Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 ...

Newly sequenced ancient genomes from Yunnan, China, have shed new light on human prehistory in East Asia. In a study published in Science, a research team led by Prof. Fu Qiaomei at the Institute of ...

The question isn’t whether such tales are correct. Perhaps the clearest picture they produce is that our origins are complex enough that we can pick just about any guiding idea and find enough ...

An innovative technique used in a study of Neanderthal hearths—places where fires were created—has been described by researchers as a "major" development in archaeology, one that could help shed light ...

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. In The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession With Human Origins, the intellectual historian Stefanos Geroulanos, ...

In the summer of 1856, laborers at a limestone quarry near Düsseldorf were clearing mud and chert out of a cave when they turned up a fossilized skull. It was long and elliptical, with wide sinuses ...

We can all agree that most people want to know about their origins—spanning from their family and ancestral history and even, occasionally, deeper into the evolutionary story. Lately, this desire has ...

A glance at recorded history shows us that humans have “always” felt a need to explain phenomena perceived to exist beyond our comprehension. Today, we turn to science to seek answers to our questions ...

Geneticists from Trinity College Dublin, together with an international team of researchers, have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs – the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic ...