At some point in our evolutionary history, our ancestors made the leap from primitive hominins to sophisticated modern humans, though anthropologists have yet to agree on when this happened. For some, ...

Modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor, lived side by side in parts of Eurasia, and even had children together, yet their faces ended up strikingly different. The contrast between our ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A series of lower jaws from North Africa demonstrates variation among hominin fossils. The jaw on ...

Denisovans, a mysterious human relative, left behind far more than a handful of fossils—they left genetic fingerprints in modern humans across the globe. Multiple interbreeding events with distinct ...

Many people today simply assume that our evolution has quietly ended with the development of the modern human. It's easy to think that medicine, science, and modern living have made us "perfect" or ...

The original evolution of hominins (modern humans and their evolutionary ancestors since the split with other great apes) took place in Africa about 7 million years ago, based on the fossil record.

We think of lead poisoning as just damaging, but a new study suggests that periodic lead exposure might have given our ancient ancestors an advantage over Neanderthals. Researchers analyzed 51 ...

Researchers studied ancient tooth fossils and found that a gene mutation in modern humans (right) better protected them against lead and gave them an advantage over Neanderthals (left). Kyle Dykes / ...

(CNN) — Modern humans are evolutionary survivors, thriving generation after generation while our ancient relatives died out. Now, new research into our brain chemistry suggests that an enzyme unique ...

The human genome is a rich, complex record of migration, encounters, and inheritance written over thousands of millennia. Genomic research by members of Sarah Tishkoff's lab at the University of ...

Outlining the problem / P. A. Mellars, M. J. Aitken and C. B. Stringer -- Uranium-series dating and the origin of modern man / Henry P. Schwarcz -- Luminescence dating relevant to human origins / M. J ...

It's easy to take for granted that with the flick of a lighter or the turn of a furnace knob, modern humans can conjure flames — cooking food, lighting candles or warming homes. For much of our ...