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The Neanderthal woman was re-created and built by Dutch artists Andrie and Alfons Kennis. Research including fossil anatomy and a detailed study of DNA is present in the color of the skin and eyes. (Photo by Joe McNally/Getty Images)

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The Naked Neanderthal review: Looking for the real Neanderthals

From creating cave art to burying their dead, how we see Neanderthals reveals as much about us as it does about them, argues Ludovic Slimak in a fascinating new book. We may have our closest extinct relatives all wrong - again

Culture

A flint used to shape a wooden structure identified at the archaeological site Kalambo Falls in Zambia

Humans

Earliest evidence of buildings made from wood is 476,000 years old

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Humans

Why the ancient hominins of Asia are so mysterious

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2PEK6YC Professor Chris Stringer, Head of Human Origins at London's Natural History Museum, moves a cast taken from the a skull of what is said to be a new species in the evolution of man named 'Homo Floresiensis' during a news conference Wednesday Oct. 27, 2004. At left is a cast of Homo Sapiens skull. (AP Photo/Richard Lewis)

Humans

How artefacts are found tells its own story – if we want to hear it

Leader

Homo floresiensis skull. Mould made from fragments of the skull of Homo floresiensis in Liang Bua cave, Flores, Indonesia. This newly discovered hominid species was found in Liang Bua cave in 2003. It was very small, measuring just over a metre tall, and is thought to be a descendant of Homo erectus that underwent island dwarfism - a process where isolated species that lack predators and are constrained by limited resources evolve to become smaller. It is thought to have become extinct around 12,000 years ago and therefore co-existed with modern humans (Homo sapiens).

Humans

The untold story of the curiously controversial Homo floresiensis dig

Features

Humans

Ancient humans may have worn shoes more than 100,000 years ago

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Researchers Michelle Bebber holding an atlatl weapon

Humans

Women and men throw spears equally well using ancient atlatl tool

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Humans

These ancient sand drawings could be a fifth type of palaeoart

Regulars

Professor Lee Berger, palaeontologist, explorer and member of The National Geographic Society, gestures as he explains the scientific relevance of discovering Homo Naledi in the Rising Star caves system in The Cradle of Human Kind, on May 11, 2023. The news shakes the foundations of human evolution: world-renowned paleontologist Lee Berger announced on Monday that he had discovered the oldest graves ever found in South Africa, pushing back the first traces of mortuary practices by some 100,000 years . The oldest tombs discovered so far were found in Israel and Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century. They date from around 100,000 years before our era and house the remains of Homo sapiens, the direct ancestor of man. The burials unearthed in South Africa date from -200,000 to -300,000 years. (Photo by Luca Sola / AFP) (Photo by LUCA SOLA/AFP via Getty Images)

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Cave of Bones review: Lee Berger on the discovery of Homo naledi

Culture

BEAMBN Tibetan plateau scenery en route from Shegar to Tingri, Tibet

Humans

How prehistoric people settled one of Earth’s most extreme places

Archaeologists previously believed the Tibetan plateau was one of the last places to be settled by humans or hominins – over the past couple of decades that notion has been slowly but comprehensively blown apart

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Humans

We are hopeless at telling when we have goosebumps

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Humans

Ancient humans hunted animals by throwing a stick like a boomerang

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Humans

The societies proving that inequality and patriarchy aren't inevitable

Features

Humans

Artistic artefacts are rewriting the timeline of ancient South America

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