Humans

Before the Romans captured Pompeii, the famous town was run by the Samnite people – and a dip in their public baths might have been an unpleasant experience More

A collection of arrow points excavated in South Africa has provided the oldest direct evidence of hunters deploying plant-based poisons on their weapons, a practice that has continued into modern times in some traditional cultures More

New skull discoveries and DNA analysis are unravelling the mysteries of the Denisovans.  Paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer explores what we know about this enigmatic species and what it tells us about our own family tree More

The jawbones and vertebrae of a hominin that lived 773,000 years ago have been found in North Africa and could represent a common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans More

A 1.78-million-year-old partial elephant skeleton found in Tanzania associated with stone tools may represent the oldest known evidence of butchery of the giant herbivores More

Did Sahelanthropus, which lived 7 million years ago, walk on two legs like a modern human? It’s complicated More

Ella Al-Shamahi explores the complexities of our past by meeting the fascinating human species we once shared the planet with More

Our tendency to anthropomorphise our pets and possessions reveals the baggage we bring to our relationship with the natural world, says Justin Gregg in his fascinating new book Human-ish More