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ancient humans

A caretaker feeds chimpanzees inside their playground area at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Freetown, on April 24, 2025. The sanctuary, which rehabilitates orphaned Western chimpanzees, is a leading site for wildlife research and conservation education programs. Extremely popular with tourists, its keepers have defiantly kept it closed since late May. The protest is meant to spur the government into action over the rapid environmental degradation taking place in the national park where it is located. The deterioration does not just affect the chimps, experts say, but also inhabitants of the wider region including the nearby capital of Freetown, home to some two million people. (Photo by PATRICK MEINHARDT / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK MEINHARDT/AFP via Getty Images)

Life

Smart new book takes an axe to the myth of human exceptionalism

Christine Webb's provocative and moving book The Arrogant Ape explores our unjustifiable sense of superiority in the living world, laying out the evidence against it, says Elle Hunt

Culture

Humans

Cradle of humanity is still revealing new insights about our origins

Comment

Does the family tree of ancient humans need a drastic rewrite?

Humans

Does the family tree of ancient humans need a drastic rewrite?

Features

Humans

Denisovans may have interbred with mysterious group of ancient humans

News

How a surge in ancient plagues 5000 years ago shaped humanity

Humans

How a surge in ancient plagues 5000 years ago shaped humanity

Features

Humans

Neanderthal-human hybrids may have been scourged by a genetic mismatch

News

Humans

Ancient lead exposure may have influenced how our brains evolved

News

Humans

Early hominin had human-like dexterity and gorilla strength

News

Humans

Who were the first humans to reach the British Isles?

Comment

An illustration of a scroll being unfurled by two hands, surrounded by Roman columns and wisps of smoke, with a Roman figure in a toga at the centre

Humans

We’re finally reading the secrets of Herculaneum’s lost library

A whole library’s worth of papyri owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law were turned to charcoal by the eruption of Vesuvius. Nearly 2000 years later, we can at last read these lost treasures

Features

Humans

A compelling book about the end of the Neanderthals is a rare treat

Culture

Humans

Does this sculpted head show an ancient hunter-gatherer's hairstyle?

News

Humans

Understanding the Denisovans means understanding ourselves

Leader

Humans

An incredible Denisovan skull is upending the story of human evolution

Features

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