Ancient DNA is finally putting hard numbers on a mystery that has trailed humanity for millennia: when our most familiar ...

Cats were domesticated in North Africa, but spread to Europe only about 2,000 years ago. Earlier reports of “house” cats were ...

Africa has long been known as the cradle of humanity. Fossils, tools and genetics all point there. Yet the deeper story of how the first modern humans lived, moved and mixed has stayed blurry. Too ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Important, previously unrecognized genetic changes common to all ancient and modern Homo sapiens spread in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, a new study finds. After that, the same investigation ...

The oldest sediment DNA discovered so far comes from Greenland and is 2 million years old.

Researchers have reconstructed ancient human genomes from southernmost Africa, shedding new light on early human history in a region known for its rich archaeological past. The DNA of 13 individuals ...

In October 2015, scientists reconstructed the genome of a 4,500-year-old man who lived in Ethiopia. It was the first time that anyone had created a complete genetic snapshot of an African from an ...

A 4,500-year-old burial in Middle Egypt has reshaped what scientists know about ancient Egyptian origins. Inside a sealed ...

An ancient woman thought to have hailed from sub-Saharan Africa and therefore to have been the first known Black Briton actually had fairer skin and was from southern England, researchers using new ...

A faded label suggested the bones had been unearthed at the nearby Beachy Head cliffs sometime in the 1950s, though specific details of the original excavation had been lost to time. What followed was ...