Human evolution is always fascinating so we’ve gone back through the year to find some of the best stories that reveal interesting insights into the way that we have evolved.
Australian dig shows signs of earliest human habitation
People began to venture into Australia’s arid interior around 49,000 years ago – 10,000 years earlier than previously thought – according to evidence from an excavation in South Australia. Read more
Credit: PHILIPPE PLAILLY / GETTY IMAGESWhy we have so few Neanderthal genes, even after interbreeding
Human evolution may not simply be a case of “survival of the fittest”, but also “survival of the many”, according to a genetic study of early human origins. Even though early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) interbred, the smaller population size of the latter meant many of their genetic traits were, over the millennia, weeded out. Read more
Credit: ROBBIE SHONE / GETTY IMAGESBeyond radiocarbon: how archaeologists date artefacts
Scratching around in a cave in the middle of nowhere, you find a bone. How do you find out if it’s the remains of an ancient animal that stomped the land tens of thousands of years ago or a discarded scrap from a cooking fire only a few hundred years back? An archaeologist’s staple is radiocarbon dating. Read more
Credit: AFP / Stringer / Getty ImagesStone age Aegean farmers brought agriculture to Europe
Archaeologists have debated for decades the origins of Europe’s earliest farmers but, thanks to genetics, we now have a definitive answer – around the Aegean Sea in what is now Greece and northwestern Turkey. Read more
Credit: MONSIGNOR RONALD ROYER / GETTY IMAGESA 6,000-year-old ‘telescope’ to watch the stars
Megalithic tombs could have been designed as ingenious tools to observe the faintest stars – effectively telescopes without lenses – astronomers in Britain suggest. They say the long, narrow entrance passageways of so-called passage graves, dating from around 6,000 years ago, are aligned to certain stars. Read more
Credit: ANUFirst people on Vanuatu and Tonga came from Taiwan
The first inhabitants of Vanuatu and Tonga came from East Asia and not from other parts of the Pacific as previously thought, a DNA study has shown. What is more, they arrived as relatively recently as 3,000 years ago, only mingling with Melanesians from Papua and other places at least 500 years later. Read more
Credit: AFP / Stringer / Getty ImagesThe Iceman weareth: Ötzi’s clothes were made of bear, deer and goat
The Tyrolean Iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, has revealed a great deal about the diet, tools, lifestyle, health and ancestry of humanity 5,300 years ago since his mummified body was discovered in the Italian Ötztal Alps in 1991. But they say clothes maketh the man – and now his threads are disclosing more information about life in the Copper Age. Read more
Credit: DE ROSSO / F D’ERRICOPaint points to sophisticated Stone Age ancestors
Ancient Africans used ochre for a wide range of purposes, from decorative or symbolic to purely functional, a study reveals. The findings indicate that people of the Middle Stone Age led lives of considerably greater complexity than previously assumed. Read more
Credit: PHILIPPE PLAILLY / GETTY IMAGESNeanderthals were broad and stocky from birth
Comparison of baby Neanderthal skeletons to modern humans suggest infants resembled robust adults. Read more
Credit: D. BAGAULT / C2RMFAncient amulet’s creative secrets uncovered with new technique
‘Full-field photoluminescence’ confirmed the 6,000-year-old artefact is the oldest known object made using the ‘lost wax’ method. Read more