Sri Lanka’s September 22, 2026 Easter Sunday judgment marks a decisive legal reckoning with one of the country’s deadliest terrorist attacks, convicting 15 of 24 defendants after an extensive examination of thousands
Many people are overwhelmed by the fast-paced evolution of mass communication in a world increasingly shaped by the internet and artificial intelligence (AI). Yet ideas have not always circulated across the globe
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The first fossil hominins were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century in South Africa, just over half a century after the publication of Darwin’s milestone work The Origin of Species (published in 1859)
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Our chapter in the human evolutionary story is one of a globally connected population that has ballooned thanks to a suite of recent technologies. We frequently congratulate ourselves on these achievements, unique
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The evolution of the human mind has allowed us to transcend our modern understandings of time and expand into the realm of “deep time thinking.” One example of this is the Geologic Time Scale (GTS), a
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Until now, at least 14 different species have been assigned to the genus Homo since it emerged in Ethiopia some 2.8 million years ago revealing branching evolutionary stories of survival, intermixing, and extinctions. Archaeology is increasingly allowing
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What led humans on the unique path of cultural development? And can we do anything useful with newly reconstructed histories of this process? Culture is central to defining humanity. Throughout history, many
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Scientific breakthroughs about human origins have captured the curiosity of audiences eager to learn more about the past. We are entering a new phase, thanks to the accumulation of evidence and new
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A glance at recorded history shows us that humans have “always” felt a need to explain phenomena perceived to exist beyond our comprehension. Today, we turn to science to seek answers to
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An ancient Greek myth tells the story of Prometheus, who, after molding humans out of clay and teaching them the fine arts of civilization, defied the Olympian Gods by stealing the secret of
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While the circumstances that led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans (AMH) remain a topic of debate, the species-centric idea that modern humans inevitably came to dominate the world because they
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When I began studying human prehistory in the mid-1990s, little did I know that I would witness a paradigm shift in our understanding of when the first humans settled in Western Eurasia firsthand. At
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The famous American astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” But can we ever know the history of human origins well enough to understand why humans
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Important scientific advances are changing what we know about the technological, social, and cognitive traits of our ancient human ancestors. The invention of the first stone tools was a hugely significant milestone
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We can all agree that most people want to know about their origins—spanning from their family and ancestral history and even, occasionally, deeper into the evolutionary story. Lately, this desire has become
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We live in an era of mass migration. According to the United Nations’ World Migration Report 2022, there were 281 million international migrants in 2020, equaling 3.6 percent of the global population. That’s
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