Ancestry & Evolution
The desire to understand our origins is primal. By examining our DNA over successive generations through the evolutionary process of inherited characteristics of human and animal populations–as well as from those species from which humans share a common ancestry–we can decipher our individual and collective past and develop medical innovations for the future.
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Hominids have existed on earth for two million years. What makes us human?
The distinction between ourselves and other animals is, arguably, artificial. Animals are more like humans than we might think – ...
How did intelligent problem-solving behavior come to exist?
How can a biological system ever generate coherent and goal-oriented behavior from the bottom up when there is no external ...
Two years after Wuhan: Why Omicron is a ‘blindsiding riptide’
Next Tuesday, December 21, marks two years since the China CDC Weekly acknowledged the first “cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown ...
Podcast: Why do people donate kidneys to strangers? Is altruism an evolved human trait?
Penny Lane gave up months of wages and weeks of her life to have her kidney cut out and given ...
Humans drive evolution of other organisms, from condors to the coronavirus
Many people think that evolution is some magical phenomenon that takes hundreds, even thousands of years to occur. People think ...
‘Venice of the stone age’: Why this ancient Chinese city was abandoned
Some 4,000 years ago, a sophisticated society that built a city of canals known as “China’s Venice of the Stone ...
Did the Omicron variant originate in an immunocompromised person with HIV?
A prevailing theory as to how the omicron variant emerged so suddenly and jam-packed with mutations is that it was ...
Mystery of 3.7 million year old footsteps solved
In the 1970s, a set of 3.66-million-year-old human footprints preserved in volcanic ash turned the paleontology field upside down. They ...
Previously infected with COVID? That likely won’t protect you from the Omicron variant
Scientists have known since early in the pandemic that the immunity gained from a coronavirus infection is not total, and ...
Genetics and race: An awkward conversation during volatile times
Discussing inter-group divergence is largely taboo. So do we just ignore the deluge of data? ...
Latest COVID variant Omicron proving ‘formidable, but not unstoppable’
A sobering portrait of the omicron variant is emerging from the first burst of laboratory studies on the coronavirus’s latest ...
If we gene hacked humanity to be more like our bonobo cousins, would militarism become obsolete (and sex more frequent)?
Bonobos are a species of primate believed to be humankind’s second-closest living ancestor. That’s intriguing, because zoologists have long observed ...
Evidence emerges that this early human species swung from trees but also walked upright
Early hominins used their upper limbs to climb like apes and their lower limbs to walk like humans, according to ...
Life span vs. health span: How physical activity wards off age-related disease
In a new review published [November 22] in PNAS, [evolutionary biologist Daniel] Lieberman and his Harvard co-authors grapple with the ...
‘Many sites were hidden in plain sight’: How digital tools are revolutionizing archeology
Hidden parts of deep human history are being revealed by digital tools that generate new troves of data for archaeologists ...
Are humans doomed to go extinct?
Mammal species tend to come and go rather rapidly, appearing, flourishing and disappearing in a million years or so. The ...
DNA from ancient Etruscan bones and teeth spurs rewrite of 25-century old Italian civilization’s history
For years, the origins of the Etruscans remained an unsolved mystery. They inhabited central Italy for two thousand years before ...
As plain as the nose on your face: Sniffing out what we know about the evolutionary history of the proboscis
Mammalian noses, including the prominent snout that graces the head of the horse, are an evolutionary novelty – and also ...
How new advances in archaeology are illuminating mysteries of the Hebrew Bible
Far from any city, ancient or modern, Timna is illuminating the time of the Hebrew Bible—and showing just how much ...
Omicron genetic surprise: Its family tree traces back more than a year
Just as people who want to find out their ancestry — were their forebears Nordic? Mongol? — can find traces ...
Could humans have evolved on other planets, too?
Could it be that our species is the principal indigenous race in the Universe – that Homo sapiens, or something ...
Viewpoint: Why gene editing is so much like ‘nature’ — and therefore should not be tightly regulated
At what point do regulatory experts possess sufficient knowledge on innovative technologies and their potential impacts, both beneficial and adverse, ...
Omicron contains dozens of new mutations — but that doesn’t mean the variant is more dangerous
The Omicron variant of the coronavirus has alarmed many scientists because of the sheer number of genetic mutations it carries ...
Why don’t humans have tails?
Why did some primates keep their tails, while humans and apes didn't? Tail loss is thought to be part of ...
This story is crap: A history of human excrement
If there’s one thing we have in common with our ancestors, it’s that they were just as dismayed with their ...
Evolution doesn’t stop: Hundreds of new traits have developed in humans in recent centuries
A new study from Europe has identified 755 traits that have changed in the past 2-3,000 years of human evolution ...
‘Life as we made it’ book review: Why ‘intervening in nature’ is not new and should not be feared
Life as We Made It by Beth Shapiro, an exploration of biotechnology, human evolution and our significant and often unwelcome impact ...
