June 16, 2016
Could early Homo pass the sniff test?
Like modern humans, early hominins walked upright and had opposable thumbs, but their faces were more ape-like, with flattened noses and …
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Human Evolution
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77 articles · Page 2 of 4
May 19, 2016
Ancient Indonesian tools made by mysterious inhabitants
The island of Sulawesi is one link in a chain of islands between mainland Asia and Australia, and was likely an important stepping stone in human …
May 13, 2016
Underwater archaeology reveals pre-Clovis people butchered mastodon in Florida
Following the discovery of stone tool artifacts uncovered near Clovis, N.M., in 1932, archaeologists have thought that the people who made the …
April 19, 2016
Humans evolved early to be more efficient sleepers
We humans spend about a third of our lives asleep. While that might sound like a lot, we require less sleep than most mammals. In a new study, …
April 18, 2016
China's Red Deer Cave people may have survived until the last ice age
In the 1980s, a collection of bones from very small hominids was excavated from a cave in southwestern China, alongside a number of bones from a …
January 8, 2016
Rising Star cave hominid walked its own way
After dozens of human-like fossils were discovered in a cave in South Africa last summer, they were declared distinct enough to be classified as …
December 23, 2015
South African cave system reveals new early human ancestor
The Rising Star Cave system, near Johannesburg, South Africa, has never been extensively explored because of its complexity and extremely narrow …
November 12, 2015
Human hands not most advanced
Compared to chimpanzees, our recent evolutionary cousins, humans have long thumbs relative to our fingers. This trait has endowed our ancestors …
November 2, 2015
Butchery or trampling? Controversy marks ancient animal bones
At some point in early human evolution, our ancestors began regularly hunting, butchering and consuming meat from large game, a protein- and …
October 27, 2015
Benchmarks: July 11, 1997: Neanderthal DNA unraveled
On July 11, 1997, six scientists announced they had sequenced DNA from a Neanderthal fossil. It was the first time anyone had analyzed the …
August 24, 2015
Earliest stone tools pre-date Homo
Tool making is thought to be one of the defining characteristics of the transition from apes to early man. Now, the discovery of a set of stone …
May 5, 2015
The new anthropology: From bones and stones to biology and behavior
Paleoanthropology has traditionally been a dusty science, with new discoveries usually involving bones, teeth and stone tools painstakingly …
January 5, 2015
Scientists sequence oldest modern human genome to date
A chance fossil find along a Russian river has provided researchers with the oldest genomic data ever sequenced from a modern human. The fossil, …
January 5, 2015
Ancient cave art discovered in Indonesia
Europe has long been thought to have been the home of the oldest art in the world — including a stash of cave paintings in northern Spain that …
December 9, 2014
Down to Earth With: Naomi Levin
Stable isotope geochemist Naomi Levin, a native New Yorker, says she could easily imagine alternate career paths that would have been more in …
December 9, 2014
Dating the demise of the Neanderthals
For a time, _Homo sapiens _and Neanderthals shared space in Europe, likely interacting and possibly interbreeding, but roughly 40,000 years ago …
October 3, 2014
Down to Earth With: Molecular biologist Sarah L. Anzick
In May 1968, when Sarah L. Anzick was 2 years old, the 12,600-year-old remains of a male toddler were discovered at the base of a bluff on her …
September 2, 2014
Out of Africa, time and again
There is widespread agreement among scientists based on fossil and geochemical evidence that modern humans evolved in Africa between 200,000 and …
June 19, 2014
Spanish cave reveals possible new Neanderthal ancestor
A trove of thousands of hominin fossils unearthed from a prolific cave in northern Spain is proving a boon for paleoanthropologists studying …
April 8, 2014
Fieldwork revises ice-free corridor hypothesis of human migration
The existence of an ice-free corridor through Canada during the climax of last glaciation, which allowed the first Americans to cross the Bering …
February 20, 2014
From boom to bust in Neolithic Europe
As agricultural practices spread from the Fertile Crescent across Europe, gradually expanding west and north starting about 8,500 years ago, they …
November 18, 2013
Science denialism: The problem that just won't go away
Editor's Note: Traditionally, EARTH has published a "highlights" or "year in review" issue at the end of the year. This year, we decided to try a …
October 30, 2013
Hydrological models locate ancient human migration routes
Archaeologists and geologists have long hypothesized that major river systems flowed north through the Sahara Desert about 100,000 years ago. …
October 17, 2013
Hominin skull discovery fuels debate about early human evolution
Hailed as a find for the ages, a rare skull of a 1.8-million-year-old human relative could provide answers to longstanding questions about the …