More than 40,000 years ago, Ice Age humans were carving repeated patterns of dots, lines, and crosses into tools and small ivory figurines. A new computational study of more than 3,000 of these ...

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 ...

Mosquitoes haven’t always had a taste for human blood — partly because the tiny yet dangerous insects have been around a lot longer than humans. Pinpointing when mosquitoes shifted their preference to ...

In 1758, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus gave humans a scientific name: Homo sapiens, which means "wise human" in Latin. Although Linnaeus grouped humans with other apes, it was English biologist ...

Around 400,000 years ago, a band of Neanderthals, or their ancestors, in Britain struck flint with pyrite and built a fire repeatedly in the same spot. Archaeologists studying the site think it is the ...

It's easy to take for granted that with the flick of a lighter or the turn of a furnace knob, modern humans can conjure flames — cooking food, lighting candles or warming homes. For much of our ...