Ancient humans hunted animals by throwing a stick like a boomerang

19 July 2023

Analysis of a wooden stick thought to be around 300,000 years old suggests it was designed to be thrown rotationally, rather than as a spear

#201 The truth behind the orca uprising; Earth enters uncharted territory; genetic treatments for unborn babies.

22 June 2023

A new therapy is being used to treat a rare genetic disorder in babies, before they’ve even been born. The condition, which only affects boys, leaves them with few teeth, sparse hair and no sweat glands. The team learns about the successes of this groundbreaking...

Some of the earliest modern humans in Europe used bows and arrows

22 February 2023

A site in France briefly occupied by modern humans is littered with stone points that were probably used as arrowheads, showing that bows and arrows were used in Europe much earlier than we thought

Nobel prize awarded for study of human evolution using ancient DNA

3 October 2022

Geneticist Svante Pääbo has been awarded a Nobel prize for his work on evolutionary genetics

When did humans start making art and were Neanderthals artists too?

15 July 2022

On a visit to see ancient cave art in Spain, Michael Marshall explores why it's so hard to calculate the age of early human artworks and whether other hominins might also have created art.

Life As We Made It review: Should we go all in on gene-editing tech?

3 November 2021

Beth Shapiro's latest book explores how humans have affected the planet so far and what we might do to the animals and plants living on it in the future

Just 1.5 to 7 per cent of the modern human genome is uniquely ours

16 July 2021

Just 1.5 to 7 per cent of the modern human genome is uniquely ours – meaning it emerged after we split from other ancient human groups including the Neanderthals and Denisovans

Climate change may have driven early human species to extinction

15 October 2020

Sudden climatic changes may have been a significant driver of the extinction of early human species, including the Neanderthals, Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis

We are in the midst of rewriting our understanding of Neanderthals

19 August 2020

Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains how modern techniques are helping us to better understand Neanderthals, as well as where we fit in to the family tree

Neanderthals may have inspired folk tales

15 July 2020