A book about witches casts a spell, and arguments about whether blue-green algae should be called blue-green bacteria, in this week’s pick from theNature archive.

Rock art found in Indonesia dates to at least 67,800 years ago, representing the earliest known cave art made by humans. These findings provide insights into the movement and cultural lives of populations that contributed to the ancestry of Indigenous Australian and Papuan people.

A distinctive population with high hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted 3,000 years later than in most European regions, contributing to later Lower Rhine–Meuse Bell Beaker users.

Using food residues on pottery vessels and dental calculus, and faunal remains, Casanova et al. find evidence that Neolithic communities in Iran were milking goats or sheep as early as the seventh millenniumBC.

Voluntary deference to prestigious individuals is a unique feature of human social life. Here, the authors show that human prestige psychology can promote marked-yet-adaptive inequalities in influence while remaining non-coercive.

All-action archaeologist Daniel Davenport unpacks the country’s complex past from inside its vast national parks.

Finding suggests that ‘blocking games’ were played in Europe centuries earlier than realized.

Macrophage-like cells consume waste lipids made during waking hours — plus, an ancient European population that shunned farming.

Ancient inhabitants of the Rhine–Meuse river delta resisted population shifts that transformed most of Europe — until they helped to catalyse the expansion of ‘Bell Beaker’ culture.

A book about witches casts a spell, and arguments about whether blue-green algae should be called blue-green bacteria, in this week’s pick from theNature archive.

This paper explores the sustainability potential of food and farming culture, which is largely overlooked by mainstream approaches for transitioning food systems. I present two cases where food and farming culture is alive and thriving—in the Maya-Achí territory of Guatemala and in Wales—illustrating how cultural practices and values may contribute to global sustainability challenges and resilience.