How Stone Tools, Fire, and Language Paved the Highway to Artificial Intelligence
Each leap in human communication—from vocal anatomy to writing to digital networks—followed the same pattern: faster, more complex, less individual.
Paranthropus and the Greatest Whodunit of All Time
Our robust Paranthropus cousins thrived in Africa for a million and a half years, making stone tools and sharing the landscape with different Homo species at the dawn of...
Archeologists Join Geologists in the Quest to Define the Age of Humans
A new archeology is being developed based on evidence of human activity in the Earth’s sedimentary record, and archeologists are helping to define the Anthropocene as a new stage...
What Was It Like for Our Sapiens Ancestors to Meet and Mix With Cousin Species?
Between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago in Eurasia, the disappearance of hominin species or their biocultural assimilation with anatomically modern humans is one of the biggest questions in prehistory...
Digging Up the Roots of Human Culture
What led humans on the unique path of cultural development? And can we do anything useful with newly reconstructed histories of this process?
Keys to Building Human Bridges to the Past
Human technologies have continued to evolve exponentially since the end of the Paleolithic: today we are using them to learn more about the past.
Finding the Roots of Religion in Human Prehistory
In a world so profoundly transformed by science and technology, it seems reasonable to ask: Why do religions still exist?
Why Culture Is Not the Only Tool for Defining Homo sapiens in Relation to Other Hominins
We need a broad comparative lens to produce useful explanations and narratives of our origins across time.
