We’re living through a golden age of archaeological discovery about our distant cousins, the Neanderthals. We’ve recently learned they were much more intelligent than we used to give them credit for, ...

The last Neanderthals lived in Western Europe but disappeared within a few thousand years of the arrival of modern humans. The fact that we so rapidly replaced these archaic hominins has been used to ...

Language may feel like one of the most distinctly human things about you, but the genetic groundwork for it appears to be older than our own species. A new study from University of Iowa Health Care ...

Prehistoric sexual proclivities helped to shape the human genome, according to a study 1 of genetic material from three female Neanderthal specimens. The analysis suggests that female Homo sapiens and ...

In a first-of-its-kind finding, researchers at University of Iowa Health Care discovered that specific genetic sequences have an outsized impact on humans’ language abilities and that these sequences ...

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. Among the many other human species that once inhabited ...

Most people today have a little Neanderthal DNA sprinkled through their genome. These genomic signals are the telltale signs that overlapping populations of ancient anatomically modern humans and ...

CNN — If you were to greet a Neanderthal with a handshake, it might feel a little awkward. The digits of the Stone Age people, who went extinct about 40,000 years ago, were much chunkier than ours.