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human evolution
12 stories · all stories
Why Are We the Last Humans on Earth? The Extinction of Our Ancestors
For most of history, multiple human species coexisted on Earth. We examine why they vanished shortly after Homo sapiens arrived and how their DNA lives in us.
The Prehistoric Weapons That Defied Physics
Did early humans rely on simple clubs and rocks? Discover the physics of prehistoric weapons: from biconical sling bullets optimized like modern ballistic shells, to 30,0
Your Brain Was Built for the Hunt, Not the 8-Hour Workday
The 3 p.m. crash isn't a personal failure, it's an evolutionary mismatch. Why a brain shaped for short bursts of focus and real recovery struggles with the continuous 8-h
The First Dog: How an Ice Age Wolf Became Our Best Friend
Dogs were our first domesticated companions, born from Ice Age wolves before farming. A 14,000-year-old dog was nursed through illness and buried beside two humans.
How We Know When Humans First Wore Clothes (Thanks to Lice)
Clothing rots away, so we date its origin from the DNA of body lice, which only live in clothing. The answer is surprisingly early, well before humans left Africa.
The First Word: The Search for the Origin of Language
Language may be our defining trait, yet it leaves no fossils. Scientists reconstruct its origin from anatomy, the FOXP2 gene, and the first symbolic art.
They Opened Skulls in the Stone Age — And the Patients Lived
Stone Age people practiced real surgery: healed trepanation, a 31,000-year-old amputation in Borneo, and Neanderthal care for the injured—skill and mercy written in bone.
The Real Hobbits: Homo floresiensis and the Island That Shrank Humans
Homo floresiensis, the 'real hobbits' of Flores, were a one-meter-tall human species that made tools and hunted dwarf elephants until about 50,000 years ago.
The Denisovans: The Ghost Human Species Hiding in Your DNA
The Denisovans were a human species found from a finger bone and known mostly from DNA, until the Dragon Man skull gave them a face. They still live on in living people's
When the Human Population Dropped to Near Zero: A Survival Story
Genetics suggests our ancestors once crashed to a tiny breeding population — perhaps just over a thousand individuals — and clung on for thousands of generations. The con
Did Neanderthals Invent Advanced Weaponry?
Were Neanderthals and early humans primitive brutes — or engineers? The physics of the Schöningen spears, hafted points, birch-tar glue and the atlatl say otherwise.
The Darkest Day in Human History: How We Survived the Toba Supereruption
Around 74,000 years ago, Sumatra's Mount Toba erupted in a global cataclysm that almost ended humanity. We explore the bottleneck and the coastal refuge.