Philippa Kaur

Flint Dibble’s high-profile debate with Graham Hancock on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has opened up the debate around the dangers of pseudoarchaeology More

Urban populations in southern Britain experienced a decline in health that lasted for generations after the Romans arrived More

The first Denisovan skull, an ancient hunter’s toolkit and a Roman man’s brain that has turned to glass: here are our picks of the year’s most striking findings about prehistoric humans More

An excavation in Suffolk, UK, has uncovered pyrite and flint that appear to have been used by ancient humans to light fires some 400,000 years ago More

From bonobos and rats to tickling robots, research is finally cracking the secrets of why we’re ticklish, and what that reveals about our brains More

New evidence suggests that alcohol was a surprisingly big motivator in our monumental transition from hunting and gathering to farming – but was beer really more important to us than bread? More

From an incredible series of revelations about the ancient humans called Denisovans to surprising discoveries about tool making, this year has given us a clearer picture of how and why humans evolved to be so different from other primates More

Excavations of a workshop that was buried in Pompeii almost 2000 years ago have given archaeologists unique insights into Roman construction techniques and the longevity of the empire’s concrete More