Why don’t humans have big brow ridges?
The human face is unique in our lineage, lacking the pronounced brow ridges present in other species. New research claims to have figured out why this is.
Why was the Neanderthal nose so big?
One of the more unusual Neanderthal features is a very large nose. Although many explanations for it have been proposed, none have held water. Until now.
Human evolution weekly update #9 – Environment day
Another week, another bunch of human evolution news has come out. In fact, too much for me to handily summarise here. So instead, here are the top 5 most interesting human evolution news stories from the past week. As voted on by you, the people.
Why did the human hand evolve?
The human hand seems to have evolved along a different path to our ape relatives. New research sheds light on why this may have happened, suggesting our unique hand evolved to smash!
Neanderthals worked hard to keep their caves clean
Archaeology reveals that Neanderthals living in a Greek cave went to great length to keep their cave clean. They burned refuse in their fires and scraped rubbish away from where they were living.
Human brain evolution continued after we evolved
Modern humans evolved around 300,000 years ago. New research suggests that the human brain didn’t evolve until much later, after at least 100,000 years ago.
Stone age cave art discovered in Crete
Stone age cave art may have been discovered on Crete, which is quite the achievement because humans likely didn’t arrive on Crete until thousands of years after the end of the Palaeolithic.
700,000 year old footprints document family day out
African footprints from 700,000 years ago reveal early humans butchered a hippo together as a family, with children as young as 6 months old taking part.
Female cats are right-handed, with implications for human evolution
Research on which paw cats prefer to use reveals females end to be right-handed, males left-handed. More importantly, these discoveries challenge many hypotheses we had about why hand preferences might evolve.
Study suggests our foot evolved for fighting
All apes walk on the whole sole of their foot. New research suggests this unique posture may be an adaptation for fighting by giving us a more stable foundation.
