100,000-year-old Homo sapiens bones from Ethiopia may preserve earliest evidence of human cremation
Researchers studying Ethiopia’s Afar Rift have reported what could be the oldest known evidence of human cremation. The…
China scientists argue that harsh settings, not warm climates, drive early human creativity
Archaeologists in central China have directly challenged the long-held belief that humanity’s earliest ancestors reached their creative peak…
Scientists May Have Finally Figured Out Why Most People Are Right-Handed
Around 90% of people—across cultures and throughout recorded history—are right-handed. That fact may seem ordinary, yet it remains…
146,000-year-old Ice Age humans used advanced stone tools for butchery and survival
A new study from central China is changing how scientists think about creativity and survival among ancient humans.…
Neanderthal Babies Were Apparently Built Different and Reached Toddler Size in Only Six Months
AI-generated illustration of a Neanderthal toddler. Credit: ZME Science. When scientists examined the incredibly well-preserved skeleton of a…
A Hundred Thousand Years Ago, Humans and Neanderthals Built a Shared Culture in This Cave
Artistic depiction of an ancient Neanderthal around a campfire. Humans and Neanderthals not only coexisted and interbred, but…
Study: Ancient Mating Preferences, Not Natural Selection, Helped Shape Human Genome
Prehistoric humans and Neanderthals didn’t just interbreed, they did so with a consistent sex bias, as male Neanderthals…
60,000-year-old markings on ostrich eggs reveal oldest geometric grammar
Researchers have discovered and analyzed the world’s oldest geometric patterns on 60,000-year-old ostrich egg fragments, revealing the complex…
China’s Xigou Site Yields Evidence of Advanced Stone Tool Technology
Technological innovations in Africa and Western Europe in the later part of the Middle Pleistocene signal the behavioral…
Anthropologists Still Can’t Agree On The Answer
The chin is one of our most familiar features, yet scientists still debate why we evolved it. Here’s…
We Evolved Something Else Instead
Humans are the only primates that run nearly naked under the sun. Here’s how this biological tradeoff reshaped…
Enigmatic Hominins May Have Overlapped with Homo sapiens on Sulawesi
At Leang Bulu Bettue, a rock-shelter in the Maros-Pangkep karst region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, paleoanthropologists…