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Human Evolution
The human brain is only the latest chapter in the ancient story of thinking on Earth.
As always, aDNA research raises as many questions as answers.
The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora is one of the reasons why Bryan Walsh sees supervolcanoes as the” single, biggest threat to the human race.”
Planet Earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years, but humans? For 99.998% of our planet's history, humans were nowhere to be found.
Was this a moment when humans interbred with Neanderthals?
After it became clear that the world wasn't 6,000 years old, some proposed that northern peoples had emerged independently from others.
A new analysis of an ancient hominin fossil sheds light on the "Out of Africa" dispersal events that occurred more than one million years ago.
Dating of volcanic ash suggests the remains are at least 230,000 years old.
We are generally taught that there is an arc of history — an inevitable path of progress that leads to modern society. Maybe it isn't true.
Many key inventions were unique: one-offs.
Bears, chimps, or humans? A track of five poorly preserved footsteps at Laetoli has puzzled paleontologists for decades. Now, a research paper from Nature claims to have solved the mystery.
Today, every Homo species is extinct besides humans. But one of our close evolutionary relatives still lives on in our DNA.
The human brain makes a striking deviation from the normal building plan.
An evolutionary biologist explains why you probably won't grow a tail.
Society-changing ideas form through a three-stage process, argues author Michael Bhaskar.
Fittingly, the skull was found in the Rising Star cave of South Africa, itself located at a site known to UNESCO as the Cradle of Mankind.
Most of us will never run a 4 minute mile. But on a bicycle, almost anyone can do it. As human beings, we often take for granted how our bodies work. […]
The history of the Universe is forever imprinted in our own bodies. We can learn a lot about the history of the Universe just by looking at each of our own […]
The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events. By the time our planet was four billion years old, the rise of large plants and animals […]
The history of life on Earth took many meandering turns before it gave rise to us. When Earth first formed, all the raw ingredients for life — atoms, molecules, a potentially habitable planet […]
Who should sit atop the iron throne? Let your DNA decide. Here on Earth, we hold one important truth to be self-evident above all others: that all humans are created equal. […]