Archaeologists have long known that complex societies can rise, flourish and then disappear so completely that only scattered ruins hint at what was lost. Now a new wave of research is sharpening the ...

Could Earth have hosted an advanced civilization before humans? This intriguing question is at the heart of the Silurian Hypothesis, a theory that challenges our understanding of Earth’s history. By ...

Researchers have reconstructed ancient herpesvirus genomes from Iron Age and medieval Europeans, revealing that HHV-6 has been infecting humans for at least 2,500 years. Some people inherited the ...

For only the second time, researchers have obtained the full genome of a Denisovan, a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia. The DNA was extracted from a single 200,000-year-old tooth found in a ...

The provenance of 3.4-million-year-old foot bones in Ethiopia may have finally been solved – and could prompt a rethink into how our various ancient human ancestors coexisted. In 2009, Yohannes ...

For decades, scientists believed ancient humans avoided dense rainforests, treating them as nearly impossible environments for early survival. But a groundbreaking discovery in West Africa is ...