Humans news stories

Without clocks or modern tools, ancient Mexicans watched the sun to maintain a farming calendar that precisely tracked seasons and even adjusted for leap years.

The deserts of Saudi Arabia were once the lush and fertile homes of ancient people more than 8,000 years ago.

This is a new discovery we describe in a study published in PLOS Genetics today. It further suggests that our modern human diversity didn’t just evolve – some parts of it we got from other, extinct human groups.

A study of children with autism spectrum disorders in Israel reported significant improvements in their social communication abilities after six months of treatment with cannabidiol-rich cannabis oil… The study was published in Translational Psychiatry.

A new Dartmouth College-led study analyzing stone tools from southern China provides the earliest evidence of rice harvesting, dating to as early as 10,000 years ago

An 11,000-year-old rock-cut relief in southeastern Turkey featuring menacing animals and two men, one of whom is holding his genitalia, is the oldest narrative scene on record, a new study suggests

Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction,” the head of the United Nations has warned at the start of a high-level nature summit in Canada.

For over a century, one of the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Spain has been long considered a Neandertal. However, new analysis…dismantles this century-long interpretation, demonstrating that this fossil is not a Neandertal; rather, it may actually represent the earliest presence of Homo sapiens ever documented in Europe.

A single, low dose of  lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) can increase reward-related brain activity, according to new research published in Neuropsychopharmacology. The study indicates that the psychedelic drug alters neuropsychological processes that tend to be blunted in patients with depression.

Astronomers searching for radio signals that could be signs of extraterrestrial life have just gained access to South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope.

Scientists may have just identified the culprit behind signs of recently active volcanism on Mars. Beneath a broad plain called the Elysium Planitia, a colossal, 4,000-kilometer (roughly 2,500-mile) wide convection plume in the Martian mantle could be driving molten magma up as far as the surface.

Ancient owl-shaped slate engraved plaques, dating from about 5,000 years ago in the Iberian Peninsula, may have been created by children as toys, suggests a paper published in Scientific Reports.

Researchers are heralding the discovery of an ancient human skull in central China as an important find. As excavation of the remarkably intact fossil continues, archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists anticipate that the skull could give a fuller picture of the diverse family tree of archaic humans living throughout Eurasia in prehistoric times.

Recent papers have offered alternate interpretations of their age. Knowing the approximate age of the mounds provides significant insight into the people who built the mounds. Archaeologists have built “culture histories” describing prehistoric ways of life and the way lifestyles have changed through time.

More than 2,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun—in present-day Turkey— carrying tons of rare metal.

Archeologists have rediscovered a pre-Hispanic fresco depicting mythological scenes in northern Peru that they had only seen in black and white photographs that were more than a century old.