In October 2004, excavation of fragmentary skeletal remains from the island of Flores in Indonesia yielded what was called "the most important find in human evolution for 100 years." Its discoverers...
Archaeologists are accustomed to finding evidence of funeral practices around the world, but every once in a while, something they find surprises them. This was the case with a recent discovery in...
A University of Adelaide-led project has overturned the theory that the evolution of human intelligence was simply related to the size of the brain -- but rather linked more closely to the supply of...
The ancient Greeks told myths about human sacrifice, but did they really kill people as some sort of sinister sacrifice to the gods? The 3,000-year-old skeleton of a teenage boy discovered in a mound...
A recent study says that a genetic change suddenly arose in the primate family tree about about 280,000 years ago. The researchers claim it is responsible for the largest genetic difference between...
A man who is born into a family of physicians tends to have a great opportunity to become a specialist of the human body. This is what happened for Andreas Vesalius, an individual who is remembered...
A new study of the genomes of Australasians has revealed sections of DNA that do not match any known hominin species. The dramatic findings mean that a mystery species bred with ancient humans in the...
The so-called German Stonehenge near Pommelte, where there was apparent human sacrifice, has been under reconstruction for several years and has just opened to the public for the first time. The 4,...
Thousands of years ago, the ancestors of modern humans left Africa to embark on a journey that would eventually take them across the globe. Yet we still know precious little about the momentous...
Archaeologists carrying out excavations on the outskirts of the Roman city of Pompeii have discovered the remains of four people in the ruins of an ancient shop. It is believed that they had gathered...
The Neanderthal genome included harmful mutations that made the hominids around 40% less reproductively fit than modern humans, according to estimates published in the latest issue of the journal...
The pint-sized Homo floresiensis, nicknamed Hobbits, may have met their demise much earlier than previously believed. Recent research suggests that they lived around 50,000 years ago and not between...
If I had taken a straw poll among anthropologists 10 years ago asking them how far genetic research would come in the next decade, I doubt anyone would have come close to predicting the big impact...
The archaic Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA that persists in modern individuals from the Pacific islands of Melanesia could be a source of new information about early human history, according to a...
The Paleo movement, which may include all or some of the following: A Paleo diet, Paleo sleeping, Paleo exercise, etc., is essentially an attempt to integrate as much of the Stone Age hunter-gatherer...
The question about the origins of Homo floresiensis has been one of the most important problems of modern science since 2003, when a team of Australian and Indonesian researchers excavated some 18,...