The last Neanderthals lived in Western Europe but disappeared within a few thousand years of the arrival of modern humans. The fact that we so rapidly replaced these archaic hominins has been used to ...

In 1857, the German anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen analyzed a human fossil with "an extraordinary form" that he had never seen before – not in "existing European stocks", he wrote, or "even in the ...

Language may feel like one of the most distinctly human things about you, but the genetic groundwork for it appears to be older than our own species. A new study from University of Iowa Health Care ...

A tiny set of ancient genetic “switches” may have played a surprisingly large role in making human language possible.

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. Among the many other human species that once inhabited ...

Most people today have a little Neanderthal DNA sprinkled through their genome. These genomic signals are the telltale signs that overlapping populations of ancient anatomically modern humans and ...

Prehistoric sexual proclivities helped to shape the human genome, according to a study 1 of genetic material from three female Neanderthal specimens. The analysis suggests that female Homo sapiens and ...

NEW YORK -- Humans and Neanderthals cozied up from time to time when they lived in the same areas tens of thousands of years ago. But we don't know much about who got with whom, or why. A new genetic ...