Humanity’s First Global Ancestor
THE UPDATE: Decades of fossil discoveries have illuminated our understanding of a deep-time human ancestral species that persisted and spread across the globe well more than one million years ago.
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Cover Stories
Scientists discover the earliest ancestral human face of Western Europe
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 today.
First burials: Neanderthal and Homo sapiens interactions in the Mid-Middle Palaeolithic Levant
The first-ever published research on Tinshemet Cave reveals that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the mid-Middle Paleolithic Levant not only coexisted but actively interacted, sharing technology, lifestyles, and burial customs.
Advanced radiocarbon dating pins down the chronology of the Lapedo Child
Part modern human, part Neanderthal, this child is now dated to about 28,000 years ago.
How Mesopotamia’s Urban and Industrial Revolution Started Politics as We Know It Today
Giorgio Buccellati’s At the Origins of Politics takes readers to the early stages of a process that became the structure of modern life.
The standardized production of bone tools by our ancestors pushed back one million years
The first Bronze Age settlement in the Maghreb
UB researcher leads discovery of great significance for the history of Africa and the Mediterranean.
Vesuvian ash cloud turned brain to glass
A super-heated ash cloud from Vesuvius turned a Roman citizen's brain to glass in Herculaneum in 79 AD.
Earliest evidence for humans in rainforests
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Other Stories
Research reveals ancient Maya lessons on surviving drought
Huge variety of plant foods made their starvation unlikely.
Nits on ancient mummies shed light on South American ancestry
New technique means head lice can provide clues about ancient people and migration.
Scientists digitally ‘unwrap’ mummy of pharaoh Amenhotep I for the first time in 3,000 years
Study shows that 21st dynasty restorers ‘lovingly restored’ mummy, dispelling theory that they were bent on reusing old royal burial equipment.
New dates for Viking trade
Solar flare throws light on ancient trade between the Islamic Middle East and the Viking Age.
Humans Reached Remote North Atlantic Islands Centuries Earlier Than Thought
Faroes Settled Well Before Vikings Arrived, Lake Sediments Show.
Mystery solved: Footprints from site A at Laetoli, Tanzania, are from early humans, not bears
Findings provide conclusive evidence that multiple species of hominins co-existed on the landscape.
Volcanic eruptions contributed to collapse of China dynasties
Eruptions create sulfuric acid clouds in the upper atmosphere and can cool the climate.
A Child of darkness
The first partial skull of a child of Homo naledi begins to give us insight into all stages of life of this remarkable species.
More than ceremonial, ancient Chaco Canyon was home, new study says
Early puebloans impacted the ecosystem around Chaco Canyon earlier than previously believed.
