Human Origins

Today's humans carry the genes of an ancient, unknown ancestor, left there by hominin species intermingling perhaps a million years ago.

This weird locomotion has never been seen until now.

Using genetic data from 1,200 modern indigenous Africans, researchers believe they’ve pinpointed the location of the first permanent human settlement, which thrived 200,000 years ago.

The diminutive size of the extinct human relative called the Hobbit, or Homo floresiensis, could come down to really fast evolution.

Foot calluses have evolved to protect the feet and provide comfort in perhaps ways that shoes can't match, a new study says.

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.