The transition of human societies from hunter-gatherers to farmers and pastoralists is a more nuanced process than generally thought, according to a new study of peoples living in the highlands of southwest Ethiopia. The work was published March 9 in Current Biology.

Between the time when early modern humans emerged in Africa and when they spread around the globe, they developed complex behaviors that enabled them — and us — to adapt and thrive in new environments.

When pay-to-conserve programs don’t come through with payments, they don’t conserve, indicates a UC Davis case study of a REDD+ Readiness program on the island of Pemba, off the coast of Tanzania.

The Tibetan Plateau has long been considered one of the last places to be populated by people in their migration around the globe. A new paper by archaeologists at UC Davis highlights that our extinct cousins, the Denisovans, reached the “roof of the world” about 160,000 years ago — 120,000 years earlier than previous estimates for our species — and even contributed to our adaptation to high altitude.

A book by UC Davis anthropology professor Li Zhang on the rise of Western-style psychological counseling in China received honorable mention in the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s 2021 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing competition.

A new documentary, Endangered, produced by Discovery and the BBC Natural History Unit, features UC Davis anthropologist Damien Caillaud’s work to study and protect Grauer’s gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.