Human Origins

Handprint from Maltravieso Cave in Caceres, Spain.

Project Is Making 3D Scans of Ancient Handprints

The Handpas Project is looking to unlock who made the prehistoric art and why

Vindija Cave in Croatia where some of the samples were collected

Scientists Extract DNA From Ancient Humans Out of Cave Dirt

The new technique promises to transform the study of the hominid family tree

The surface of mastodon bone showing half impact notch on a segment of femur.

Remarkable New Evidence for Human Activity in North America 130,000 Years Ago

Researchers say prehistoric mastodon bones bear human-made markings

Homo floresiensis

The "Hobbits" Could Be Much Older Than Once Thought

The Flores hobbits' ancestor may have ventured out of Africa much earlier than previously thought

In 1950, Tollund Man’s discoverers “found a face so fresh they could only suppose they had stumbled on a recent murder.”

Europe's Famed Bog Bodies Are Starting to Reveal Their Secrets

High-tech tools divulge new information about the mysterious and violent fates met by these corpses

Reconstruction of the Tham Lod woman who lived 13,600 years ago

Researchers Work to Take the Bias Out Of Facial Reconstruction

Instead of relying on European-centric data sets, researchers used a global database to help image a 13,600-year-old woman from Thailand

Computer-assisted reconstruction of the cavities

13,000-Year-Old Fillings Were “Drilled” With Stone and Packed With Tar

You can't handle the tooth

Don't worry: It's beef.

New Study Fleshes Out the Nutritional Value of Human Meat

The caloric value of the human body is surprisingly low compared to other prehistoric food options

Artifacts Found in Indonesian Cave Show Complexities of Ice Age Culture

Pendants and buttons as well as carvings suggest the inhabitants of Wallacea were as advanced as Europeans during the Ice Age

Paleo diet? Not so much. Thanks to Neanderthal dental plaque, researchers are getting a much better idea of what our ancestors actually dined on.

Scientists Delve Into Neanderthal Dental Plaque to Understand How They Lived and Ate

The plaque that coated Neanderthal teeth is shedding new light on how our ancestors ate, self-medicated and interacted with humans

The 38,000-year-old woolly mammoth carving next to Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte." Despite the vast amount of time between their respective creations, both use a collection of dots to form a larger image.

Prehistoric Pointillism? Long Before Seurat, Ancient Artists Chiseled Mammoths Out of Dots

Newly discovered 38,000-year-old cave art predates the French post-Impressionist art form

An artist's recreation of what the ancient creature looked like.

Bag-Like, Big-Mouthed Sea Creature Could Be Earliest Human Ancestor

This minute wriggly sea blob could represent some of the earliest steps along the path of evolution

The limestone carving of an aurochs

Dig This: Researchers Found a 38,000-Year-Old Engraving in France

Excavated from a rock shelter, the image of an aurochs covered in dots was made by the Aurignacians, the earliest group of modern humans in Europe

The horse mandible marked by traces of stone tools, which might prove humans came to North American 10,000 years earlier than previously believed.

Humans May Have Arrived in North America 10,000 Years Earlier Than We Thought

A 24,000-year-old horse jawbone is helping rewrite our understanding of human habitation on the continent

Mouse embryo growing rat heart cells

Human-Pig Chimeras Created for the First Time

The hybrid embryos are the first step in interspecies organ transplants

This piece of rock might have caught a Neanderthal's eye

Did Neanderthals Like Pretty Rocks?

An unusual rock in a cave inhabited by Neanderthals in Croatia suggests the hominids may have picked up interesting stones

A reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology.

Ötzi the Iceman's Last Meal Included Goat Bacon

Analysis of the 5,300-year-old mummy's stomach contents shows he ate dry-cured meat from a mountain ibex

Early stage human embryos

Second "Three-Parent" Baby Born. This Time, It's a Girl

The baby was produced through a controversial technique that requires implanting a fertilized nucleus into a donor egg

Skeleton of the Trojan woman

Remains From 800-Year-Old "Trojan Woman" Record Early Maternal Infection

Bacterial nodes on the skeleton and DNA from her fetus show the woman likely died from an infection of her placenta

Fossil Footprints Show Movements of Our Early Ancestors

The trace fossils found in Tanzania spurred a debate about how early hominids lived

Page 11 of 13