Genes make us who we are—but are they shaped by chance, natural selection, or something else?

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes, but by culture. "Human evolution seems to be changing ...

The evolutionary success of our species may have hinged on minute changes to our brain biochemistry after we diverged from the lineage leading to Neanderthals and Denisovans about half a million years ...

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift — driven not by genes, but by culture. In a paper published in the Oxford ...

A timeline of genetic changes in millions of years of human evolution shows that variants linked to higher intelligence appeared most rapidly around 500,000 years ago, and were closely followed by ...

Speciation and adaptation arise from the dynamic interplay of genetic variation, natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow. Divergence between populations often begins with ecological or ...

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every month. If I tried to recap all the new fossils, new methods and ...

Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the ...