A vast stretch of islands across the South Pacific holds one of the oldest human stories on Earth. For tens of thousands of ...

(Volodymyr Yakimchuk/Creatas Video+/Getty Images Plus) A seismic shift in the selection pressures acting on humans may have brought us to a major turning point in our evolutionary journey. According ...

Human evolution has often been depicted as a process of adaptation, where natural selection and genetic changes drive species toward better-suited traits for survival in their environments. But this ...

Denisovans, a mysterious human relative, left behind far more than a handful of fossils—they left genetic fingerprints in modern humans across the globe. Multiple interbreeding events with distinct ...

A massive study of ancient DNA from nearly 16,000 people across more than 10,000 years in West Eurasia reveals that natural selection has shaped modern human genomes far more than previously thought.

Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift — driven not by genes, but by culture. In a paper published in the Oxford ...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be the result of millions of years of evolution. Rapid neuronal evolution in humans is likely ASD’s genetic cause, new research suggests. Though autism can cause ...

A just-published article in the journal Nature—“Ancient DNA reveals pervasive directional selection across West Eurasia,” (Akbari et al, 15 April 2026)—describes how the development of agriculture in ...

The evolutionary success of our species may have hinged on minute changes to our brain biochemistry after we diverged from the lineage leading to Neanderthals and Denisovans about half a million years ...

Scientists reveal Afro-textured hair, common in African populations, is a genetic trait likely shaped by evolutionary ...

“Before the last glacial period, Neanderthals had diverse maternal lineages. As ice sheets advanced and habitable territory shrank, survivors appear to have concentrated in a climate refugium in ...