The longest documented family tree in the world belongs to the Chinese philosopher Confucius, whose descendants can be traced across more than 80 generations, stretching nearly 3,000 years from his ...

Ancient human footprints discovery could rewrite the history of migration ...

An algorithm scanned 78 million genetic variants and found patterns that shouldn't exist. Most human DNA tells a familiar story—but some of it defies explanation. Researchers discovered genetic ...

Pain is one of the few things all of us experience, from stubbing a toe to waking up with an aching back; we can all relate ...

Walking on two legs has long been considered a milestone in human evolution and one of our most defining characteristics. Until now, researchers assumed that the first humans originated in Africa and ...

Mosquitoes haven’t always had a taste for human blood — partly because the tiny yet dangerous insects have been around a lot longer than humans. Pinpointing when mosquitoes shifted their preference to ...

Food processing has been a part of human adaptation since deep in the past. The softening and breaking down of food left its testimony on the human body. For example, the massive teeth of our early ...

When Anna Dhody was growing up in Philadelphia, in the nineteen-eighties, her mother used the city’s museums as a kind of babysitter. “She would just drop me off at the Penn Museum and be, like, ...