To Shakespeare’s Hamlet we humans are “the paragon of animals”. But recent advances in genetics are suggesting that humans are far from being evolution’s greatest achievement. For example, humans have ...

What makes the human brain different from that of other primates has long been a question. A new study suggests that the ...

When scientists found the skull, named Yunxian 2, they assumed it belonged to an earlier ancestor of ours, Homo erectus, the ...

Stanford study finds rapid brain cell evolution boosted human cognition but lowered autism gene activity, raising ...

Volcanic eruptions are excellent timekeepers because they happen very quickly, geologically speaking. As hot magma erupts, it ...

Microbes supporting the production of more metabolic energy could be key to the evolution of large brains First study to show gut microbes from different animal species shape variations in their ...

What will humans be like generations from now in a world transformed by artificial intelligence (AI)? Plenty of thinkers have applied themselves to questions like this, considering how AI will alter ...

The story of how us humans—and other mammals—got our noses may have just gotten more complicated. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers from Japan who have studied how the face develops ...

Human societies have long depended on the division of labor to thrive—walk into any town, and you can probably find bakers baking bread, truck drivers driving that bread to market and grocers selling ...

John Gowlett receives funding from PAST Africa and Wenner-Gren Foundation, and his work has previously been supported by The Leverhulme Trust. He is associated with a new series of podcasts on human ...

How did humans become human? Understanding when, where and in what environmental conditions our early ancestors lived is central to solving the puzzle of human evolution. Subscribe to our newsletter ...