More than 400 human footprints preserved in hardened volcanic sediment are providing a rare peek at social life among ancient East African hunter-gatherers. These impressions, found in northern ...

A team of international researchers, which includes a Saint Louis University Madrid anthropologist, dug deep to find some of the oldest African DNA on record, in a new study published in Nature.

Not long after humankind's emergence in Africa, Homo sapiens were off to explore the rest of the world. Yet, across the ancient timeline, the land that ancient humans walked upon was ever-changing.

Important, previously unrecognized genetic changes common to all ancient and modern Homo sapiens spread in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, a new study finds. After that, the same investigation ...

Tens of thousands of years ago, humans sought refuge from the elements in a rocky hollow near the crook of Africa’s western coast. They crafted stone tools, ate fresh kills or gathered plants, and ...

The ancient-genomics revolution is finally reaching the cradle of humanity: Africa. Researchers have sequenced the genomes of four children who lived in what is now Cameroon several thousand years ago ...

Marlize Lombard works for the University of Johannesburg. She received funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. New genetic research is shedding light on some of the earliest ...

Ancient DNA from southern Africa is rewriting the story of our species, revealing that some early humans in this region lived in deep isolation for roughly 100,000 years and evolved genetic patterns ...