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Neanderthal. Source: procy_ab / Adobe Stock

All About Neanderthals – The Surprising Facts

Current evidence suggests that Neanderthals and humans shared a last common ancestor sometime between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago. We speculate that this ancestor was H. heidelbergensis . The story...
The Stoned Ape theory proposes magic mushrooms helped the Homo erectus evolve quickly.

The Stoned Ape Theory and the Dawn of Human Consciousness: Did Our Prehistoric Ancestors Evolve by Getting High?

The origins of behavioral modernity and what exactly makes us human are topics which have fascinated people for hundreds of years. There is a plethora of theories as to which archaic human ancestor...
Denisovans mated with modern humans.

Modern Humans Could Have Mated With Denisovans as Recently as 15,000 Years Ago

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...
Modern human eyes (Konzentation)

Origin of Modern Human Behavior is South NOT East Africa [New Research]

Researchers from the University of Huddersfield, with colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University of Minho in Braga, have been using a genetic approach to tackle one of the most...
Evolution includes many now extinct human species.

11 Mysterious Human Species That Most People Don’t Know Existed

Modern humans, Homo Sapiens , are now the only surviving member of the homo genus. It is almost inconceivable to us that there was a time we walked with other human species, but as the science of...
A piece of hematite found in Denisova cave was used as a crayon for art work in the cave.

Ancient Colored ‘Pencil’ Up To 50,000-Years-Old Found in Siberia

Cave-dwellers used hematite crayon for art work in Altai Mountains, say archeologists investigating a latest find in Siberia. The pre-historic artists were not Homo sapiens but Denisovans - a long-...
Inside the Tham Lod rockshelter - Thailand

Magnificent Tham Lod Rockshelter Sheds Light on Earliest Humans in Thailand

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...
West African rain forest during amazing sunset, Liberia, West Africa

Human Evolution: Secrets of Early Ancestors Could Be Unlocked by African Rainforests

By Eleanor Scerri / The Conversation Think of African rainforests and the picture is inevitably one of a dark and forbidding realm where life is abundant, yet alarmingly cryptic. Rather than the...
The concave hole found in the Catalonia cave

Discoveries in Spanish cave suggest Neanderthals had hot water and bedrooms

Archaeologists in Spain have made a number of discoveries inside an ancient cave in Catalonia which suggest that Neanderthals had hot water and separate living quarters around 60,000 years ago. The...
Our species is ecologically unique in its ability to occupy, and specialize in, a variety of different environments as it began to colonize the entire planet between approximately 300 and 60 thousand years ago.

Adapt, Diversify, Find a Niche: Survival Tactics of Homo Sapiens That Brought World Domination

Our species' ability to occupy diverse and 'extreme' settings around the world in the Middle and Late Pleistocene (300-12 thousand years ago) stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of...
Eritrean Grand Canyon, East African rift valley.

Rethinking Homo sapiens? The story of our origins gets dizzyingly complicated

By Darren Curnoe / The Conversation You might say it’s the ultimate prize of science, to discover when, where and why humans evolved. For a long time, the evidence has been overwhelming that Homo...
An image of white-tailed eagle talons from the Krapina Neanderthal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130,000 yars ago, may be part of a jewelry assemblage.

Did Neanderthals make jewelry 130,000 years go? Eagle claws provide clues

Krapina Neanderthals may have manipulated white-tailed eagle talons to make jewelry 130,000 years ago, before the appearance of modern human in Europe, according to a study published March 11, 2015...
Fossilized jawbone, dubbed Penghu 1, found submerged in seafloor near Taiwan. Dated between 10,000 and 190,000 years ago. Credit: Y. Kaifu,

Taiwan Jaw Bone Connected to the Origins of Humanity, May Reveal Entirely New Prehistoric Species

The first ancient human fossil found in Taiwan may indicate the presence of an unknown archaic species of humans who lived in Asia during the Pleistocene era, possibly hundreds of thousands of years...
Human Brain by J.M. Bourgery, 1831-1854.

Why do humans have such large brains? (And why aren’t they larger?)

Mauricio Gonzalez Forero / The Conversation Most animals have brains in proportion to their body size – species with larger bodies often have larger brains. But the human brain is almost six times...
The older set of bones found on Tuyana site dated to 50,000 years ago. Source: Vesti Irkutsk

50,000-year-old Siberian bones may be the ‘oldest Homo sapiens' outside Africa and Middle East

By: The Siberian Times reporter Bones unearthed in eastern Siberia could be the oldest modern humans outside Africa and the Middle East. The discovery would change thinking about the arrival of man...
Rick Potts, director of the National Museum of Natural History’s Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian, surveys an assortment of Early Stone Age hand-axes discovered in the Olorgesailie Basin, Kenya.

New Insights into Rapid Advance in Human Innovative Thinking

The first evidence of human life in the Olorgesailie Basin comes from about 1.2 million years ago. For hundreds of the thousands of years, people living there made and used large stone-cutting tools...
Handle of one of the wooden tools from the Poggetti Vecchi site.

171,000-Year-Old Fire Forged Tool Discovered Beneath a Giant Elephant

171,000 years ago, in Tuscany, a set of ancient tools were crafted and forged with fire. Archaeologists in Florence, Italy, made an incredible discovery during construction work at Poggetti Vecchi. A...
The 177,000 to 194,000-year-old maxilla (upper jaw) of Misliya-1 hominin

Jawbone of Earliest Modern Human Outside of Africa Discovered in Israel

A large international research team, led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University and including Rolf Quam from Binghamton University, State University of New York, has discovered the earliest...
Artists impression of a group of australopith

The Origin of ‘Us’: What We Know So Far About Where We Humans Come From

The question of where we humans come from is one many people ask, and the answer is getting more complicated as new evidence is emerging all the time. For most of recorded history humankind has been...
Map of sites and postulated migratory pathways associated with modern humans dispersing across Asia during the Late Pleistocene.

Updates on Out of Africa – Revising the Story of the Dispersal of Modern Humans Across Eurasia

Most people are now familiar with the traditional "Out of Africa" model: modern humans evolved in Africa and then dispersed across Asia and reached Australia in a single wave about 60,000 years ago...
A re-analysis of the Dali skull is helping rewrite the story of human origins.

Rewriting Our Origins: Skull Found in China Promotes a Wider Perspective on Human Evolution

Most people discussing the origins of our species suggest that Homo sapiens can be traced back to Africa about 200,000 years ago. However, an increasing amount of evidence suggests that there may be...
An illustration depicting the possible path of human evolution.

The Earliest Known Human Ancestor is a What?!

For those that believe human beings were created in God’s own image, the idea that we have monkeys in our evolutionary history is a little hard to swallow, so it is likely to cause even more upset...
Artist’s impression of elderly Neanderthal male based on fossil found at La Chappelle-aux-Saints

Neanderthals Took Care of Deaf and Disabled Buddy Until Old Age

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...
Representation of a Neanserthal boy at the Neanderthal Museum, Krapina, Croatia. (Michael (a.k.a. moik) McCullough/CC BY NC ND 2.0) Skeleton of the Neanderthal boy recovered from the El Sidrón cave (Asturias, Spain). (Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC)

Reconstructing How Neanderthals Grew, Based on an El Sidrón Child

How did Neanderthals grow? Does modern man develop in the same way as Homo neanderthalensis did? How does the size of the brain affect the development of the body? A study led by the Spanish National...

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