ancient humans

Researchers combined evidence found in dog genomes with physical materials recovered from archeological sites to discover factors behind major societal changes.

The findings suggest a new hypothesis of Indo-European language evolution.

A newer dating technique using cosmogenic isotopes finds Australopithecus remains from the Sterkfontein caves to be about 1 million years older than previous estimates, potentially changing scientists’ understanding of humanity’s origins.

The genome is from a male who was likely in his late thirties when the historic Mount Vesuvius eruption occurred. The analyses suggest he is related to the diverse Imperial Roman population of the time, and that he may have suffered from spinal tuberculosis.

Fogel mined information from isotopes to explore modern and ancient ecosystems, climatic changes, and evolution.

The oldest DNA yet isolated from humans in Africa reveals long-range migrations around 50,000 years ago, which likely played a role in the Middle to Later Stone Age transition.

The Kenyan fossil finder is known for his discoveries of various Stone Age artifacts and ancient human skulls and skeletons.

Ancient and modern genomes reveal that a variant of the human growth hormone receptor likely helped our ancestors survive when food was scarce.

Researchers excavated human footprints out of a small bluff next to a dried-up playa lake and radiocarbon-dated embedded seeds to around 23,000 years ago. Their results suggest that people entered the Americas thousands of years earlier than the accepted estimate.

An analysis concludes that pigments were transported into the cave, and the marks were made with intention, though their ultimate meaning remains unknown.

A massive, well-preserved skull discovered in China in the 1930s belongs to a new species called Homo longi, researchers report, but experts remain skeptical about the evidence.

Impressions that ancient brains left in fossilized skulls reveal that the first human ancestors to migrate out of Africa had much more primitive brains than previously thought.

A new analysis of the hand of the 4.4-million-year-old partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus indicates that the human ancestor may have climbed and swung through trees like chimpanzees do.

Neanderthal DNA surprises in modern humans, the first blood test for Alzheimer’s, a discovery of new human salivary glands, and, oh yeah, a pandemic

An isotopic analysis of eggshell beads dating back more than 30,000 years indicates that they helped build networks that stretched for hundreds of kilometers.

The crania of individuals who lived in the Yucatán Peninsula during the late Pleistocene show a high degree of anatomical diversity among them, and their skull shapes differ from that of other North American populations of the time.

A new analysis of more than 2,500 human genomes indicates that modern Eurasians who acquired Neanderthal DNA during past interbreeding migrated back to Africa and spread those sequences.

Microbial species that are commonly associated with oral diseases in modern humans are unreliable proxies for determining tooth health status in ancient samples, a new study finds.

Archaeologists find ring-shaped objects made from grains at a site in Austria thought to date back to 960 BCE.