An article published in the journal “Scientific Reports” offers evidence that hominins who lived at least 1.45 million years ago killed each other and possibly practiced cannibalism. Paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner of the National Museum of Natural History led the study of the markings found on a fossil tibia discovered in northern Kenya. The examination of 3D models of the surface of this tibia indicates that 11 of those marks were left by stone tools and that their characteristics likely indicate butcher work much like that seen on fossil animal bones slaughtered by hominins for consumption.

Three articles under peer review ahead of a publication in the journal “eLife” report different aspects of a study of what were defined as intentional burials of individuals belonging to the species Homo naledi. Various researchers including Dr. Lee Berger, who led the team that discovered these hominins, examined the cave called Rising Star, about 50 km northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa, in which their fossils were discovered and what were interpreted as engravings of symbols accompanying those burials. This would mean that Homo naledi buried their dead between 241,000 and 335,000 years ago, 100,000 years before Homo sapiens.

An article published in the journal “Nature” reports the results of a genetic study on a Neanderthal community that lived in today’s Siberia. A team of researchers including Nobel Prize winner for medicine Svante Pääbo obtained DNA from 11 individuals who lived in Chagyrskaya Cave and 2 who lived in Okladnikov Cave. It’s one of the largest genetic studies on Neanderthals ever done. The results of the genetic analysis indicate that some of the inhabitants of Chagyrskaya Cave were closely related, including a father and daughter.

An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” reports the discovery in today’s Laos of a tooth that was attributed to a little girl that belonged to the Denisovan species, an archaic human species still mysterious in many ways. The molar was dated between 164,000 and 131,000 years ago from the analysis of the sediments in which it was found in the Cobra Cave (Tam Ngu Hao 2), in the Annamite Chain, in Laos. The warm and humid conditions in that area offer little hope of still finding pieces of DNA but the proteins and appearance of the molar, very similar to that of a jawbone discovered in Tibet and attributed to a Denisovan, led the researchers to that conclusion.