Early Humans News

June 3, 2025

Top Headlines

Bed Bugs Are Most Likely the First Human Pest, New Research Shows

May 28, 2025 — Researchers compared the whole genome sequence of two genetically distinct lineages of bed bug, and their findings indicate bed bugs may well be the first true urban ...

Ancient DNA Used to Map Evolution of Fever-Causing Bacteria

May 22, 2025 — Researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from Borrelia recurrentis, a type of bacteria that causes relapsing fever, pinpointing when it evolved to spread through lice rather than ticks, and how it gained and lost genes in the ...

Asians Made Humanity's Longest Prehistoric Migration and Shaped the Genetic Landscape in the Americas

May 15, 2025 — An international genomics study has revealed that early Asians undertook humanity's longest known prehistoric migration. These early humans, who roamed the earth over 100,000 years ago, are believed ...

Europe's Forest Plants Thrive Best in Light-Rich, Semi-Open Woodlands -- Kept Open by Large Herbivores

May 14, 2025 — Before Homo sapiens arrived, Europe's forests were not dense and dark but shaped by open and light-rich woodland landscapes. Researchers have analyzed 917 native forest plant species in Central and ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:51pm EDT

Digital Reconstruction Reveals 80 Steps of Prehistoric Life

May 15, 2025 — A dinosaur's 40-second journey more than 120 million years ago has been brought back to life by a research team using advanced digital modelling ...

Dexterity and Climbing Ability: How Ancient Human Relatives Used Their Hands

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have found new evidence for how our fossil human relatives in South Africa may have used their hands. Researchers investigated variation ...

Researchers Map 7,000-Year-Old Genetic Mutation That Protects Against HIV

May 9, 2025 — Modern HIV medicine is based on a common genetic mutation. Now, researchers have traced where and when the mutation arose -- and how it protected our ancestors from ancient ...

Comb Jellies Reveal Ancient Origins of Animal Genome Regulation

May 7, 2025 — Life depends on genes being switched on and off at exactly the right time. Even the simplest living organisms do this, but usually over short distances across the DNA sequence, with the on/off switch ...

Sunscreen, Clothes and Caves May Have Helped Homo Sapiens Survive 41,000 Years Ago

Apr. 16, 2025 — A study suggests that Homo sapiens may have benefited from the use of ochre and tailored clothing during a period of increased UV light 41,000 years ...

Sophisticated Pyrotechnology in the Ice Age: This Is How Humans Made Fire Tens of Thousands of Years Ago

Apr. 14, 2025 — Whether for cooking, heating, as a light source or for making tools -- it is assumed that fire was essential for the survival of people in the Ice ...

Footprints Reveal Prehistoric Scottish Lagoons Were Stomping Grounds for Giant Jurassic Dinosaurs

Apr. 2, 2025 — Jurassic dinosaurs milled about ancient Scottish lagoons, leaving up to 131 footprints at a newly discovered stomping ground on the Isle of Skye in ...

Machine Learning Helps Construct an Evolutionary Timeline of Bacteria

Apr. 3, 2025 — Scientists have helped to construct a detailed timeline for bacterial evolution, suggesting some bacteria used oxygen long before evolving the ability to produce it through ...

First Ancient Genomes from the Green Sahara Deciphered

Apr. 2, 2025 — An international team has sequenced the first ancient genomes from the so-called Green Sahara, a period when the largest desert in the world temporarily turned into a humid savanna-like environment. ...

Discovery of Quina Technology Challenges View of Ancient Human Development in East Asia

Mar. 31, 2025 — Researchers have uncovered a complete Quina technological system in the Longtan site in southwest China. The discovery challenges the widely held ...

A Genetic Tree as a Movie: Moving Beyond the Still Portrait of Ancestry

Mar. 27, 2025 — Researchers have created a way to see your family tree as a movie rather than a still portrait by tracing where your ancestors moved across the globe over time. The statistical method can also be ...

Genetic Study Reveals Hidden Chapter in Human Evolution

Mar. 18, 2025 — Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the ...

When Did Human Language Emerge?

Mar. 18, 2025 — Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ...

