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.
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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.
New research suggests humans spread to Europe at least 50,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Long-standing assumption that humans killed large mammals 4.5m years ago has been debunked by researchers -- but some experts still think humans played a part in the demise of biodiversity
New studies reveal when the Denisovans and their Neanderthal cousins occupied a cave in southern Siberia. It's the only site known to have been inhabited by them and by modern humans.
Ancient stone tools found in what is now Algeria show early humans likely spread across Africa more rapidly than first thought.
South Africa's fossils can step out of the shadows of being undated and undateable.
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.
Recent research suggests that humankind's origins lay outside of Africa. This is the nature of science: a paradigm that cannot be questioned on a regular basis becomes a dogma.
The theory that humankind originated in Europe is an old one. It was abandoned in 1924 when the first Australopithecus was discovered in South Africa.
Evidence of Homo naledi's age suggests we need to rethink our understanding of human history and evolution.
Cancer is a deadly disease and would have been particularly lethal before the recent development of effective treatments. So why didn’t it – or our susceptibility to it – die out long ago?
Beyond the cool factor of figuring out hominin hearing capacities two million years ago, these findings could help answer the tantalizing question of when did human vocalized language first emerge.
Top contributors
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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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Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
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Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), University of Wollongong
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Professor, University of Wollongong
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Richard Gunderman is a Friend of The Conversation.
Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University
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Paleoanthropologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Professor of Archaeological Theory and Method, University of Liverpool
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Ramón y Cajal (Senior) Research Fellow, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)
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Senior lecturer, University of Cape Town
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Associate professor, University of Wollongong
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Arqueólogo y profesor, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH)
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Research Associate, University of Oxford
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Associate Professor in Palaeoanthropology, University of Oxford
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Banting Postdoctoral Fellow and Adjunct Professor, University of Alberta
