Brain & behaviour

Neanderthals lived across Europe, but never seemed to make it further north than Germany. New research suggests we haven’t been looking hard enough.

One of the big pieces of evidence Neanderthals could speak – they have the human version of FOXP2 – is fake news. Is there other evidence they could speak?

Teamwork leads to people taking intellectual shortcuts. This makes them slower to learn and more likely to be reliant on the successful group members.

Humans can use tools with many body parts, from feet to elbows. This suggests the brain bits behind dexterity aren’t restricted to our hands.

A 100 year old Neanderthal skeleton was plagued with health conditions like scoliosis. Their continued survival shows Neanderthals cared for their sick.

Wherever humans went, extinction often followed. New Zealand was no exception, where the giant moa was wiped out. But local populations still remember them.

A new hypothesis suggests that becoming hairless drove the evolution of our big brains, as it was forced to adapt to the new sensations of a naked body

Researchers have managed to reconstruct the Homo naledi brain from fossils, revealing it was surprisingly small yet shared many modern features with us.

When humans arrived in a region it was often bad news for local animals. However, the mammoth escaped our wrath. Were ancient people protecting the animals?

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.