Anthropology

The researchers dated remains from four multiple burials discovered in Germany in 2005. The 4,600-year-old graves contained groups of adults and children buried facing each other – an unusual practice in Neolithic culture.

A recently discovered female pelvis is changing minds about the head size of an ancient human ancestor, Homo erectus, and consequently revising notions about how smart they may have been.

The discovery of the earliest known cases of human tuberculosis (TB) in bones found submerged off the coast of Israel shows that the disease is 3000 years older than previously thought. Direct examination of this ancient DNA confirms the latest theory that bovine TB evolved later than human TB.

More than 40 million years ago, primates preferred Texas to northern climates that were significantly cooling, according to new fossil evidence discovered by Chris Kirk, physical anthropologist at The University of Texas at Austin.

Take a trip back in time and meet the "Mother of all mankind"; the common ancestor from whom we all descended.

Researchers report the discovery of the first new living species of giant clam in two decades, according to a report to be published online on August 28th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. While fossil evidence reveals that the new species, called Tridacna costata, once accounted for more than 80 percent of giant clams in the Red Sea, it now represents less than one percent of giant clams living there.

Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens).

All humans share some common bits of DNA, passed down to us from our African ancestors. Geneticist Spencer Wells talks about how his Genographic Project will use this shared DNA to figure out how we are -- in all our diversity -- truly connected.

Research led by UK and Australian scientists sheds new light on the role that our ancestors played in the extinction of Australia's prehistoric animals.

Tiny fossilized teeth excavated from an Indian open-pit coal mine could be the oldest Asian remains ever found of anthropoids, the primate lineage of today's monkeys, apes and humans, say researchers from Duke University and the Indian Institute of Technology.

Louise Leakey asks, "Who are we?" The question takes her to the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa, where she digs for the evolutionary origins of humankind -- and suggests a stunning new vision of our competing ancestors.

By Mano Singham

Trying to discover the origins of language is a fascinating scientific problem but the evidence is necessarily indirect. Clearly our bodies' physical capacity to articulate sounds is a biological development. Language had to be preceded by the evolution of the physical organs responsible for vocalization. Those organs must have co-evolved with those parts of the brain that can process language.

By Mano Singham

One of the things that makes some people uneasy about the theory of evolution is its implication that humans are just one branch in the tree of life, connected to every other living thing through common ancestors, and thus not special in any mysterious way. It is surely tempting to think that we must be somehow unique. Look at the art and culture and science and technology we have produced and for which nothing comparable exists by any other species. How can we explain that if we are not possessed of some quality not present in other species?

An archaeological excavation at a site near Pulborough, West Sussex, has thrown remarkable new light on the life of northern Europe’s last Neanderthals. It provides a snapshot of a thriving, developing population -- rather than communities on the verge of extinction.

After speaking at TED2007 on elegance in physics, the amazing Murray Gell-Mann gives a quick overview of another passionate interest: finding the common ancestry of our modern languages.