Human Origins

The bone fragment from four different angles, with a white scale bar representing one centimeter. The flat side of the bone contains puncture marks that suggest it was a punch board used for tailoring hides.

This 39,600-Year-Old Bone May Have Been Used by Prehistoric Tailors

New research suggests early Homo sapiens punched holes in leather hides to create seams for clothing

Participating in an archaeology experiment, a contemporary woman dons fur clothing similar to what Paleolithic people in colder climates might have worn.

When Did Clothing Originate?

An archaeologist traces the invention and evolution of apparel using climate data and tailoring tools

Large land snails are rich in nutrients and can weigh up to about two pounds.

Humans May Have Eaten Giant Snails 170,000 Years Ago

Shell fragments from a cave in southern Africa show signs of exposure to extreme heat, suggesting they were cooked

A fossil hippo skeleton and associated Oldowan artifacts were exposed at the Nyayanga site.

Who Made the First Stone Tool Kits?

A nearly three-million-year-old butchering site packed with animal bones, stone implements and molars from our early ancestors reignites the debate

A new study shows that Neanderthals in southern Portugal cooked and ate crabs.

Neanderthals Dined on Crab 90,000 Years Ago

Pieces of shells in a Portuguese cave suggest the early humans cooked and ate crustaceans, according to a new study

A team led by Laurits Skov and Benjamin Peter from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology sequenced nuclear, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA of 13 Neanderthal individuals. From these sequences, they determined that two of the Neanderthals represent a father-daughter pair and that another two are cousins.

Fourteen Discoveries Made About Human Evolution in 2022

Smithsonian paleoanthropologists reveal the year’s most riveting findings about our close relatives and ancestors

A high-ranking adult male chimpanzee rests in the dry and open woodland vegetation that dominates the Issa Valley savanna-mosaic habitat.

Human Ancestors May Have Evolved to Walk Upright in Trees

Research on wild chimpanzees suggests searching for food in tree branches drove bipedalism

A cannibalized face dated to the 15th century B.C.E. The remains were found in Gough's Cave, the same site as some of the remains analyzed in the new study. 

Prehistoric DNA Reveals Two Groups Migrated to the U.K. After the Last Ice Age

The bones of two individuals found in caves helped scientists determine their ancestry

An illustration of a Neanderthal father and his daughter

Cool Finds

Ancient DNA Reveals the First Known Neanderthal Family

The lived with a small community in a Siberian cave some 54,000 years ago

Two Hadza men in Tanzania carry bows and their catch.

Our Ancestors Ate a Paleo Diet, With Carbs

A modern hunter-gatherer group known as the Hadza has taught researchers surprising things about the highly variable menu consumed by humans past

Svante Pääbo poses with a model of a Neanderthal skeleton after winning the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Svante Pääbo Wins Nobel Prize for Unraveling the Mysteries of Neanderthal DNA

The Swedish geneticist used 40,000-year-old bones to sequence the early humans' genome

Skull of a Neanderthal, or Homo neanderthalensis

What's the Difference Between a Human and Neanderthal Brain?

One small variation in DNA may have helped Homo sapiens out-compete our ancient relatives

Sahelanthropus likely walked on the ground and used all its limbs to move around in trees.

Seven Million Years Ago, the Oldest Known Early Human Was Already Walking

Analysis of a femur fossil indicates that a key species could already move somewhat like us

A footprint discovered on an archaeological site is marked with a pin flag on the Utah Test and Training Range, July 18, 2022.

Archaeologists Find 12,000-Year-Old Human Footprints in Utah

The 88 individual footprints were were discovered on a remote desert Air Force training site that was once a wetland

Roughly two million years old, this tool, known as the Kanjera stone, was part of a new Stone Age technology that helped make better-fed, smarter hominins.
 

This Is the Oldest Human-Made Object in the Smithsonian Collections

Roughly two million years ago, simple items like the Kanjera tool sparked a revolution in the way humans lived

Replica plaquettes were placed next to a fire to see how ambient light made stone carvings of animals appear to move.

Ice Age Artists May Have Used Firelight to Animate Carvings

Researchers examined 15,000-year-old stone art and suggest the makers were inspired to show movement by dynamic lighting of the fireside environment

Homo heidelbergensis, a species whose skull is pictured here, likely lived in regions that overlapped with Neanderthals in Europe and Homo sapiens in Africa—according to climate modeling results released this week.

How Did Climate Change Affect Ancient Humans?

Sophisticated climate models were paired with evidence from the archaeological record to reveal where ancient humans may have lived and evolved

Using human genomes, researchers have developed a massive family tree identifying nearly 27 million ancestors dating back more than 100,000 years ago. 

New Research

Largest Human Family Tree Identifies Nearly 27 Million Ancestors

Researchers create massive genealogical network dating back 100,000 years

One reader wonders if European modernists thought of the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe as a remarkable artist.
 

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Was Georgia O'Keeffe's Genius Appreciated Outside of America? And More Questions From Our Readers

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Neronian points found in Grotte Mandrin

Discovery of Ancient Baby Tooth Places Humans in Western Europe 10,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

The archeologists also uncovered a number of Neanderthal artifacts suggesting the two species coexisted in the area

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