Homo naledi had a brain less than half the size of our own. Yet the new research claims it had cognitive abilities far beyond what we might expect.
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Articles on Hominins
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This was an area in which early anatomically modern humans survived, evolved and thrived, before spreading out of Africa to other continents.
Signs of controlled fire use from Spain are at least 50,000 years older than previous evidence.
The findings suggest we weren’t the first advanced carnivore among the hominins, as has been previously assumed.
Africa’s large mammal heritage has formed a deep cultural legacy for all of humankind.
Almost all theories of human bipedalism explain it as a terrestrial adaptation. A new study does not support that view.
Ancient DNA helps reveal the tangled branches of the human family tree. Not only did our ancestors live alongside other human species, they mated with them, too.
Cutting-edge analysis of fossil ape teeth reveals ancient seasonal change in Africa, long before human ancestors appeared. The method will be crucial for the future study of early hominins.
The Earth has had at least five major ice ages, and humans showed up in time for the most recent one. In fact, we’re still in it.
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.
The fossil material was recovered from the surface of a tight, narrow passage that can only be accessed with difficulty by one person at a time.
What looks like a bright, sharp dividing line between humans and other animals is really an artefact of extinction.
The new work presents the oldest dated evidence for hominins in Arabia, in the form of an ancient handaxe tool uncovered from the Nefud Desert.
The 140,000-year-old skull fossils are leading to more questions than answers. Also found was the oldest intact campfire ever found in the open air.
It appears that the South African Cape south coast’s dunes and beaches formed a vast canvas of sand on which our ancestors could leave their mark.
The ancestors of modern-day people living on Southeast Asian islands likely interbred with a prehistoric species called Denisovans - raising the possibility of fresh and intriguing fossil discoveries.
Several theories have suggested either humans, climate change or both drove megafauna extinctions in Southeast Asia. Our newest work suggests otherwise.
The footprints of over 20 different prehistoric people, pressed into volcanic ash thousands of years ago in Tanzania, show possible evidence for sexual division of labor in this ancient community.
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.
Given that we know humans moved across these landscapes, we wondered whether there might also be evidence of other forms of human activity on these surfaces of sand.
Top contributors
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Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
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Deputy Director, Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University
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Associate Professor of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York
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Senior Researcher in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Director, Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University
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Paleoanthropologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Emeritus Research Professor of African Ecology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Professor, University of Wollongong
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Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences at the University of Bath, University of Bath
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Lecturer of Anthropology and Assistant Director of the Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
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Professor of Archaeological Theory and Method, University of Liverpool
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Associate Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University
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Professor in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution & Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University
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Ramón y Cajal (Senior) Research Fellow, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)
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CENIEH Director, Atapuerca Research Team and author of "Homo imperfectus" (Ed. Destino), Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)
