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Skull of a man with multiple lesions on the side, probably caused by a club.

Opinion: Finding a hunter-gatherer massacre scene that may change history of human warfare

19 Jan 2016

Marta Mirazon Lahr (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies) discusses the discovery, made by her and her team, of the oldest known case of...

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‘Virtual fossil’ reveals last common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals

18 Dec 2015

New digital techniques have allowed researchers to predict structural evolution of the skull in the lineage of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, in an...

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Archaeologists outside the entrance to the Mota cave in the Ethiopian highlands, where the remains containing the ancient genome were discovered.

Ancient genome from Africa sequenced for the first time

08 Oct 2015

DNA from 4,500-year-old Ethiopian skull reveals a large migratory wave of West Eurasians into the Horn of Africa around 3,000 years ago had a genetic...

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Oronsay

What limpets can tell us about life on Mesolithic Oronsay

19 Aug 2015

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, L is for...

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Running

Distance running may be an evolutionary ‘signal’ for desirable male genes

08 Apr 2015

New research shows that males with higher ‘reproductive potential’ are better distance runners. This may have been used by females as a reliable...

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Cast of the 'Nariokotome boy' (Homo ergaster) skeleton

Earliest humans had diverse range of body types, just as we do today

27 Mar 2015

New research harnessing fragmentary fossils suggests our genus has come in different shapes and sizes since its origins over two million years ago...

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Left: A view across a valley in the Messak landscape. Right: A Levallois core, a distinctive type of Middle Stone Age stone tool, recovered on the surface of the Messak

Saharan 'carpet of tools' is the earliest known man-made landscape

11 Mar 2015

Researchers used the new survey of the Messak Settafet to estimate that enough stone tools were discarded over the course of human evolution in...

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Hunter-gatherer bone mass (left) compared with agriculturalist bone mass (right)

Hunter-gatherer past shows our fragile bones result from physical inactivity since invention of farming

22 Dec 2014

Latest analysis of prehistoric bones show there is no anatomical reason why a person born today could not develop the skeletal strength of a...

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Kosenki fossil skull, and and illustration of the Kosteni find

Ancient DNA shows earliest European genomes weathered the ice age, and shines new light on Neanderthal interbreeding and a mystery human lineage

06 Nov 2014

A genome taken from a 36,000 year old skeleton reveals an early divergence of Eurasians once they had left Africa, and allows scientists to better...

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