Sunscreen may have contributed to ancient humans' survival
Ancient humans used ochre, a mineral with sun-protective properties when applied to the skin. Other ways they protected themselves from harmful solar radiation include tailored clothes and the use of caves.
The research team found that the North Pole wandered over Europe when the magnetic field's poles started to flip positions, a natural process that has happened around 180 times over Earth's geological history. The magnetic reversal didn't occur, but the magnetic field weakened, allowing aurora to appear over most of the globe and increasing the amount of harmful UV light from space.
Scientists find strongest evidence yet of life on an alien planet
Researchers say the measures the ancient humans took may have contributed to their spread throughout Europe and Asia when the Neanderthal population was declining and eventually disappeared around 40,000 years ago.
'In the study, we combined all of the regions where the magnetic field would not have been connected, allowing cosmic radiation, or any kind of energetic particles from the sun, to seep all the way in to the ground,' lead researcher Agnit Mukhopadhyay said. 'We found that many of those regions actually match pretty closely with early human activity from 41,000 years ago, specifically an increase in the use of caves and an increase in the use of prehistoric sunscreen.'
Researchers said their work highlighted that people were still able to survive on a planet whose atmosphere looked a lot different than ours today, and this has implications for the search for life on planets other than Earth.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
London team helps Jersey with archaeological finds
Archaeologists from London are visiting Jersey to help catalogue and store hundreds of ice age animal bone from an ancient site. Jersey Heritage said while the items, found before 1960 at La Cotte de St Brelade, had been subjected to detailed work, the early finds were yet to be studied using modern scientific techniques. It said visitors could meet the team from the University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology for a free "Meet the Collections" event on Saturday at Sir Francis Cook Gallery. The finds, which are part of a Société Jersiaise collection, include a fragment of woolly mammoth bone and lots of pieces of horse, red deer, bison, and bear bones, said Jersey Heritage. It added the UCL team was interested in the remains of animals that may have been hunted by some of the last surviving Neanderthal groups in the region. Jersey Heritage said: "There is no reason why some of these fragments of bone might not be from the Neanderthal people themselves." More news stories for Jersey Listen to the latest news for Jersey Curator of archaeology at Jersey Heritage, Olga Finch, said: "It's great to have the expertise of the London team to undertake this curatorial work and provide a detailed catalogue, which the public and researchers can access to learn more about this important story in the Island's history." Dr Matt Pope from UCL said it was exciting to be involved in the "important process". "This is one of the most important collections of Ice Age animal bone in the region and we are getting every ready to unlock its secrets," he added. Follow BBC Jersey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to Related internet links Jersey Heritage UCL Institute of Archaeology More on this story New exhibition to explain history of Jersey Heritage releases historical Jersey records Gold award for Jersey Museum exhibit about island
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science to host community celebration before temporary closure
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science will be hosting a community 'closing celebration' on Aug. 3, one day before the museum is set to temporarily shut its doors for its first major renovation in decades. Officials said they plan to make a new entrance including rebuilding the lobby, add a new ticket booth, expand the gift shop, refresh permanent exhibition halls, replace the skylights in the atrium and Cretaceous Hall and update the main sewer line. Village of Ruidoso says its ready to welcome visitors back after devastating floods The 'Closing Celebration will take place at the museum from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will feature all-ages activities including face-painting, balloon animals, and more. Vistiors will also be able to catch a free show in the Verus Research DynaTheater or the Planetarium, and get their picture taken with the roaring Bisti Beast, Bonita, on the museum's 2nd floor. The museum expects to open back up in March 2026, and plans to have a 40th anniversary celebration for the museum, which opened in 1986. To learn more about the temporary closure of the museum on Aug. 4, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Gizmodo
Our Neanderthal Cousins Were Big Maggot Eaters, Scientists Argue
Modern humanity's most famous cousins, the Neanderthals, may have had a clever, if unappealing, dietary trick for survival: maggots. Research out today posits these creepy crawly fly larvae provided Neanderthals an ample source of essential nitrogen and fat. Scientists at Purdue University, the University of Michigan, and others conducted the study, published Friday in Science Advances. Using both experimental and historical data, they showed that maggot-infused meat is rich in fat and nitrogen and that similar human populations have commonly included such foods in their diets. The team argues that maggots are the most reasonable explanation for why Neanderthals had very high levels of nitrogen in their system. 'Fly larvae are a fat-rich, nutrient dense, ubiquitous, and easily procured insect resource, and both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, much like recent foragers, would benefit from taking full advantage of them,' lead author Melanie Beasley, a paleoanthropologist at Purdue, told Gizmodo. Nitrogen is a much-needed nutrient; among other things, it's used to help create amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Speaking of protein, dietary nitrogen is most abundantly found in animal meat (though certain leafy vegetables and legumes are also high in it). The excavated remains of Neanderthals are known to have high levels of nitrogen isotopes, indicating they had plenty of nitrogen in their diets. According to Beasley, most researchers have assumed this meant Neanderthals were hypercarnivores—predators at the top of the food chain that ate lots of freshly killed large animals, mammoths included. But in 2017, co-author John Speth put forth a different hypothesis: that Neanderthals were actually eating lots of stored and putrid meat filled with maggots. Both then and now, researchers note that some Indigenous groups in the Northern Hemisphere have regularly and intentionally eaten maggot-rich food—practically as a delicacy. In 1931, for instance, Knud Rasmussen, a polar explorer and anthropologist, wrote this anecdote about him and some members of an Inuit community coming across a cache of meat: 'The meat was green with age, and when we made a cut in it, it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish.' Beasley heard about Speth's argument and said she could help him test it out experimentally. At the time, she was pursuing a postdoctoral degree that involved studying muscle tissue decomposition in deceased people. This work also meant Beasley would spend much of her time around the maggots that feed on decaying tissue. Beasley and her colleagues documented the changing nitrogen levels in these samples of decaying tissue along with three different species of fly maggots. As the tissue decayed, levels of nitrogen inside changed modestly. The maggots themselves, however, were chock-full of nitrogen. Given the conditions back then, it would have been impossible for Neanderthals to avoid some maggots ending up in any animal meat they tried to store. Rather than a hindrance, though, these hominids probably made the most of the situation, using the maggots to turn their lean meat into a 'fat-rich, more complete food resource,' Beasley said. The researchers are still collecting more evidence to shore up their argument for maggot-eating Neanderthals, and they're also working to understand how the nutritional benefits of maggot-rich food change over time (exactly when is rotten meat too rotten, in other words?). However Neanderthals ate their meat, though, there are many people today still using insects and maggots to spice up their diet, the researchers point out. In Europe, for instance, there's casu marzu, a Sardinian sheep's milk cheese that's intentionally laced with cheese fly (Piophila casei) maggots. Much love to my Neanderthal brethren and casu marzu fans, but I think I'll still just stick to some classic sharp cheddar for my next cheese plate.
