Neanderthals are often depicted as graduates of the Stone Age school of hard knocks: Without sophisticated weapons, they had to face down violent prey such as woolly rhinos at close range. But a new study reveals our closest human relatives were no more likely than Stone Age members of our species to sustain head injuries. Image: Gleiver Prieto & Katerina Harvati
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The origins of our species might need a rethink. An analysis of an ancient skull from China suggests it is eerily similar to the earliest known fossils of our species –found in Morocco, some 10,000 kilometres to the west. The skull hints that modern humans aren’t solely descended from African ancestors, as is generally thought. Image: Sheela Athreya
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Has our species been hiding its real age? Fossils found in Morocco suggest the Homo sapiens lineage became distinct as early as 350,000 years ago – adding as much as 150,000 years to our species’ history. Image: Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig
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Great minds grow alike. Evidence from Neanderthals’ skulls suggests that their large brains grew in the same way as ours do. That in turn suggests that Neanderthals were perhaps not so cognitively different from us – although not everyone agrees with this interpretation. Image: p_a_h
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Albert Perry carried a secret in his DNA: a Y chromosome so distinctive that it reveals new information about the origin of our species. It shows that the last common male ancestor down the paternal line of our species is over twice as old as we thought, and might provide more evidence that modern humans interbred with archaic forms. Image: dctim1
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