Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia; David W. Zeanah, California State University, Sacramento; Fiona Hook, The University of Western Australia; Kane Ditchfield, The University of Western Australia, and Peter Kendrick, The University of Western Australia
Barrow Island off the coast of Western Australia holds a unique record of First Nations people. For millennia, they lived on vast plains that are now drowned by the sea.
A close look at 7,000-year-old grinding stones left in ancient firepits shows wandering herders in northern Saudi Arabia carried heavy tools for working on bones, plants and rocks.
A forensic technique more often used at modern crime scenes identified blood residue from large extinct animals on spearpoints and stone tools used by people who lived in the Carolinas millennia ago.
Shared designs for stone tools across southern Africa show early humans had wide social connections before beginning to migrate to the rest of the world.
Stone artifacts and a fossil tooth point to Homo sapiens living at Grotte Mandrin 54,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals were still living in Europe.
Knowing that our North African ancestors were making handaxes helps scientists to understand how our human ancestors spread across the African continent.
Combining evidence from archaeology, geochronology and paleoenvironmental science, researchers identified how ancient humans by Lake Malawi were the first to substantially modify their environment.
A new environmental record for a prehistoric site in Kenya helped researchers figure out how external conditions influenced which of our ancient ancestors lived there, with what way of life.
Archaeological discoveries in a jungle cave in central Indonesia suggest humans arrived there 18,000 years ago and decided to stay a while, hunting in the jungle and building canoes.
Capuchin monkeys in Brazil use big stones to crush the shells of nuts they want to eat. An experiment in the field investigated how these monkeys prepare to use new, unfamiliar tools.