History

George Busby, University of Oxford Over the past 25 years, scientists have supported the view that modern humans left Africa around 50,000 years ago, spreading to different parts of the world by replacing resident human species like the Neanderthals. However, rapid advances in genetic sequencing have opened up a whole new window into the past, […]

Francis Thackeray, University of the Witwatersrand More than 145 years ago, Charles Darwin argued that Africa was the continent from which humans evolved in prehistory. We now know he was right. We have the evidence to prove from prehistoric remains that our distant human relatives go back at least seven million years. Certainly, the fossil

Simon Armitage, Royal Holloway University of London How did human uniqueness first evolve among our ancestors, setting us apart from other animals? That is a question many archaeologists are grappling with by investigating early records of art, language, food preparation, ornaments and symbols. How our ancestors treated and mourned the dead can also offer crucial

H. Ekkehard Wolff, University of Leipzig Africa is humankind’s home continent. Homo sapiens, with the anatomical and cognitive capacity to have human language as we know it today, originated in Africa between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Then, as an abundant fossil and archaeological record makes clear, some of our human ancestors left Africa. They

Eleanor Scerri, University of Oxford Think of rainforests and the picture is inevitably one of a dark and forbidding realm where life is abundant, yet alarmingly cryptic. Rather than the sense of space offered by long, iconic grassland vistas, distance is compressed into tangled webs of foliage, veiling both predators and prey. Diffuse and difficult

Christopher Henshilwood, University of Bergen and Karen Loise van Niekerk, University of Bergen Scientists working in Blombos Cave in South Africa’s southern Cape region have made a discovery that changes our understanding of when our human ancestors started expressing themselves through drawings. They’ve found a 73 000-year-old cross-hatched drawing on a silcrete (stone) flake. It

Amanuel Beyin, University of Louisville; Ahmed Hamid Nassr., University of Ha’il, and Parth Randhir Chauhan, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali Africa is the birthplace of humanity. From the time of our lineage’s split from the chimpanzee line around 7 million years ago, the continent has remained the primary homeland for successive hominin

Patrick Randolph-Quinney, University of Central Lancashire and Anthony Sinclair, University of Liverpool Just 20 years ago, many archaeologists believed there was a “human revolution” 40,000-50,000 years ago during which modern behaviours such as symbolism, innovation and art suddenly arose. This was thought to have enabled a major shift in cognitive organisation and probably the advent

Audrey G. Bennett, University of Michigan Design remains a largely white profession, with Black people still vastly underrepresented – making up just 3% of the design industry, according to a 2019 survey. This dilemma isn’t new. For decades, the field’s whiteness has been recognized as a problem, and was being openly discussed as far back

Neil Rusch, University of the Witwatersrand Alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. But where was the first alcoholic beverage brewed and consumed? The answer isn’t clear because traces of alcohol don’t preserve well in the archaeological record. Containers like skin bags and wooden vessels that were likely used to hold