Tag: archaeology

Even amid the pandemic, anthropologists and archaeologists around the world have continued to make mind-boggling discoveries about our human ancestors this year.

One analysis revealed that the earliest known example of interbreeding between different human populations was 700,000 years ago — more than 600,000 years before modern humans interbred with Neanderthals. Findings from a Mexican cave, meanwhile, offered evidence that the earliest humans came to the Americas via boat, not land bridge. And researchers also found new reason to believe climate change was responsible for the extinction of many of our ancestors.

Taken together, these discoveries and others bolster and complicate our understanding of human history — the story of who our ancestors were, where they came from, and how they lived.

Here are some of the most eye-raising anthropological findings of 2020.

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According to a paper published today in the journal Nature, the site, known as Chiquihuite Cave, may contain evidence of human occupation that places people in North America around 30,000 years ago—roughly twice as early as most current estimates for when the first humans arrived on the continent.

The question of when people first arrived in the Americas has been debated for more than a century. For much of that time the reigning theory put the arrival around 13,500 years ago. But archaeologists are now exploring sites that keep pushing the date farther back, including some who have reported finding signs of human presence beyond 30,000 years ago. The evidence supporting those claims is hotly contested, and this latest discovery is already stirring more controversy.

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