Archaeology
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Ancient 'telescope' to watch the stars
Passages to ancient tombs designed to make stars clear.
Megalithic tombs could have been designed as ingenious tools to observe the faintest stars – effectively telescopes w...
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Agriculture brought to Europe by farmers
DNA analysis has finally settled decades of archaeological debate.
Archaeologists have debated for decades the origins of Europe’s earliest farmers but, thanks to genetics, we now have...
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Madagascar's history of colonisation
Evidence that Southeast Asian settlers colonised African island.
A huge mystery of human history may have been solved, thanks to ancient cooking scraps. Alison Crowther from The Uni...
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Neanderthals were broad and stocky from birth
Neanderthal skeletons suggest infants resembled robust adults.
Neanderthal infants' skeletons were wide and stocky, just like Neanderthal adults, a new study suggests. A team of r...
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Recipe for 5,000-year-old Chinese beer unearthed
Amber liquid was a social lubricant all those millennia ago.
It’s not quite the simple German recipe of hops, barley, water and yeast, but 5,000-year-old Chinese beer comes close...
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DNA study builds picture of Ice Age Europeans
Genome shows population movements due to climate.
The fates of ice age human groups in Europe were closely linked to climate change, according to an unprecedented stud...
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Neanderthal fertility problems
Y chromosome of Neanderthals linked to fertility problems.
While our genome harbours a smattering of Neanderthal DNA, the Y chromosome – a human sex-determining chromosome – do...
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The hobbit's life story, rewritten
Excavations place the “hobbit” much earlier in hominin history.
The tiny human ancestor Homo floresiensis – better known as the "hobbit" – may have disappeared much earlier than fir...
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How tools overcame the chore of chewing
Ancient eating practice that gave the body optimal energy.
As early humans became bigger and brainier they required a lot more energy – and therefore food – to live. So why did...
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A simple rule for our ancestors' molar size
A single tooth informs us about one of our oldest relatives.
The size of whole row of teeth from our most ancient hominin ancestors can be gleaned from a single tooth, according ...
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Destruction of Easter Island
Tools left over from wars that destroyed Rapa Nui civilisation.
For decades we have been told that the Rapa Nui, the people who lived on Easter Island in the South Pacific, committe...
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Humans and Neanderthals
An affair that began 100,000 years ago.
Modern humans' love affair with Neanderthals stretches back far longer than we thought, with a genetic analysis showi...