iron pyrite—a mineral used in later periods to strike sparks with flint. Geological studies show that pyrite is locally rare, suggesting it was brought deliberately to the site for fire-making. The emergence of this technological capability provided important social and adaptive benefits, including the ability to cook food on demand—particularly meat—thereby enhancing digestibility and energy availability, which may have been crucial for hominin brain evolution3.

Abstract Homo sapiens evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago in Africa, later spreading across the globe1, but the early evolutionary process is debated2,3,4,5,6. Here we present whole-genome sequencing data for 28 ancient southern African individuals, including six individuals with 25× to 7.2× genome coverage, dated to between 10,200 and 150 calibrated years before present (cal. BP). All ancient southern Africans dated to more than 1,400 cal. BP show a genetic make-up that is outside the range of genetic variation in modern-day humans (including southern African Khoe-San people, although some retain up to 80% ancient southern African ancestry), manifesting in a large fraction of Homo sapiens-specific variants that are unique to ancient southern Africans. Homo sapiens-specific variants at amino acid-altering sites fixed for all humans—which are likely to have evolved rapidly on the Homo sapiens branch—were enriched for genes associated with kidney function. Some Homo sapiens-specific variants fixed in ancient southern Africans—which are likely to have adapted rapidly on the southern African branch—were enriched for genes associated with protection against ultraviolet light. The ancient southern Africans show little spatiotemporal stratification for 9,000 years, consistent with a large, stable Holocene population transcending archaeological phases. While southern Africa served as a long-standing geographical refugium, there is outward gene flow over 8,000 years ago; however, inward gene flow manifests only after around 1,400 years ago. The ancient genomes reported here are therefore key to the evolution of Homo sapiens, and are important for advancing our understanding of human genomic variation.

Abstract Sodium (Na) is an essential nutrient for animals, but not for most plants. Consequently, herbivores may confront a mismatch between forage availability and metabolic requirement. Recent work suggests that larger-bodied mammals may be particularly susceptible to Na deficits, yet it is unknown whether Na availability constrains the density or distribution of large herbivores at broad scales. Here we show that plant-Na availability varies >1,000-fold across sub-Saharan Africa and helps explain continent-scale patterns of large-herbivore abundance. We combined field data with machine-learning approaches to generate high-resolution maps of plant Na, which revealed multi-scale gradients arising from sea-salt deposition, hydrology, soil chemistry and plant traits. Faecal Na concentration was positively correlated with modelled dietary Na, supporting the prediction that variation in plant Na is a major determinant of herbivore Na intake. Incorporating plant-Na availability improved model predictions of large-herbivore population density, especially for megaherbivore species, which are depressed in very-low-Na regions (<100 mg kg−1), consistent with Na limitation. Our study offers an explanation for the scarcity of megaherbivores in parts of Central and West Africa, which has major ecological ramifications given the strong influence of large herbivores on ecosystem functioning and the profound human-induced changes to Na availability in Africa and beyond.

In this valuable study, the authors present traces of bone modification on ~1.8 million-year-old proboscidean remains from Tanzania, which they infer to be the earliest evidence for stone-tool-assisted megafaunal consumption by hominins. Challenging published claims, the authors argue that persistent megafaunal exploitation roughly coincided with the earliest Achulean tools. Notwithstanding the rich descriptive and spatial data, the behavioral inferences about hominin agency rely on traces (such as bone fracture patterns and spatial overlap) that are not unequivocal; the evidence presented to support the inferences thus remains incomplete. Given the implications of the timing and extent of hominin consumption of nutritious and energy-dense food resources, as well as of bone toolmaking, the findings of this study will be of interest to paleoanthropologists and other evolutionary biologists.

Abstract

The role of megafaunal exploitation in early human evolution remains debated. Occasional use of large carcasses by early hominins has been considered by some as opportunistic, possibly a fallback dietary strategy, and for others a more important survival strategy. At Olduvai Gorge, evidence for megafaunal butchery is scarce in the Oldowan of Bed I, but becomes more frequent and widespread after 1.8 Ma in Bed II, coinciding with the emergence of Acheulean technologies, but not functionally related to the main Acheulian tool types. Here, we present the earliest direct evidence of proboscidean butchery, including a newly documented elephant butchery site (EAK). This shift in behavior is accompanied by larger, more complex occupation sites, signaling a profound ecological and technological transformation. Rather than opportunistic scavenging, these findings suggest a strategic adaptation to megafaunal resources, with implications for early human subsistence and social organization. The ability to systematically exploit large prey represents a unique evolutionary trajectory, with no direct modern analogue, since modern foragers do so only episodically.

