Stone obelisks stand tall in Aksum, Ethiopia. This city was once the capital of a kingdom spanning northeast Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
Shutterstock / Artist
45,000 years ago, people first started arriving in what’s known as Europe today. We thought a worsening ice age made them disappear – but it seems some lineages survived.
A new analysis of deep soil sediments accumulated in the mangroves of Pohnpei and Kosrae islands reveals a potentially different history of human arrival in this oceanic region.
Population growth fuels knowledge, leading to new technology and energy use, fueling more population growth.
Robert Essel/The Image Bank via Getty Images
The UN estimates the global population will pass 8 billion people on Nov. 15, 2022. From the Stone Age to today, here’s how things spiraled out of control.
A Neanderthal father and his daughter.
Tom Björklund
Ancient DNA from Neanderthal fossils in southern Siberia reveals a small community with close family ties – including a father and his teenage daughter.
An astonishing discovery from the oldest known grave in Southeast Asia has revised medical history – the previous known amputation surgery was just 7,000 years ago.
Stone-walled structures such as Driefontein often store information that’s not written down and are the only remaining resources to help understand local histories.
The original Dikika child skull (left), a 3D model produced with synchrotron scanning (middle), and a model corrected for distortion during fossilisation (right).
Gunz et al. (2020) / Science Advances.
Rainforests may have played far more of a role in shaping human evolution than previously thought.
In July 2017, new research was published that pushed the opening chapters of Australian history back to 65,000 years ago.
Marcella Cheng/The Conversation
When did Australia’s human history begin?
The Conversation, CC BY16.6 MB(download)
Today's episode of Essays On Air, the audio version of our Friday essay series, seeks to move beyond the view of ancient Australia as a timeless and traditional foundation story.
Digging in Traders Cave in the iconic Niah Caves archaeological complex. Darren Curnoe excavates while Roshan Peiris observes. (Photo: Mhd. S. Sauffi/Darren Curnoe)
Author provided
From the tropics of Borneo, Darren Curnoe posted a daily diary sharing his team’s dig to explore ancient cemeteries. Through two metres of clay, human bones and tools were discovered.
Tapping into ancient DNA can help us understand ancient humans’ movements and lives.
Illustration: Marlize Lombard, Maryna Steyn and Anders Högberg
Archaeology is not only about stones and bones: it is mainly about the people of the past. DNA is one way to get from the stones and the bones to the people and their stories.
World map of linguistic families / Wikimedia Commons
Ask any anthropologist what they do and they will find it hard to give you a direct answer. But it ultimately comes down to studying people and their culture.