Forestry officials are recommending people find eco-friendly ways to honor their ancestors to avoid fires during the Tomb Sweeping Day.

New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

An international European research collaboration led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reports evidence for a rapid developmental pattern in a 100,000 year old Belgian Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).

Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?

Chimpanzees crave roots and tubers even when food is plentiful above ground, according to a new study that raises questions about the relative importance of meat for brain evolution.

Fossil remains of Neanderthals paint an incomplete picture; they cannot tell us about their cognitive skills or give us details of what they looked like. Since scientists in Svante Pääbo's team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig started looking into the DNA of Neanderthals, they have made some new and astonishing discoveries.

Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals' pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were likely redheads.

A team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has determined through analysis of the earliest known hominid fossils outside of Africa, recently discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic, that the first human ancestors to inhabit Eurasia were more primitive than previously thought.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that humans' ability to walk upright developed from ancestors foraging for food in forest tree tops and not from walking on all fours on open land.

By observing wild orangutans, a research team has found that walking on two legs may have arisen in relatively ancient, tree-dwelling apes, rather than in more recent human ancestors that had already descended to the savannah, as current theory suggests.

It took 10 to 15 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out before modern mammals - including our ancient human ancestors - were able to diversify and rise to their present-day prominence across the globe, a landmark new study has found.