News

Around 19,000 years ago, a woman from a group of hunter-gatherers died and was buried in a cave in northern Spain. In 1996, archaeologists started exploring the cave, finding abundant evidence of prehistoric people and their activities. In 2010,...

Breakthroughs in ancient genome reconstruction and biotechnology are now revealing the rich molecular secrets of Paleolithic microorganisms. In a transdisciplinary study, scientists are rebuilding microbial natural products up to 100,000 years old using...

As far back as 45,000 years ago, groups of hunter-gatherers lived in what is now called El Mirón Cave near the northern coast of Spain. First discovered for science in 1903 by local archaeologists and surveyed by University of New Mexico Professor of...

With the largest dataset of prehistoric European hunter-gatherer genomes ever generated, an international research team has rewritten the genetic history of Europe’s human ancestors. This study was led by researchers from the University of Tübingen and...

The University of New Mexico’s long-scheduled Journal of Anthropological Research 52nd Distinguished Lecture will host Christina Warinner, a bioarcheologist at Harvard and the Max Planck Institute best known for her research on the evolution of ancient...

University Communication and Marketing (UCAM) annually compiles a Year-in-Review highlighting its general and research news and feature stories across campus during the course of the calendar year. Below is a select list based on UCAM's Google Analytics...

Around 19,000 years ago, a woman ̶ possibly a woman of some special status ̶ from a group of hunter-gatherers died and was buried in El Mirón Cave in northern Spain. In 1996, archaeologists started exploring the cave, finding abundant evidence of prehistoric people.

A new article in the journal “Nature” this week paints the outlines of a group of people who began to populate the land we know as modern day Europe starting 45,000 years ago. The article pieces together the work of researchers from dozens on...

University of New Mexico Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Lawrence Guy Straus found his life’s work as a young boy allowed into the study of his long-deceased French grandfather where he alone could look in the cabinet drawers, at the...

For nearly two decades, University of New Mexico Leslie Spier Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Lawrence G. Straus, his colleague Manuel R. Gonzalez Morales from the University of Cantabria and their students have spent part of every summer in Spain, in a cave that once held penned goats. They have been searching for a glimpse of the inhabitants who lived in this part of the world between 40 and 3,000 years ago.