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- We have ancient DNA. DNA tells us a lot about who we are now. But we also look to ancient DNA to learn about our origins. When the decade first started, scientists recovered ancient genetic material from a fossilized finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in Siberia.
- Meet our new ancestors. Over the past decade, we welcomed four new species to our family tree, including the mysterious Homo naledi. In 2015, scientists announced the discovery of fossils of at least 15 individuals of this species in a deep, dark chamber of the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa.
- Fossil discoveries tell more of our story. Not all fossil discoveries lead to a new species. But new fossils always reveal more of our story. In the past ten years, we’ve found fossils that widen both the geographic and time range of several early human species.
- We made tools earlier than we thought. When you think of technology today, you might picture computers, smartphones, and gaming consoles. But for our ancestors millions of years ago, it would have been stone tools.
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- Polio Vaccine. On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio.
- Liquid Crystals. Source: “Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Cholesterins" via Wikipedia. If Austrian botanical physiologist Friedrich Reinitzer had not discovered liquid crystals while examining the physico-chemical properties of various derivatives of cholesterol back in 1888, there would be no LCD TVs these days.
- Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Inspired by the observation he made on the second survey voyage of the Beagle (1831 – 1836), Charles Darwin begin to develop what later became known as the theory of evolution by natural selection – the key mechanism of evolution.
- Teflon. The material that most nonstick cookware is now made of was actually discovered by accident as American chemist Roy Plunkett was looking for a replacement for then refrigerants to make refrigerators more home friendly.
- Animal Friends and Animal Food: Origins of Domestication and Cooperation
- Friends and Family Ties in Modern Apes and Neanderthals
- How Disease Shapes Us, and How We Evolved to Treat It
- Most Notable: A New 2022 Nobel Laureate
Whether for work, companionship or food, domesticated animals make modern human existence possible. But do human impacts on animal communities in a broader sense date back far earlier than evidence for domestication?
While most studies of apes focus on groups of only one species at a time, some apes, like chimpanzees and gorillas, do overlap in multiple locations—providing an opportunity to observe the interactions between them. Often when two closely related species overlap in range, their actions are predominantly antagonistic or aggressive toward the other g...
Modern medicine is thought to have arisen at least by the time of agriculture and large-scale population centers, possibly as a result of their development. More people means more disease, and humans would have looked for new ways to treat diseases. But something as medically complex as limb amputations were only known to occur as far back as 7,000...
While important strides have been made in genetics and human evolution in the past year, the most notable achievement must go to a new Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo. Born in Sweden in 1955, Pääbo has long been a leader in the field of ancient DNA, especially when it comes to humans and our closest relatives. In 2010, Pääbo’s team deciphered the Neand...
- Brian Handwerk
- 550,000 to 750,000 Years Ago: The Beginning of the Homo sapiens Lineage. Genes, rather than fossils, can help us chart the migrations, movements and evolution of our own species—and those we descended from or interbred with over the ages.
- 300,000 Years Ago: Fossils Found of Oldest Homo sapiens. As the physical remains of actual ancient people, fossils tell us most about what they were like in life.
- 300,000 Years Ago: Artifacts Show a Revolution in Tools. Our ancestors used stone tools as long as 3.3 million years ago and by 1.75 million years ago they’d adopted the Acheulean culture, a suite of chunky handaxes and other cutting implements that remained in vogue for nearly 1.5 million years.
- 100,000 to 210,000 Years Ago: Fossils Show Homo sapiens Lived Outside of Africa. Many genetic analyses tracing our roots back to Africa make it clear that Homo sapiens originated on that continent.
Dec 13, 2023 · The civilisation myth: How new discoveries are rewriting human history. In an evolutionary eyeblink, our species has gone from hunting and gathering to living in complex societies.
Dec 15, 2022 · New fossils shed light on old ancestors: discoveries from our earliest and most recent evolutionary history. As in previous years, 2022 gave us more new fossil finds to tell us about our human lineage’s earliest history.
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Jan 11, 2020 · Just 20 years ago, no one could have imagined what scientists know two decades later about humanity’s deep past, let alone how much knowledge could be extracted from a thimble of dirt, a scrape...
