If we restrict the use of Homo sapiens in the fossil record to specimens which share a
significant number of derived features in the skeleton with extant H. sapiens, the origin of our …

A decade ago, we summarised the South African and Lesotho Stone Age technocomplex
sequence as a heuristic exercise, anchored in 242 dated assemblages (Lombard et al …

New discoveries and dating of fossil remains from the Rising Star cave system, Cradle of
Humankind, South Africa, have strong implications for our understanding of Pleistocene …

Previous scientific consensus saw human evolution as defined by adaptive differences
(behavioural and/or biological) and the emergence of Homo sapiens as the ultimate …

Abstract The Upper Laetolil Beds of Laetoli, Tanzania (∼ 3.6–3.85 Ma) has yielded a large
and varied faunal assemblage, including specimens of Australopithecus afarensis. In …

The origins of Homo, as well as the diversity and biogeographic distribution of early Homo
species, remain critical outstanding issues in paleoanthropology. Debates about the …

The fact that rapid brain size increase was clearly a key aspect of human evolution has
prompted many studies focusing on this phenomenon, and many suggestions as to the …

North Africa is a key area for understanding hominin population movements and the
expansion of our species. It is home to the earliest currently known Homo sapiens (Jebel …

Identification of butchery marks on hominin fossils from the early Pleistocene is rare. Our
taphonomic investigation of published hominin fossils from the Turkana region of Kenya …

That may seem obvious, but a moment's thought will reveal that people often regard any use
of words as linguistic. Consider, for example, a dog that responds appropriately to the verbal …