Africa has long been known as the cradle of humanity. Fossils, tools and genetics all point there. Yet the deeper story of ...

The first complete genetic portrait of a so‑called “last Neanderthal” is forcing scientists to redraw the map of our origins, from who we met to how we survived. Instead of a simple story of ...

New research reveals ancient humans in southern Africa lived in isolation for nearly 100,000 years. This led to unique ...

Learn how genomes from 28 ancient individuals show that Homo sapiens lived in southern Africa in near isolation for hundreds ...

Two genomes from 7,000 years ago found in the Takarkori rock shelter reveal a lost lineage from North Africa in the Green Sahara.

Sediment DNA also traces life outside the cave. Predators dragged prey into sheltered chambers, humans left waste behind. By ...

Two 7,000-year-old mummies found in Libya reveal an isolated North African lineage and rewrite the genetic history of the ...

In the past twenty years, major technological advances in extracting and analyzing DNA have transformed the ability to ...

Scientists have long debated how modern humans evolved. For decades, most researchers agreed that Homo sapiens came from one ancestral group in Africa, dating back 200,000 to 300,000 years. But new ...

The study of ancient DNA has revolutionised our understanding of human history, enabling scientists to decipher complex population dynamics over tens of thousands of years. By analysing genetic ...

The moment a creature dies, its DNA begins to break down. Half of it degrades every 521 years on average. By about 6.8 million years, even under ideal preservation conditions in cold, stable ...

Scientists have decoded the world’s oldest human DNA sequence, beating the previous record by almost 300,000 years, and at the same time confusing what we know of our early relatives. Published in ...