Human Evolution

The Human Instinct: A Conversation with Ken Miller

Too many people think evolution demeans our species. But maybe evolutionary theory indicates the opposite: our special place among life on Earth.

Behavioral Scientist

Speaking of Evolution, in Non-Threatening Tones

For two years, researchers from the Smithsonian traveled the country to discuss — calmly — the science of human evolution. Here’s why.

Undark

Who First Buried the Dead?

Evidence of burial rites by the primitive, small-brained Homo naledi suggests that symbolic behavior is very ancient indeed.

Aeon

Slow Flow of Human Immigration May Have Doomed Neanderthals

What killed off the Neanderthals? It’s a big debate, and now a study says that no matter what the answer, they were doomed anyway.

Associated Press

Inevitable or Accident? Tackling the Big Questions of Evolution

Modern evolutionary science has some advantages Darwin didn’t. Here’s what we’re learning from DNA, experimentation, and more.

Science Friday

The Evolution of Evolution: Are We the Masters of Our Fate?

It’s a profound question facing modern humans: Are we still subject to natural selection?

World Science Festival

This Mysterious Human Species Lived Alongside Our Ancestors, Newly Dated Fossils Suggest

Homo naledi, now dated to 236,000 to 335,000 years ago, joins a half-dozen members of our genus that lived during the past half-million years or so.

Science

Who and What Are We? And When Did We Get Here?

The modern human’s capacity for symbolic information-processing truly is unique among living creatures. And this, of course, invites us to inquire just when our precursors acquired such exceptional cognitive traits. Do these traits have deep roots in the past, having emerged insensibly under natural selection as hominid brains enlarged? Or did they appear suddenly and all at once? And, if so, when?

Big Questions Online