A ritual dance honoring Yoruban ancestors is one of the countless examples of human culture. Jorge Fernández/LightRocket via Getty Images Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the ...

From epic poetry to game shows, from Stone Age axes to spaceflight, humans have the most complex cultures of any species on Earth. Since the time of Darwin, scientists have suspected that this culture ...

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 ...

The chin is one of our most familiar features, yet scientists still debate why we evolved it. Here’s a breakdown of what we ...

Culture is central to defining humanity. Throughout history, many definitions have been proposed to describe what we mean when we talk about culture, leading to considerable confusion. But while ...

Tool-assisted foraging may have been the impetus for the earliest beginning of the evolution of cumulative culture. Early hominins, 3.4 to 2 million years ago, likely relied on foraging strategies ...

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 ...