Opinion: No giant leap for mankind: why we’ve been looking at human evolution in the wrong way
14 June 2016Robert Foley (Department of Archaeology and Anthropology) discusses the cumulative processes by which we became human.
Tool use is 'innate' in chimpanzees but not bonobos, their closest evolutionary relative
16 June 2015First evidence for a species difference in the innate predisposition for tool use in our closest evolutionary cousins could provide insight into how humans became the ultimate tool-using ape.
Saharan 'carpet of tools' is the earliest known man-made landscape
11 March 2015Researchers used the new survey of the Messak Settafet to estimate that enough stone tools were discarded over the course of human evolution in Africa to build more than one Great Pyramid for every square kilometre of land on the continent.
Opportunity, and not necessity, is the mother of invention
12 November 2014When food is scarce, tool use among non-human primates does not increase. This counterintuitive finding leads researchers to suggest that the driving force behind tool use is ecological opportunity – and that the environment shapes development of culture.
Chimpanzees have favourite ‘tool set’ for hunting staple food of army ants
16 October 2014New research shows that chimpanzees search for the right tools from a key plant species when preparing to ‘ant dip’ - a crafty technique enabling them to feast on army ants without getting bitten. The study shows that army ants are not a poor substitute for preferred foods, but a staple part of chimpanzee diets.
They weren’t wimps: how modern humans, like Neanderthals, braved the northern cold
23 September 2014Recent finds at Willendorf in Austria reveal that modern humans were living in cool steppe-like conditions some 43,500 years ago – and that their presence overlapped with that of Neanderthals for far longer than we thought.
The thinking hominid
01 February 2008The discovery in southern India of a well-preserved quarry dating from a million years ago is helping researchers to answer: how intelligent were our ancestors?
