Two-footed walking, large human brains and using stone tools are all examples of evolution.
SpicyTruffel/Shutterstock
Understanding our evolution can tell us a lot about the health challenges we face today.
Amber held high value in past human cultures, and it may have been lucrative to create fake beads for trade.
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Archaeologists have uncovered a 2,000-year-old amber bead scam. But humans have been making fake jewels and icons for much longer than that.
The dinosaur Ledumahadi mafube - reconstructed in this illustration - made headlines in 2018.
Viktor Radermacher
Five major finds this year adds to our understanding of evolution and ancient life history.
Paul Hudson/Flickr
Nimble-fingered Neanderthals went about their daily business in a similar way to modern humans.
The drawing found on silcrete stone in Blombos Cave.
Craig Foster
A new discovery adds to our existing understanding of Homo sapiens in Africa.
Oleg Znamenskiy/Shutterstock.com
Rainforests may have played far more of a role in shaping human evolution than previously thought.
We don’t have the full skeleton of a Denisovan so we don’t really know what they looked like.
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Ancient DNA in a 50,000+ year old bone tells us that two species of early humans did produce offspring together.
Necklaces and earrings in traditional Kenyan cultures denote messages about marriage and childbearing.
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Why is jewellery so important to the story of human evolution? Because it provides a public message – even to people we don’t know.
Rampasasa people are from Waemulu village, Flores – near Liang Bua where ‘the Hobbit’ fossils were discovered.
Dean Falk, Florida State University
Modern day people of short stature became physically small due to the effects of living on a small island or forested environment. But we’re not sure why “the Hobbit” of Flores was so small.
Homo sapiens evolved in the East African rift valley…but then what happened?
26781577@N07/flickr
A manifesto from 23 researchers challenges old models, and outlines the major new directions archaeology should follow to solve the puzzling origins of modern humans.
: Ian Cartwright/Michael Petraglia/Palaeodeserts Project
How we found the oldest human fossil ever discovered outside Africa and the Levant.
By about 320,000 years ago, humans in Kenya began using color pigments and manufacturing more sophisticated tools.
Human Origins Program, Smithsonian
Scientists have discovered sophisticated tools in Kenya that are much older than expected.
The Spinosaurus was just one example of a dinosaur that roamed Africa hundreds of millions of years ago.
By Mike Bowler from Canada (Spinosaurus) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
You might recognise Spinosaurus, from Jurassic Park 3, but did you realise it is 100% an African dinosaur?
Middle Palaeolithic artefacts emerged during excavation at Attirampakkam.
Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India
Modern humans could have left Africa shortly after evolving, making it to India in tens of thousands of years.
Fossilized teeth from a modern human who lived in Israel close to 200,000 years ago.
Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University
New discoveries are changing archaeologists’ ideas about the origins of our own species and our migration out of Africa. This fossil pushes Homo sapiens’ African exodus date back by 50,000 years.
The story of where we come from evolves almost every year.
Shutterstock/Eugenio Marongiu
The story of where humans come from is growing as new evidence – and new methods of analysis – emerge all the time.
The genetics of Indonesian people are a mix between different groups of humans.
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I try to learn who are the ancestors of Indonesian people through genetics. The genetics of Indonesian people are a mix between different groups of humans.
The pyramids of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.
Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.
Just like us, but different: recently-discovered Homo sapiens fossils have a modern face, but an ancient brain case.
Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig
New paired research papers have pushed back by 100,000 years the time frame in which humans (Homo sapiens) are thought to have lived in Africa.
Jean-Jacques Hublin, MPI-EVA, Leipzig
A researcher tells the story of how he and his team discovered the oldest Homo Sapiens fossil bones to date in Morocco.