An international research team has extracted genome-wide ancient DNA from two 7,000-year-old mummified women buried in a Libyan rock shelter, identifying a deeply divergent human lineage that appears ...

When ancient humans mated, dad was a Neanderthal, mom was Homo sapiens.

Africa has long been known as the cradle of humanity. Fossils, tools and genetics all point there. Yet the deeper story of how the first modern humans lived, moved and mixed has stayed blurry. Too ...

Most people alive today carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. Now scientists are gaining a more intimate ...

In October 2015, scientists reconstructed the genome of a 4,500-year-old man who lived in Ethiopia. It was the first time that anyone had created a complete genetic snapshot of an African from an ...

The human genome is a rich, complex record of migration, encounters, and inheritance written over thousands of millennia.

Learn how sex-biased interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans explains why Neanderthal DNA is largely missing ...

Mandible of a hunter-gatherer woman who lived 7900 years ago at Matjes River Rockshelter in the Western Cape, South Africa, for whom a genome was reconstructed. In one of the largest African ...

Together with artifacts from the past, ancient DNA can fill in details about our ancient ancestors. Credit: Nina R/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Every person alive on the planet today is descended from ...