Human Origins

You may give them little thought beyond when to trim them or which nail color to apply. But the humble nail laid the groundwork for our evolution into the humans we are today.

An entirely new lineage of the mysterious human relatives called Denisovans has been discovered.

Our extinct cousins have a lousy reputation that's being overturned by new discoveries.

The brain of a very old human ancestor looks a lot like an ape's and a little like a human's.

The shape of your brain may say a lot about the Neanderthal in you.

Following an epic 20-year-long excavation in South Africa, researchers have finally recovered and cleaned the nearly-complete skeleton of an ancient human relative.

Way more sex happened between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans across Europe and Asia than scientists originally thought, a new study finds.

A long bone unearthed in Denisova Cave in Siberia is providing new proof that Denisovans and Neanderthals mated.

Finally, there's proof that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred.

A new discovery suggests that human ancestors left Africa roughly 10,000 generations earlier than experts thought.

The DNA samples come from one of the most ancient cemeteries in the world.

The mysterious extinct human lineage known as the Denisovans may have interbred with modern humans in at least two separate waves, a new study finds.

The oldest fossils of modern humans outside Africa have been discovered in Israel.

Ancient stone tools that may be nearly 2 million years old have been unearthed in Saudi Arabia, providing clues to help determine when ancient hominins dispersed from Africa.

Neanderthal DNA could influence your skin tone, hair color, sleep patterns, mood and even smoking behavior, a new study finds.

The newly sequenced genome of a female Neanderthal is revealing that our relatives may have passed on genes that today are linked to cholesterol levels, arthritis and other diseases.