Artifacts that may be the earliest evidence of modern humanity in India suggest that humans there survived a giant volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago.

Two genes that are still evolving in humans might have subtle effects on people's abilities to learn different types of languages, according to new research.

A chieftain buried in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb was found to be of European descent, marking the easternmost spot where his ancient lineage has ever been found.

A comet exploded over North America about 13,000 years ago, causing massive mammal die-offs and the demise of one of the earliest American cultures, according to a controversial new theory.

The skull of a 30-million-year-old human ancestor held a brain tinier and more primitive than previously believed, though the species probably still had excellent vision.

Australian Aborigines, Asians, and Europeans all emerged from a wave of migration out of Africa around 50,000 years ago, according to new DNA evidence.

Computer reconstructions of a 1.9-million-year-old skull suggest that early modern humans looked more like apes than thought—but other experts are cautious about the new findings.

Forty-thousand-year-old remains from a cave near Beijing add to evidence that early Homo sapiens occasionally mated with older human species such as Neandertals.

Porcine clues paint a more complex picture of the route humans took from Asia into the Pacific than previously thought, researchers report.

While conventional theory says they needed stocky physiques to stay steady in trees, australopiths might have needed short legs more to battle for females.

The distinctive culture that arrived via a land bridge between Asia and Alaska were not the first people in the New World, new radiocarbon analysis suggests.

About 50 objects found at a Minnesota construction site could be at least 13,000 years old, archaeologists said, potentially pushing back human presence in the region by millennia.

A cache of 4,300-year-old stone nutcrackers found in Africa pushes back chimpanzee tool use thousands of years, a new study suggests.

DNA extracted from an ancient human skeleton found in Alaska suggests that the New World was first settled by prehistoric seafarers 15,000 years ago.

An unusual chromosome previously known only in West Africans has been discovered in white people from northern England, researchers report.