I have spent years covering discoveries that nudge our origin story around the edges, but the sequencing of DNA from one of the very last Neanderthals does something different: it rewrites the center ...

Scientists have decoded the world’s oldest human DNA sequence, beating the previous record by almost 300,000 years, and at the same time confusing what we know of our early relatives. Published in ...

Genetic research does not always produce tidy answers. Sometimes it reveals traces that raise more questions than they settle. In recent years, scientists studying human DNA identified genetic signals ...

Africa has long been known as the cradle of humanity. Fossils, tools and genetics all point there. Yet the deeper story of how the first modern humans lived, moved and mixed has stayed blurry. Too ...

Originally published with subtitle: The stories in our genes. London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2016. With new foreword. NH copy purchased with funds from the S. Dillon Ripley Endowment. In our unique ...