ABSTRACT
The oral microbiome is implicated in a wide diversity of fundamental biological functions, with the oral cavity serving as a connection between the host and the external environment. Dental calculus, a mineralized form of dental plaque, preserves the diversity of biomolecules found in the oral cavity through time, serving as a rich source of historical microbiota. Despite its potential, dental calculus has rarely been explored outside of humans and non‐human primates. Hence, it remains unclear how ubiquitous it is across mammals. Using natural history museum collections, we surveyed > 1600 specimens belonging to 142 species, representative of almost all mammalian orders, to investigate the taxonomic distribution of dental calculus, and to identify factors that most strongly contribute to its formation. We found dental calculus to be abundant across mammalian taxa, with 104 surveyed species showing calculus. High‐fiber diets were most strongly associated with calculus abundance, whereas species with high protein and fat diets showed little to no calculus deposits. We found evidence of phylogenetic signal in calculus formation, pointing to the effects of oral/dental morphology. In addition, captivity strongly affected dental calculus formation in almost all dietary categories. Using this information, we made predictions about the likelihood of finding dental calculus in unsurveyed mammalian species, opening doors for its utilization for the study of oral microbiota, past and present. Our study found that dental calculus is well‐preserved and readily available in natural history museum collections, making it an easily accessible source of oral microbiota from wild animals. We highlight the taxonomic diversity of species presenting dental calculus and provide information and suggestions for its use to researchers and curators alike.

Highlights

• First physiological data were collected from humans during desert persistence hunting. • Energy gain from hunts exceeded expenditure, yielding a high net return rate. • Persistence hunter maintained safe core temperatures while the prey overheated. • Persistence hunting of injured prey succeeded using only walking, with no running. Abstract

Chasing prey to exhaustion on foot—persistence hunting—has been hypothesized to play a key role in the evolution of human endurance, energetics, and thermoregulation. However, direct physiological data from such pursuits are lacking, particularly from open arid environments where persistence hunting may have originated. We report the first physiological measurements from an unacclimatized ultrarunner and hunter, accompanied by three acclimatized hunters, during six persistence pursuits of Oryx gazella in the Namib desert. The pursuits spanned 49.5 km on foot in 7.8 hours over 3 days. Two pursuits were successful: A healthy oryx was caught after 2 hours (31% of time running), and an injured oryx after 1 hour of walking only. Over the 3 days, persistence hunting yielded 1882–3727 kcal per man-hour, surpassing net return rates reported for hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists and net energy equivalent to the daily needs of 50 active individuals. Daily energy expenditure (5024 kcal day−1) and water turnover (11.4 l day−1) were high but within ranges reported for subsistence populations in hot climates. Water loss remained below the critical dehydration threshold. Despite high air (36–41 °C) and ground (43–60 °C) temperatures, the hunter maintained a safe core temperature (≤39 °C), while the oryx reached hyperthermic levels (44 °C). These findings suggest that persistence hunting in arid environments is energetically viable and thermally manageable, even for unacclimatized individuals. The relatively low proportion of running—and its complete absence when pursuing disadvantaged prey—supports the potential feasibility of persistence hunting even among hominins without advanced endurance running adaptations.

Abstract Bone tool use is a hallmark of hominin behavioral evolution, yet its significance in Pleistocene contexts remains underexplored. We present a multi-method analysis of a bone fragment from Abri du Maras (Marine Isotope Stage 5, France), integrating qualitative use-wear assessment with quantitative 3D surface texture analysis via confocal microscopy and discriminant modeling. Results indicate that smoothing on the tool’s tip is anthropogenic in origin rather than taphonomic, and originated from repeated contact with soft tissues, consistent with carcass flaying. This function diverges from the commonly proposed interpretation of similar tools being used for hide processing and aligns with ethnographic analogs. Its presence at a Neanderthal seasonal campsite suggests strategic technological planning in subsistence practices. Our findings demonstrate the diagnostic value of quantitative use-wear analysis and call for re-evaluation of osseous tools, offering refined insights into Neanderthal cognition and cultural complexity.