History

Elizabeth Sawchuk, University of Alberta; Jessica Thompson, Yale University, and Mary Prendergast, Rice University Every person alive on the planet today is descended from people who lived as hunter-gatherers in Africa. The continent is the cradle of human origins and ingenuity, and with each new fossil and archaeological discovery, we learn more about our shared […]

Jayne Wilkins, Griffith University and Sechaba Maape, University of the Witwatersrand A rockshelter in South Africa’s Kalahari documents the innovative behaviours of early humans who lived there 105,000 years ago. We report the new evidence today in Nature. The rockshelter site is at Ga-Mohana Hill — a striking feature that stands proudly above an expansive

Christopher Henshilwood, University of the Witwatersrand and Karen Loise van Niekerk, University of Bergen The origins of “modern human behaviour” generate lively debate worldwide. The central question in these discussions is: When and where did our common ancestors first start behaving in ways similar to ourselves? Although it is well known that Homo sapiens were

Julien Louys, Griffith University; Gilbert Price, The University of Queensland; Huw Groucutt, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Michael Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History If you stood in the middle of the Nefud Desert in central Arabia today, you’d be confronted on all sides by enormous

Martina Demuro; Lee Arnold, and Mathieu Duval, Griffith University Even our earliest human ancestors made and used technology – something we can look back on thanks to the lasting nature of stone tools. An exceptionally high density of giant handaxes dated to 200,000-300,000 years ago has been uncovered at an archaeological site in Galicia, northwest

Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University The earliest known existence of modern humans, or Homo sapiens, was previously dated to be around 200,000 years ago. It’s a view supported by genetic analysis and dated Homo sapiens fossils (Omo Kibish, estimated age 195,000 years, and Herto, estimated age 160,000 years), both found in modern-day Ethiopia, East Africa.

Darren Curnoe, UNSW Sydney Can there be any more important a question than, ‘How did we get here?’ Of course, I don’t mean those books we all gawked at as tweens desperate to understand our transforming pubescent bodies. I mean, ‘How did we get here, as a species?’ ‘How did we come to be so

Anna M. Kotarba-Morley, Flinders University Many think of globalisation as a modern and corporate phenomenon, and it has been readily linked to the spread of coronavirus. But globalisation isn’t new. Archaeological research shows it began in antiquity. A global economy, with luxury consumerism and global interconnectivity, linked Europe, Africa and Asia at least 5,000 years

Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation The archaeologist who helped discover the extinct Homo species Flores Hobbit, Professor Mike Morwood, has died after a struggle with cancer. New Zealand-born Professor Morwood, who was based at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong, was also a world expert in Australian rock art. Professor

Mathieu Duval, Griffith University and Mohamed Sahnouni, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) When did early humans first arrive in the Mediterranean area? New archaeological evidence published today online by the journal Science (as a First Release) indicates their presence in North Africa at least 2.4 million years ago. This is about