The majority of Neanderthals , much like modern Homo sapiens, exhibited a strong preference for using their right hand , as evidenced by the accidental scratches on their teeth. This intriguing...
The protective capacities of shoes are obvious, and would have been just as obvious in ancient times, when the earliest modern humans walked the earth. Nevertheless, researchers have long debated...
The rich historical tapestry of Greece has been dramatically expanded with the recent discovery of hunting tools dating back an astonishing 700,000 years. Unearthed in a coal mine in Megalopolis,...
The journey of evolution has been a long one, spanning over millions of years, and our ancestors have survived some of the toughest conditions imaginable to get where we are today. Starting from the...
In the latest string of research and studies shedding light on the incredibly complex history of human evolution, fossils found in Boxgrove, England have been compared to fossils found at Sima de los...
Neanderthals are generally classified by palaeontologists as the species Homo neanderthalensis , but some consider them to be a subspecies of Homo sapiens ( Homo sapiens neanderthalensis ). The first...
Several years ago, a team of scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, set out to put a human face to ancient hominid species that once walked the Earth. Using...
A new analysis of two 7.2 million-year-old fossils belonging to a hominin species nicknamed “El Graeco” from Mediterranean Europe, suggests that mankind emerged in Europe and not in Africa. The new...
Scientists have described an 11.62 million-year-old ape that moved like no other creature on Earth using its human legs and orangutan arms. A team of scientists from Eberhard Karls University of...
A study has made a startling claim. It argues that an extinct species of humans, the Denisovans , may have mated with modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) as late as 15,000 years ago. This claim is based...
The Tham Lod Rockshelter (a shallow cave) in Mae Hong Son Province, in Northwest Thailand is a prehistoric area that had been the center for burial and tool–making in the late Pleistocene to the late...
They have an unwarranted image as brutish and uncaring, but new research has revealed just how knowledgeable and effective Neanderthal healthcare was. The study, by the University of York, reveals...
A new analysis suggests that an older Neanderthal from nearly 50,000 years ago, ended up being deaf and most likely depended on his friends in order to survive, after he had suffered several injuries...
Early humans seem to have recognized the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found. The...
An amazing technological innovation in the study of DNA has been called a ‘game changer’ in the research into ancient humans and hominids. It may solve many of the mysteries that exist in relation to...
Traces of long-lost human cousins may be hiding in modern people’s DNA, a new computer analysis suggests. People from Melanesia, a region in the South Pacific encompassing Papua New Guinea and...
Most non-Africans possess at least a little bit Neanderthal DNA. But a new map of archaic ancestry--published March 28 in Current Biology--suggests that many bloodlines around the world, particularly...
Can there be any more important a question than, ‘How did we get here?’ Of course, I don’t mean those books we all gawked at as tweens desperate to understand our transforming pubescent bodies. I...
Over the past half-decade, ancient DNA research has revealed some surprising aspects to our evolutionary history during the past 50,000 years. Perhaps the most startling of these has been the extent...
How did the world sound to our ancient human relatives two million years ago? While we obviously don’t have any sound recordings or written records from anywhere near that long ago, we do have one...
Fragments of an early human skull and rib were found in Pleistocene era layers in Strashnaya Cave, it was announced by Professor Andrey Krivoshapkin, head of Archeology and Ethnography at Novosibirsk...
Researchers excavating an eroded basin in Hebei province, China, claim to have made a remarkable discovery - a two-million-year-old ‘playground’ of ancient hominids complete with stone artifacts...
The Omo Valley of Ethiopia is known as a beautiful, biologically and culturally diverse land, distinctive and vital for many reasons. The Omo River empties into the unique Lake Turkana in Kenya - the...
A controversial new theory published in the journal Nature suggests that the remains of Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the Hobbit for its small stature, do not belong to the Homo lineage at all, but...