Human evolution

Take a tour through seven million years of human evolution and explore the origin of Homo sapiens.

What features make us human? And where, when and why did they evolve?

Many of us carry around two per cent Neanderthal DNA in our genes. Prof Chris Stringer discusses why and what it means.

Our DNA offers us the chance to look into our ancient past. Discover what six celebrities learned when they had their DNA analysed.

Australopithecus afarensis is one of the best-known early human relatives thanks to an extraordinary fossil called Lucy.

Learn about the longest-surviving human species, which was also the first known to leave Africa.

Explore Neanderthal facts, from looks to lifestyle and abilities. These early humans are far more similar to us than once believed.

Meet your long-lost relative and find out why their discovery has had such an impact on our family tree.

It has been named Homo luzonensis.

Fragments of bone from a Siberian cave reveal ancient human species were mating.

Prof Chris Stringer addresses this controversial question.

Discover the science and art involved in making the Museum's Neanderthal and early modern human models.

Listen to the tale of the first adult Neanderthal skull unearthed and what we've uncovered about our close relative in the past 160 years.

Prof Chris Stringer discusses a Museum fossil that helps explain why Neanderthals looked different to us.

Discover more about some iconic Neanderthal skulls.

We've been looking at the wrong species. 

Breeding with Neanderthals allowed our ancestors to better cope with European winters, but also passed on diseases we suffer today.

Accurate dating of 40 sites across Europe shows that Neanderthals and humans overlapped by as much as 5,400 years.

Unearth the one-million-year story of humans in Britain and their struggle to survive in a changing land.

Dr Silvia Bello tells us about the gruesome yet fascinating behaviour of people living in a Somerset cave 14,700 years ago.

Discover how the changing climate of the past million years affected Britain's coastline and the presence of humans.

Follow the progress of a team of scientists as they realise they have uncovered human footprints that are around 900,000 years old.

Bone detectives at the Museum are uncovering the secrets of life and death in London over 5,000 years.

How has London buried its dead over the past 5,000 years?

Human remains from prehistoric to Victorian times reveal how people lived and died in the city.

How scrutinising a person's bones and teeth can disclose who they were, how they lived and even how they died.

Neanderthals lived fast and died young, developing their teeth earlier than humans to power their rapid growth. 

A new ancestor of modern humans with the potential to rip up the family tree has been tentatively named.

A series of ancient lake beds discovered in Saudi Arabia is showing how the now arid deserts were once green wetlands.

A huge skull found in China represents a new sister lineage for Homo sapiens.

Dating to roughly 78,000 years old, the grave is the oldest human burial discovered in Africa to date. 

When modern humans arrived in the islands of southeast Asia, they may have encountered a range of ancient human species. 

The fossilised tooth of a nine-year-old child found in Shuqba Cave is the most southerly evidence of Neanderthals ever discovered.

Rather than a violent turnover of populations, there was a merging of communities.

Genetic and fossil records do not reveal a single point where modern humans originated, researchers have found. 

Ancient teeth could be evidence of a hybrid population of Neanderthals and modern humans. 

Bronze Age people were keeping human body parts and preserving them.

Prehistoric societies in the Britain were creating artistic designs on rock as long ago as the late Ice Age.

New research on Turkana Boy is changing our understanding of the species Homo erectus.

Africa and Eurasia were inhabited by a whole range of hominin species just a few hundred thousand years ago.

Ancient fossils are revealing even more about this species' evolution.

New dating suggests they were in southern Greece 210,000 years ago. 

The introduction of farming across the world changed the course of human history.

The earliest human drawing, dating back to the Stone Age, has been found in a cave in South Africa. 

The teeth are helping us to understand how ancient human populations interacted.

A new paper challenges the traditional idea that our species evolved from a single population in one region of Africa.

Remains of young people who were ritually sacrificed have been found from Bronze Age Mesopotamia.

Hollywood star Andy Serkis worked with Museum experts to create an animated Neanderthal.

The new centre will allow scientists to collaborate more closely and share pioneering research.

Ancient DNA reveals that the British population was all but wiped out and replaced roughly 4,400 years ago.

A newly-discovered fossil jawbone has revealed that Homo sapiens had already left Africa 180,000 years ago.

New dating of teeth from a cave in western Sumatra, Indonesia, suggests that modern humans were present in tropical southeast Asia earlier than previously thought.

Museum human origins expert Chris Stringer comments on research that suggest humans arrived in the Americas much earlier than previously thought.

Prof Chris Stringer comments on new research that has identified the earliest known fossils of our species, Homo sapiens.

A patterned prehistoric human bone from an archaeological site in Somerset has revealed that the practices of ancient cannibals were ritualistic, and not simply about survival.

New DNA evidence of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals raises surprising questions about our species' history. Human origins expert Prof Chris Stringer explains why.

Research on a Museum fossil helps explain why Neanderthal faces looked different to our own.

Modern human teeth that are at least 80,000 years old have been found in China. Museum human origins expert Professor Chris Stringer says the discovery is a 'game-changer'.

Studies on two jawbones, one 2.8 million years old and the other 1.8, give more clues to human origins.

A treasure trove of important human fossils missing for decades has been identified among the Museum’s collections.

New research confirms the theory that modern humans and Neanderthals had a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago.