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.
Inca origins: DNA analysis supports a pair of foundational myths
Researchers from Peru, Brazil and Bolivia, who have been tracing the origins of the Inca civilization, have confirmed two of the ...
Humans have always been overwhelmingly right-handed. We still aren’t sure why.
Nine out of 10 humans are considered right-handed. “It doesn’t matter where you find them, humans have that ratio,” says ...
Are humans truly evolving or are we just genetically ‘drifting’?
Evolution may be responsible for a range of complex traits, including height and waist-to-hip ratio, and diseases such as schizophrenia, ...
Big data meets taxonomy: Classifying animal species with ‘DNA barcoding’
[T]axonomy – the science of classifying organisms – would be so much easier if life forms came with barcodes… Interestingly enough, ...
Ancient human species with orange-sized brain could have possessed modern human intelligence
An ancient species of human with a brain no larger than an orange may have possessed intelligence to rival that ...
Astronomical cycles may have influenced animal evolution on Earth
A team of researchers from the United States and New Zealand took a look at how likely species were to ...
Who owns the DNA of ancient humans—and do they have rights?
The remains of a 6-inch long mummy from Chile are not those of a space alien, according to recently reported ...
Ancient art may have been created by people with autistic traits, study suggests
Much of the world’s earliest great art is likely to have been created by gifted early humans on the autism ...
Ancient DNA analysis reveals Botai hunter-gatherers first domesticated horses
[W]ho first domesticated horses is a hotly debated question. One leading hypothesis suggests Bronze Age pastoralists called the Yamnaya were ...
Neanderthal ‘mini brains’ created from ancient DNA could illuminate human brain biology
Scientists are preparing to create “miniature brains” that have been genetically engineered to contain Neanderthal DNA, in an unprecedented attempt ...
What caused the 60-million-year insect fossil gap?
Insects are everywhere—in the air, on the ground, in the ground, and sometimes in your house and food. Yet there ...
Extinct strain of hepatitis B found in human remains suggests virus had greater diversity
Despite its prevalence, little is known about the ancestral roots of the [hepatitis B] virus. New findings, published [May 9] in Nature, ...
How ‘human errors’ challenge intelligent design theory
When Charles Darwin first proposed natural selection as the mechanism of evolutionary change, he provided many different lines of reasoning ...
Sex in space? An awkward talk we will need to have
As the prospect of Mars colonization grows on the public radar screen, sex talk is not as much taboo that ...
Carnivorous waterwheel plant ten times faster than Venus flytrap
Scientists have characterised the movement of the Venus flytrap's aquatic cousin in detail for the first time. The carnivorous Aldrovanda vesiculosa, ...
What a headache: Genetic adaptation to cold weather also gave us migraines
A human genetic variant in a gene involved in sensing cold temperatures became more common when early humans migrated out of ...
Searching for alien intelligence and how dolphins can help
The return to dolphins as a model for alien intelligence came in 1999, when SETI Institute astronomer Laurance Doyle proposed using information ...
King David’s United Monarchy: Is this 3,000-year-old Israeli house evidence of ‘lost’ biblical kingdom?
Archaeologists have discovered a sprawling, possibly 3,000-year-old house that suggests a biblical kingdom called the United Monarchy, ruled by King ...
Which of our hominid ancestors forged stone weapons used to kill rhino in the Philippines 700,000 years ago?
Stone tools found in the Philippines predate the arrival of modern humans to the islands by roughly 600,000 years—but researchers aren’t ...
The ‘Big O’: How and why evolution brought us the female orgasm
Female orgasms aren’t necessary for reproduction. A comparative evolution study suggests they once might have been ...
Neanderthals’ brains may have doomed them to extinction
Using computers and MRI scans, researchers have created the most detailed reconstruction of a Neanderthal brain to date, offering new ...
DNA found in ancient latrines reveals fascinating human diet history
[W]ith the help of improving DNA analysis techniques, researchers are seeing what they can learn from particularly old waste: that ...
Did math build a barrier between scientists and God?
In a new book called The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide, Michael E. Hobart offers a new twist on ...
Is this ancient hashtag just a decoration or the first human symbol?
About 100,000 years ago, ancient humans started etching lines and hashtag patterns onto red rocks in a South African cave ...
Why we find ourselves at the limits of human lifespan
The 20th century was a period of unprecedented biological growth for our species. The average human lifespan increased from 31 years in ...
Ancient DNA suggests South Asians descended from 3 Eurasian groups—hunter-gatherers, farmers, herders
[A] study of the first ancient DNA recovered from South Asia shows that populations there mingled repeatedly thousands of years ...
Viewpoint: It’s time to stop ‘connecting race to intelligence’
The race-and-IQ debate is back. The latest round started a few weeks ago when Harvard geneticist David Reich wrote a ...
