There’s an ongoing debate among archaeologists as to which route the first settlers of North America took to reach the continent. Some say these migrants travelled along an interior passage between two massive ice sheets, while others say they traversed along a coastal route. New research suggests both interpretations…
Archaeologists working in the Shangchen region of China have uncovered dozens of stone tools, the oldest of which date back 2.1 million years, making them the earliest known evidence of a human presence outside of Africa.
In a study that’s already attracting considerable controversy, a research team says it has found evidence of human habitation along the southern coast of California dating back an astounding 130,000 years. That’s ten times older than most estimates, and a complete upending of what we thought we knew about how and when…
It’s a veritable certainty that North America’s first people arrived via the Bering Land Bridge, but less certainty exists about how and where they migrated from there. For years, scientists thought they had travelled along an ice-free corridor in western Canada, but new research suggests this was impossible.
The carcass was remarkably well preserved, but something was clearly wrong. A rounded hole through the interior jugal. Deep incisions along the ribs. Dents in the left scapula. A broken mandible.
A genetic analysis of ancient and modern humans suggests that the ancestors of Native Americans entered the North American continent from Siberia some 23,000 years ago—and that they did so in a single wave.
Figuring out when humans first arrived in a location is surprisingly tricky. Sometimes, you find a nice chunk of pottery or something, but oftentimes artifacts aren't as easy to find. Predators can leave bones that look a lot like ones that a human might butcher, and a natural fire leaves coal much the same as a…
An ancient skull found in a cave in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos has revised our conceptions of when humans first occupied Southeast Asia and Australia. The skull, which is the oldest modern human fossil ever discovered in that part of the world, shows that ancient humans inhabited diverse habitats far…
There's still a lot we don't know about the first human colonization of the Americas, particularly the exact timing, but we do know that it took tens of thousands of years for humans to make it from Alaska to Chile.
