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The article discusses the debate over a paper published in the issue by anthropologists Douglas Fry and Patrik Söderberg on the evolution of war in human society, focusing on nomadic hunter-gatherer groups. Their analysis of a historical ethnographic database found that individual killings were more prevalent than group violence in mobile traditional societies. Some critics charge that the study should have included sedentary groups and that it ignores the role of personal motives in war.

This article discusses a study by geneticist Sarah Tishkoff published online in "Cell" in 2012 on the sequencing of the genomes of individuals from African hunter-gatherer groups including the Hadza, the Sandawe, and the Pygmies for the purpose of researching early genetic divergence.

The article reviews the film “The Last Days of Shishmaref,” directed by Jan Louter.

Corrections are presented for articles published previously including "100-Million-Year Dynasty of Giant Planktivorous Bony Fishes in the Mesozoic Seas" in the February 19, 2010 issue, "DSM-V at a Glance" in the February 12, 2010 issue, and "The Tangled Roots of Agriculture" in the January 22, 2010 issue.

The article discusses a paper published online in "Science" which presents data from European researchers that may end the debate regarding the spread of agriculture, through the direct comparison of ancient DNA from European hunter-gatherers and early farmers. Topics include an overview of the hypothesis regarding the introduction of farming to central Europe by outside colonizers, the analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and reaction to the study by archaeologists.

This article presents information on Tania Hardy-Smith and Phillip Edwards of La Trobe University in Victoria took a close look at the rubbish situation at the 12,000-year-old settlement of Wadi Hammeh 27, a site occupied by the Natufians, sedentary hunter-gatherers who lived in present-day Israel. The scientists counted more than 439,000 pieces of refuse, mostly debris from stone tool making and discarded animal bone, on one occupation level. They found 82% of the trash within two stone structures believed to be dwellings. The lack of hygiene, adds, also may have been deadly--the Natufians appeared to have had higher death rates than did the later farming people.

Grain starches extracted from an ancient grinding stone in Israel reveal that people milled wild barley and wheat 22,000 years ago, according to two archaeologists. The finding represents the oldest known evidence of processed food and may help explain how early humans transitioned from being hunter-gatherers to settled farmers. In the August 5, 2004 issue of the journal "Nature," Harvard University paleoarchaeologist Ehud Weiss and archaeobotanist Dolores Pipemo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama report the presence of wild barley and wheat on the Israeli grinding stone.

The process by which agriculture diffused from the Fertile Crescent within the past 10,000 years has been widely discussed, but as yet there is no consensus. The demie diffusion model predicts a substantial genetic input from migrating agriculturalists, whereas the cultural diffusion model predicts no major changes at the genetic level. Hence, a way to test these competing hypotheses would be to compare genetic variation in traditional agriculturalists, traditional huntergatherers, and recent agriculturalists. Under the demie diffusion model, recent agriculturalists are expected to show closer genetic affinities to traditional agriculturalists than do hunter-gatherers; whereas under the cultural diffusion model, recent agriculturalists should resemble hunter-gatherers genetically. Genetic studies of Europeans have led to conflicting conclusions, partly because the genetic composition of pre-agricultural European populations is unknown.

A new estimate of the age of rock paintings in South Africa's uKhahlamba-Drakensberg park may shed light on the history of the San hunter-gatherers, one of the oldest human groups. Previous work in this mountainous area, first settled by the San 8000 years ago, indicated that the paintings were less than 1000 years old. However, new research using accelerator mass spectrometry has tripled the age estimate. This research has been published in the February 2004 issue of the journal "South African Humanities."

Introduces a series of articles dealing with issues related to human migrations. Ancient hunting and gathering peoples' search for new resources; Colonization of new continents; Evolution of human ancestors.