News
A 2-Million-Year-Old Skeleton Shows Early Humans Were Still Built for the Trees
12+ hour, 25+ min ago (481+ words) Learn about the most complete Homo habilis fossil ever found, and how this fossil is changing what we know about human evolution. A remarkably complete fossil from northern Kenya is giving scientists their clearest picture yet of what one of…...
773,000-Year-Old Fossils Capture a Moment Before Human Lineages Split
1+ week, 17+ hour ago (635+ words) Learn how precisely dated fossils from Morocco reveal a population with a mix of archaic and emerging traits, helping clarify when African and Eurasian human lineages began to diverge. Along Morocco's Atlantic coast, hominin fossils dated to about 773,000 years ago…...
Oldest Cremation Pyre Found in Africa Rewrites Our Understanding of Hunter-Gatherer Ritual Behavior
1+ week, 5+ day ago (583+ words) Read more about the cremation of a mysterious women 9,500 years ago, telling a more complex story of how hunter-gatherers treated their dead. How humans deal with death and the rituals we build around it are a crucial part of our…...
This 7-Million-Year-Old Fossil May Reveal When Ancient Humans Started Walking Upright
1+ week, 5+ day ago (558+ words) Learn how detailed 3D analysis uncovered evidence that upright walking emerged near the very start of the human lineage. How one of the oldest candidates for a human ancestor moved through its environment has remained an open question. A seven-million-year-old fossil…...
50,000 Years of Island-Hopping Pigs Reveal Ancient Human Migration
1+ week, 6+ day ago (367+ words) Learn how pigs spread across Pacific islands, what their DNA reveals about ancient human journeys, and why their legacy still matters today. Pigs have spread across some of the most formidable natural barriers on Earth, appearing on islands where most…...
New Models Reveal If Neanderthals and Modern Humans Ever Met on the Iberian Peninsula During the Old Stone Age
2+ week, 2+ day ago (471+ words) Simulations suggest Neanderthals were on the brink of extinction by the time our ancestors arrived on the Iberian Peninsula. Discover more about the findings. Travel back a hundred thousand years to Paleolithic Europe, and you might find Neanderthals building fires,…...
The World’s Oldest Botanical Art Reveals How Humans Were Doing Math 8,000 Years Ago
3+ week, 2+ day ago (578+ words) Learn how ancient pottery covered in flowers may be humanity's first attempts at mathematical thinking. Long before numbers were written down or equations etched into clay tablets, early farming communities may have been doing math " with flowers. A new study,…...
What a 1.5-Million-Year-Old Face Reveals About Early Human Migration
4+ week, 17+ hour ago (564+ words) Learn how a digitally reconstructed 1.5-million-year-old fossil from Ethiopia is reshaping ideas about what early human migrants out of Africa actually looked like. When researchers digitally reconstructed the face of a 1.6-million-year to 1.5-million-year-old hominin from Ethiopia, the result wasn't…...
Ancient Dental Plaque Is Changing What We Know About Medieval Diets
4+ week, 1+ day ago (540+ words) Learn more about a new technology that is turning ancient teeth into one of archaeology's most powerful tools. For decades, archaeologists have relied on chemical signatures locked inside ancient bones to reconstruct what people once ate. But those techniques have…...
From DNA to the Fossil Record, Here's Why We Have a Good Idea of What Neanderthals Looked Like
1+ mon, 4+ day ago (621+ words) Learn more about how researchers can take evidence from the past to better shape our idea of what Neanderthals looked like. Our popular culture view of what Neanderthals might have looked like hasn't changed for decades. They're shorter, stockier, and…...