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The hunt for the lost ancestral language of Europe and southern Asia

23 November 2022

We've long known there was an ancient language that gave rise to English, Bengali and dozens of other tongues – now we’re on the brink of working out where Proto-Indo-European was spoken

'Dogor', an 18,000 year-old wolf puppy from Yakutia which was included in the study

Dogs are descended from two populations of ancient wolves

29 June 2022

Modern dogs have ancestry from wolves in Asia and Europe, according to a study analysing DNA from 72 ancient wolves going back 100,000 years

HT3KM2 Danebury Hill Fort, c2nd century BC, (c1990-2010). Artist: Karen Guffogg. Reconstruction drawing. Celtic / Iron age, approx. 2nd century BC. Built in the 6th century BC, the fort was in use for almost 500 years, during a period when the number of hill forts in Wessex greatly increased. Danebury was remodelled several times, making it more complex and resulting in it becoming a developed hill fort

Bronze Age migration may have brought Celtic languages to Britain

22 December 2021

Analysis of ancient DNA reveals a mass migration of people from what is now France to England and Wales between 1000 and 875 BC

Alice Roberts: Archaeogenetics will help us solve mysteries of past

26 May 2021

Archaeology and genetics may seem worlds apart, but they are combining to produce astonishing insights, says Alice Roberts

Stone Age people in Ireland had dark skin and were lactose-intolerant

9 October 2020

Bone fragments from a mountain chamber in Ireland belonged to Stone Age people, and genetic analysis has revealed they had moderately dark skin and couldn't digest raw milk

We need to talk about technology that people use to influence others

2 October 2019

Multi-agent artificial intelligence simulations could show us how to help people live in harmony – or how to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment. We must agree rules for its use

The story of how humans got to the Americas isn’t a simple one

25 September 2019

The New World wasn’t conquered by a single group of people - different populations migrated and interbred in a tangled web. This is the new normal for human evolution

Africans may have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar 4000 years ago

23 January 2019

Genetic analysis suggests ancient people from sub-Saharan Africa may have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain 1300 years earlier than we thought

Extinct 'Denisovan' people may have lived on Earth's highest plateau

29 November 2018

The Tibetan Plateau is a tough environment so we thought humans arrived only about 12,000 years ago, but it seems someone was there 40,000 to 30,000 years ago

The first Americans had pet dogs 1000 years earlier than thought

18 June 2018

There were domestic dogs in North America 10,200 years ago, according to a re-examination of an ancient dog skeleton that looks like a small English setter