Although anthropologists and evolutionary biologists are still debating this question, a new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, supports the view that the first egalitarian societies may have appeared tens of thousands of years before the French Revolution, Marx, and Lenin.

Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc (NYSE: JWa), (NYSE: JWb), and the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) today announced a new agreement to partner in the publication of The Australian Journal of Anthropology (TAJA). Wiley-Blackwell will also publish the backfiles from the AAS’s previous publication, Mankind.

Men may usually settle it over a drunken brawl in the pub or perhaps a verbal spat – but new evidence has shown for the first time that fighting over women in prehistoric times could have been worse than that.

University Somewhere in the murky past, between four and seven million years ago, a hungry common ancestor of today’s primates, including humans, did something novel. While temporarily standing on its rear feet to reach a piece of fruit, this protohominid spotted another juicy morsel in a nearby shrub and began shuffling toward it instead of dropping on all fours, crawling to the shrub and standing again.

Research led by the University of Leeds has discovered genetic evidence that overturns existing theories about human migration into Island Southeast Asia (covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo) - taking the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years.

A statistical approach to studying genetic variation promises to shed new light on the history of human migration.

A team led by two Texas A&M University anthropologists now believes the first Americans came to this country 1,000 to 2,000 years earlier than the 13,500 years ago previously thought, which could shift historic timelines.

A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided scientists with the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes. In a collaborative project involving researchers from the Germany, the United Kingdom, and Greece, Professor Michael Richards of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and Durham University, UK, and his team used laser technology to collect microscopic particles of enamel from the tooth.

Chimpanzees crave roots and tubers even when food is plentiful above ground, according to a new study that raises questions about the relative importance of meat for brain evolution.

Although many people rely on commercially available genetic tests for insights into their ancestry, the tests have significant limitations according to Deborah Bolnick, assistant professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin.

A team of researchers led by Doug Owsley, forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, has determined the identity of a pre-Civil War era individual buried in a cast iron coffin that was discovered in Washington, D.C., in 2005 by a utility crew.

Ancient cities arose not by decree from a centralized political power, as was previously widely believed, but as the outgrowth of decisions made by smaller groups or individuals, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Edinburgh.