In a first, scientists recovered human DNA from ancient cave paintings, a breakthrough that could open new ways to investigate prehistoric human activity by enabling caves to act as “genetic ...

Stable isotope methods play a key role in reconstructing important issues such as ancient human diet, migration, the origin and domestication of plants and ...

Ancient human footprints found at White Sands in New Mexico have gained fresh support from a new scientific study. Published inScience Advances, the research backs up earlier findings that placed ...

Scientists have found new evidence for how our fossil human relatives in South Africa may have used their hands. Researchers investigated variation in finger bone morphology to determine that South ...

The study of ancient DNA provides valuable insights into human history, including how ancient populations migrated and merged with each other. But discoveries drawn from this ancient genetic data can ...

For years, the common belief among scientists was that human evolution had basically slowed to a crawl once we invented ...

Newly sequenced ancient genomes from Yunnan, China, have shed new light on human prehistory in East Asia. In a study published in Science, a research team led by Prof. Fu Qiaomei at the Institute of ...

A new study led by Alexandra Morton-Hayward explains how low-oxygen burial conditions lead to human brain preservation for thousands of years.

For decades, small grooves on ancient human teeth were thought to be evidence of deliberate tool use—people cleaning their teeth with sticks or fibers, or easing gum pain with makeshift "toothpicks." ...

An international team of cave explorers has shown that cave walls and the prehistoric rock art that adorns them can preserve human DNA for thousands of years.

Oldowan stone tools made from a variety of raw materials sourced more than 6 miles away from where they were found in southwestern Kenya. The development of the Oldowan toolkit made it possible for ...