Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. If I tried to recap all the new fossils, new methods and ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...

What made humans behave differently to their closest relatives? Researchers have long sought an answer in a handful of genetic differences between Homo sapiens and our close relatives the Neanderthals ...

He lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, eking out an existence in what is today central China. Sporting a squat neck and a big brain, he likely wielded tools made of stone and hunted or scavenged ...

Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the ...

This has been quite the wild year in human evolution stories. Our relatives, living and extinct, got a lot of attention—from new developments in ape cognition to an expanded perspective of a ...

A composite view of the Earth constructed by NASA from multiple satellite images Editor at Large Human evolution is a story writ slow. It’s been about 3.8 billion years since life on Earth emerged and ...