Neanderthal hunting grounds in southern Siberia — the Charysh River valley, with Chagyrskaya Cave in the centre of the photo.
Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Neanderthals living in a cave in southern Siberia made distinctive stone tools that can be traced to their ancestral homeland in eastern Europe — an intercontinental journey of more than 3,000 km.
Skulls hold clues to intelligence. (Clockwise from left: Australopithecus, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee)
Roger Seymour
Evidence shows Native Americans in New England lived lightly on the land for thousands of years. It wasn’t until Europeans arrived that the landscape experienced major human impacts.
Monkeys frescoes in Akrotiri.
Thera Akrotiri Excavations
The destruction of a country’s historical and cultural heritage sites is a distressing byproduct of conflict, but there are now strategies in place to prevent it happening.
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
The site at Ngandong held the remains of the last known members of the ancient human species Homo erectus.
A survey of San ostrich eggshell beads - a common find at archaeological sites - paints a bigger picture of hunter-gatherers, herders and shifting cultural tradition.
This hunting scene, painted 44,000 years ago, is the oldest known work of representational art in the world.
Ratno Sardi
A recent cave art discovery in remote Indonesia is changing our understanding of the beginnings of art and the emergence of religious-like thinking in the early human story.
Through science, art and technology, we are able to reconstruct the faces of the dead based on their remains. The researcher who did this work for descendants in Sutherland explains the process.
Working out where Aboriginal remains came from will in take researchers from several disciplines working together.
Michael Westaway
People caught and died from plague long before it caused major epidemics like the Black Death in the middle ages. Could what scientists call cultural resistance be what kept the disease under control?
New research reveals remarkable evidence of a copper-mining bonanza in Wales that was so productive the metal reached France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden.
It is impossible to fully capture the landscape of the Flinders Ranges in one image. Spanning 400km, it is constantly changing.
Shutterstock
New research models how the Homo floresiensis species could have evolved its small size remarkably quickly while living on an isolated island.
Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos, by Joseph Lycett. New research suggests the assumption Aboriginal people lived in open vegetation sustained by fire is misplaced.
National Library of Australia
History has told us Aboriginal people in Tasmania almost exclusively occupied open plains. Revelations to the contrary could transform modern conservation.