Human Evolution

Ancient people brought the crystals to the rock shelter.

Crystals Found in Kalahari Desert Challenge Assumptions About Where in Africa Human Culture Arose

The 105,000-year-old items may have held religious meaning

Hunter-gatherers in what is now Russia likely viewed the wooden sculpture as an artwork imbued with ritual significance.

This Wooden Sculpture Is Twice as Old as Stonehenge and the Pyramids

New findings about the 12,500-year-old Shigir Idol have major implications for the study of prehistory

Some of the marks seen on the woman's skull predated her death, while others were likely left by natural forces following her burial.

Archaeologists Solve Mystery of 5,600-Year-Old Skull Found in Italian Cave

Natural forces moved a Stone Age woman's bones through the cavern over time

A hallmark of our cognitive abilities is to be able to calculate and respond to future probabilities. We will have to adapt to this pandemic reality, but adaptation is something that humans are famously good at.

Why This Pandemic Won't Be the Last

Smithsonian biological anthropologist Sabrina Sholts says Covid-19 illustrates that what makes us human also makes us more vulnerable to global contagions

A statue of Charles Darwin sits in the Natural History Museum in London. The scientist's book 'Descent of Man' was published in 1871.

How Darwin's 'Descent of Man' Holds Up 150 Years After Publication

Questions still swirl around the author’s theories about sexual selection and the evolution of minds and morals

Artist's rendering of a prehistoric human playing the ancient conch instrument

Hear the Musical Sounds of an 18,000-Year-Old Giant Conch

The shell was played for the first time in millennia after being rediscovered in the collections of a French museum

The researchers determined that a right-handed craftsperson created the markings in a single session.

120,000-Year-Old Cattle Bone Carvings May Be World's Oldest Surviving Symbols

Archaeologists found the bone fragment—engraved with six lines—at a Paleolithic meeting site in Israel

These five skulls, which range from an approximately 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus on the left to an approximately 4,800-year-old Homo sapiens on the right, show changes in the size of the braincase, slope of the face and shape of the brow ridges over just less than half of human evolutionary history.

An Evolutionary Timeline of Homo Sapiens

Scientists share the findings that helped them pinpoint key moments in the rise of our species

This image diagrams the difference between human and chimpanzee models of thumb muscles, which the researchers used to study the evolution of thumb dexterity.

How Dexterous Thumbs May Have Helped Shape Evolution Two Million Years Ago

Fossils and biochemical models show tool-wielding hominins used their hands like we do today

An Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) at the Haus des Meeres in Vienna, Austria.

Australian Lungfish Has Biggest Genome Ever Sequenced

The air-breathing fish dethrones the Mexican axolotl for the title of largest known genome in the animal kingdom

A woman hugs her granddaughter. Some scientists believe child care from grandmothers influenced human evolution.

How Much Did Grandmothers Influence Human Evolution?

Scientists debate the evolutionary benefits of menopause

While fieldwork was postponed, scientists made discoveries studying fossil footprints, ancient apes, monkeys and hominins.

Ten New Things We Learned About Human Origins in 2020

Smithsonian’s archaeologist Ella Beaudoin and paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner reveal some of the year’s best findings in human origins studies

A map of Doggerland, which once connected Britain to mainland Europe

Study Rewrites History of Ancient Land Bridge Between Britain and Europe

New research suggests that climate change, not a tsunami, doomed the now-submerged territory of Doggerland

Charles Darwin in 1857, photograph by Maull and Fox

Two Darwin Notebooks Quietly Went Missing 20 Years Ago. Were They Stolen?

Staff at Cambridge University Libraries previously assumed that the papers had simply been misplaced in the vast collections

Compared to other P. robustus males recovered from a nearby cave system called Swartkrans, DNH 155 (pictured here) was much smaller and had more female-like characteristics.

Newly Unearthed Skull Reveals How Ancient Hominids Evolved to Survive a Changing Climate

"Paranthropus robustus" evolved sturdier skulls to be able to eat new, tough vegetation

When human men mated with Neanderthal women a hundred thousand years ago, Neanderthals inherited the human Y chromosome.

How Human Y Chromosomes Replaced Those of Neanderthals in a Quiet Genetic Takeover

When the two early human species mated, their genomes changed forever

Researchers identified seven prehistoric human footprints at Alathar, a dried-up lake bed in Saudi Arabia.

Human Footprints Found in Saudi Arabia May Be 120,000 Years Old

If confirmed, the footfalls would represent the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens' presence on the Arabian Peninsula

Archaeologists discovered these fossilized fragments of grass deep inside South Africa's Border Cave.

200,000-Year-Old Bedding Found in South Africa May Be World's Oldest

New study suggests ancient humans slept on layers of grass and ash, which was used to ward off insects

The charred shoulder blade of a young adult who was cremated in northern Israel some 9,000 years ago. The bone contains the embedded point of a flint projectile.

Humans in the Near East Cremated Their Dead 9,000 Years Ago

Archaeologists found the charred bones of a young adult in the ancient Israeli village of Beisamoun

Potential human ancestor Homo heidelbergensis used this 480,000-year-old bone hammer to create flint tools.

Europe's Oldest Bone Tools Hint at Early Hominin Sophistication

480,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis used hammers to fashion flint tools in what is now southern England

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