Listening to creationists can strengthen our understanding of evolution
Rather than castigate those who deny evolution, it is more useful to consider their arguments to help science explain it better
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Neanderthals
Displaying 1 - 20 of 21 articles
Decorated snail shell in a cave in Iraq could be evidence of Paleolithic bling
The early human 'Cockney pearly kings and queens'.
DNA dating: How molecular clocks are refining human evolution’s timeline
How do scientists figure out when evolutionary events – like species splitting away from a common ancestor – happened? It turns out our DNA is a kind of molecular clock, keeping time via genetic changes.
The daily life of a Neanderthal revealed from the gunk in their teeth
Neanderthals had a very varied diet based on what foods were available to them where they lived. They also knew what to eat when they were sick.
Why are most people right handed? The answer may be in the mouths of our ancestors
The way early humans learned to handle food could explain why the majority of people today are right handed.
Why this spot on the Jersey coast was like a magnet for Neanderthals
Excavations have shown that early humans were frequent visitors to the same coastal area over tens of thousands of years.
Revealed: the ancient genetic link between chimpanzees and bonobos
The two species mated 500,000 years ago, leaving a genetic mark to this day. This knowledge could help save them from extinction.
Genetic studies reveal diversity of early human populations – and pin down when we left Africa
New research into how early humans spread across the world settles several long-running debates.
How the origin of the KhoiSan tells us that ‘race’ has no place in human ancestry
Human population groups worldwide are highly homogeneous genetically. They are in fact 99.5% similar and their anatomical features vary in an uncorrelated fashion over the landscape.
Here’s how genetics helped crack the history of human migration
Humans evolved in Africa, spread across the world, and then it gets messy. Luckily advances in genetic sequencing have helped us track the complex history of human migration.
Bone suggests ‘Red Deer Cave people’ a mysterious species of human
A new study is rewriting our understanding of archaic humans and how they may have interacted with early humans.
Our fossil find suggests humans spread to Asia way before they got to Europe
New find shows we may have been underestimating the Neanderthals.
Making sense of our evolution
The science about our special senses - vision, smell, hearing and taste - offers fascinating and unique perspectives on our evolution. Yet it remains patchy; we know surprisingly little for example about…
Marks on an ancient shell lead to a re-think of human history
Zig-zag markings have been discovered on a shell found at Trinil in Java that dates back to between 430,000 and 540,000 years ago, from the site where the original specimens of Homo erectus were found…
Ancient DNA sheds light on the origin of Europeans
Much of the evidence of where the first Europeans came from was originally derived from comparisons of skulls but our work looking at ancient DNA is revealing new insight, with results published this month…
Ancient human bone reveals when we bred with Neanderthals
When a human bone was found on a gravelly riverbank by a bone-carver who was searching for mammoth ivory, little did he know it would provide the oldest modern-human genome yet sequenced. The anatomically…
Is that rock hashtag really the first evidence of Neanderthal art?
There has been much excitement over recent reports that something found in a cave in Gibraltar is the first known example of Neanderthal art. But what exactly has been found, can it be believed and, if…
Early humans lived with Neanderthal neighbours
A new study has dated the final days of the Neanderthals and found they lived at the same time as the earliest modern humans in Europe. Rather than seeing Neanderthals suddenly vanish at the time modern…
What the crap? Neanderthals had a taste for vegetables
The evolution of diet is intimately linked to human evolution: from the use of tools to break nuts, collect insects or hunt game, to the use of fire allowing more calories to be extracted from the food…
Chew on this: Neanderthal jaws evolved before brains
Ancient remains have confirmed that the face and jaw evolved before the rest of the skull in Neanderthals and early human…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor, University of New South Wales Sydney, and Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW
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Emeritus Professor, School of Humanities, University of New England
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Research Associate in Statistical Genomics, University of Oxford
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Professor of Bioanthropology, Australian National University
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Research Officer, Radiocarbon Facility, Australian National University
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Director, Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, University of Adelaide
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Postdoctoral researcher in genetics, University of Leicester
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Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University
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Senior Research Fellow, Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University
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ARC Future Fellow, University of Adelaide
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Principal Research Associate, UCL
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Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Griffith University
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Lecturer Anthropology, UCL
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Honorary Professor, UCL
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Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town
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