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The Japanese population is descended from the Minatogawa man, depicted here in an artistic reconstruction. Source: Teruya Yamamoto / National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo

Did Japanese Population Originate with this Minatogawa Man?

A new scientific report published in Nature has concluded that the modern Japanese descended from the Minatogawa people of the Paleolithic era. This is based on a DNA study of a 20,000-year-old human...
The Aztec calendar. Source: javier_garcia / Adobe Stock.

Sacrifice and Destruction: The Apocalyptic Aztec Creation Myths

Many ancient cultures around the world have their own creation myth to explain their origins, and how the universe came into being. But few are as vivid, or as apocalyptic as the creation myth of the...
‘Dragon Man’ Skull Found in China May Be ANOTHER New Human Species

‘Dragon Man’ Skull Found in China May Be ANOTHER New Human Species

In the latest edition of the journal The Innovation , a team of evolutionary scientists led by Professor Qiang Ji from Hebei GEO University in Shijiazhuang, China have announced the discovery of a...
Elongated Skulls in utero - Morton Collection

Elongated Skulls in utero: A Farewell to the Artificial Cranial Deformation Paradigm?

Elongated skulls are usually explained in terms of head-binding or artificial cranial deformation. This paradigm emerged in the first half of the 19th century as a way of explaining unusual skulls...
Kenyan Cave Child Grave Declared Africa’s Earliest Human Burial!

Kenyan Cave Child Grave Declared Africa’s Earliest Human Burial!

78,000 years ago someone buried a young child in a cave. Now, researchers say that child’s grave in Kenya is the earliest known example of a deliberate human burial by modern humans in Africa. The...
Ruins of Shahr-i Sokhta, the “Burnt City,” in Iran.

Shahr-i Sokhta, Mysteries of the Burnt City of Iran

Located near Zabol in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, the ancient site of Shahr-i Sokhta (“Burnt City”) is one of the largest and richest Bronze Age sites in Iran and the Middle East...
105,000-Year-Old Kalahari Crystals Challenge Cultural Evolution Story

105,000-Year-Old Kalahari Crystals Challenge Cultural Evolution Story

New research at a rockshelter on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa challenges the assumption that modern human origins and complex behaviors were limited to coastal environments. A...
Prehistoric hominid species (Andrea Izzotti / Adobe Stock).

New Human Ancestor Species Discovered… And it had a Tail!

A multi-disciplinary and multi-national team of archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists in Siberia have announced the sensational discovery of a new hominid species that interbred with our...
10,000-Year-Old Dog Bone Supports Theory of Coastal Route to the Americas

10,000-Year-Old Dog Bone Supports Theory of Coastal Route to the Americas

Researchers have found the oldest known dog remains in the Americas and they believe the ancient dog bone fragment reveals how the canine and its brethren likely reached that part of the world. How...
Scientists Create Fully Functioning Neanderthal Mini Brain

Scientists Create Fully Functioning Neanderthal Mini Brain

A deep and detailed analysis of Neanderthal DNA has revealed the existence of a distinct gene, called NOVA1, that would have significantly influenced early brain development in this long-extinct...
Neanderthal Interbreeding with Humans Rampant on Jersey?

Neanderthal Interbreeding with Humans Rampant on Jersey?

Modern technology has allowed experts to re-analyze ancient Neanderthal teeth discovered at the start of the 20th century in a Jersey cave. They have been found to share attributes with those of...
Monkeys Genetically Engineered with Human Brains!

Monkeys Genetically Engineered with Human Brains!

A human gene injected into monkey brains not only made them larger, but it increased neuron function, making the animals more human. Marmoset brains are much smaller and smoother than human brains...
The casts of two men, believed to be a master and his young slave, have been unearthed in the excavation of a villa outside Pompeii. Source: Parco Archeologico di Pompei

Tragic Remains of Master and His Slave Found in Pompeii

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a master and his slave from Pompeii , victims of the cataclysmic volcanic eruption that destroyed the city. They were found in the heart of the ruins of...
10,000-Year-Old Footprints Tell Amazing Story of Human Encounter with Megafauna

10,000-Year-Old Footprints Tell Amazing Story of Human Encounter with Megafauna

Archaeologists at White Sands National Park in New Mexico examining a 10,000-year-old track of human footprints , have made more fascinating discoveries. But they’ve also unearthed a trowel-full of...
A child mummy discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb was not human.