Dozens of 3-Toed Dinosaurs Leave Their Mark in Australia

Mar. 13, 2025 — A researcher has confirmed a boulder at a regional school contains one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur footprints per square meter ever documented in ...

Prehistoric Bone Tool 'Factory' Hints at Early Development of Abstract Reasoning in Human Ancestors

Mar. 5, 2025 — The oldest collection of mass-produced prehistoric bone tools reveal that human ancestors were likely capable of more advanced abstract reasoning one million years earlier than thought, finds a new ...

Humans Inherited Their Flexible Joints from the Earliest Jawed Fish

Feb. 25, 2025 — The efficient architecture of our joints, which allows our skeletons to be flexible and sturdy, originated among our most ancient jawed fish ancestors, according to a new ...

New Study Reveals Neanderthals Experienced Population Crash 110,000 Years Ago

Feb. 25, 2025 — A new study suggests that Neanderthals experienced a dramatic loss of genetic variation during the course of their evolution, foreshadowing their eventual extinction. Examination of semicircular ...

Does Planetary Evolution Favor Human-Like Life? Study Ups Odds We're Not Alone

Feb. 14, 2025 — Humanity may not be extraordinary but rather the natural evolutionary outcome for our planet and likely others, according to a new model for how intelligent life developed on ...

Ancient DNA Analyses Bring to Life the 11,000-Year Intertwined Genomic History of Sheep and Humans

Jan. 30, 2025 — The rise of pastoralist peoples in the Eurasian steppes and their westward spread some 5,000 years ago may have been fueled by sheep herding and people exploiting their milk. As early as 8,000 years ...

Three Million Years Ago, Our Ancestors Were Vegetarian

Jan. 17, 2025 — Human ancestors like Australopithecus -- which lived around 3.5 million years ago in southern Africa -- ate very little to no meat, according to new research. This conclusion comes from an analysis ...

Early Humans Adapted to Harsh Conditions More Than a Million Years Ago

Jan. 16, 2025 — A long-standing question about when archaic members of the genus Homo adapted to harsh environments such as deserts and rainforests has been answered in a new research ...

Protein Shapes Can Help Untangle Life's Ancient History

Jan. 15, 2025 — The three-dimensional shape of a protein can be used to resolve deep, ancient evolutionary relationships in the tree of life, according to a new study. It is the first time researchers use data from ...

A New Timeline for Neanderthal Interbreeding With Modern Humans

Dec. 12, 2024 — Neanderthal genes make up 1-2% of the genomes of non-Africans. Scientists analyzed the lengths of regions of Neanderthal DNA in 58 ancient Eurasian genomes of early modern humans and determined that ...

Oldest Modern Human Genomes Sequenced

Dec. 12, 2024 — Few genomes have been sequenced from early modern humans, who first arrived in Europe when the region was already inhabited by Neanderthals. An international team has now sequenced the oldest modern ...

Earliest Deep-Cave Ritual Compound in Southwest Asia Discovered

Dec. 9, 2024 — A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian ...

Chimpanzees Perform the Same Complex Behaviors That Have Brought Humans Success

Dec. 5, 2024 — A new study suggests that the fundamental abilities underlying human language and technological culture may have evolved before humans and apes diverged millions of years ...

How Did Humans and Dogs Become Friends? Connections in the Americas Began 12,000 Years Ago

Dec. 4, 2024 — A new study sheds light on how long humans in the Americas have had relationships with the ancestors of today's dogs -- and asks an 'existential question': What is a ...

A Fossil First: Scientists Find 1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints of Two Different Species of Human Ancestors at Same Spot

Nov. 28, 2024 — More than a million years ago, on a hot savannah teeming with wildlife near the shore of what would someday become Lake Turkana in Kenya, two completely different species of hominins may have passed ...

Brains Grew Faster as Humans Evolved

Nov. 27, 2024 — Brain size increased gradually within each ancient human species rather than through sudden leaps between ...

Herodotus' Theory on Armenian Origins Challenged by First Whole-Genome Study

Nov. 25, 2024 — Armenians, a population in Western Asia historically inhabiting the Armenian highlands, were long believed to be descendants of Phrygian settlers from the Balkans. This theory originated largely from ...