CT Scan Revealed 3,000-Year-Old Non-Human Egyptian Mummies

Two ancient Egyptian sarcophagi were believed to contain human remains. One of them was thought to be a mummified child as it has the appearance of a “small human”. However, CT scanning in 2020...
Prometheus gave humans fire in ancient Greek mythology

Human Origins According to Ancient Greek Mythology

Every culture has an explanation about how we got here. The ancient Greeks were no different. The dramatic story of the origins of humanity in Greek mythology involves love, pain, and a hefty dose of...
Lapedo Child

The Controversial Lapedo Child – A Neanderthal / Human Hybrid?

Buried for millennia in the rear of a rock-shelter in the Lapedo Valley 85 miles north of Lisbon, Portugal, archaeologists uncovered the bones of a four-year-old child, comprising the first complete...
One of the mounted skulls found in Motala, Sweden. Credit: Anna Arnberg.

This is What a Man from the Tomb of Sunken Skulls Looked Like

When archaeologists were excavating a dry prehistoric lake bed in Motala, Sweden in 2009, they stumbled upon one of the most peculiar archaeological discoveries the nation had seen – the so-called ‘...
Thanks to fossil DNA, geneticists now know that different lineages of our ancestors interbred with one another, creating new genetic lines and ensuring the modern human race is genetically diverse. Pictured: Representation of our prehistoric ancestors.      Source: Kovalenko I / Adobe stock

How Ancient Fossil DNA Reveals the Secrets of Our Human Origins

When the human genome was first discovered, it revealed some amazing genetic secrets – modern humans are way more complicated than we originally thought. During a long evolution , humankind picked up...
Left: Skull of a desert hare (Lepus capensis) from the Neolithic Chinese farming community in Yangjiesha, which was used in the study (S. Hu / Antiquity Publications Ltd).        Right top: Jade carving of a rabbit from a Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC) tomb in Shaanxi Province. (P. Sheng / Antiquity Publications Ltd).        Right bottom: Bronze ornament for a chariot in the shape of a rabbit recovered from Yulin. (P. Sheng / Antiquity Publications Ltd).

Neolithic Chinese Had a Special Relationship with Hares

Researchers in China have found evidence that Stone Age people had a close relationship with hares. While they never domesticated them as they did with dogs, it appears that humans changed the...
Priest in Tenochtitlan Plucks the Heart from Human Sacrifice. Date: circa 1500. Credit:  Archivist / Adobe Stock

Secrets of Living Human Heart Extraction Revealed

In the mid-16th century the hyper-violent forces of Spanish conquistadors burned, tortured, raped and spread diseases as they made their way across Mesoamerica in the name of their one god. Yet they...
Main: View over the excavations in Schöningen in Germany. Inset: The ‘killing stick’ that was unearthed at the excavation site.           Source: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

300,000-Year-Old ‘Killing Stick’ Sheds Light on Evolution of Hunting

In Germany, a team of experts have made a very important discovery. They have established that an ancient wooden artifact is a throwing stick (or ‘killing stick’). This is allowing them to understand...
A new study finds that three different human species lived alongside each other. Source: pict rider / Adobe Stock.

Three Different Human-like Species Lived Concurrently in Ancient Africa

The oldest known Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus fossils have been found in a hilltop cave and a new study details a critical period of hominin evolution showing that two million years ago “...
Homo naledi juvenile skeleton (Bolter et al. 2020) and reconstruction of a Homo naledi adult. (Cicero Moraes (Arc-Team) et al/CC BY 4.0)

Ancient Hominin Skeleton Holds Clues To How Our Ancestors Grew Up

There are various ways researchers can explore the evolution of ancient humans and our relatives. Mapping their movements through genetic migrations , discovering more about what they ate and their...

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