In order to figure out how something came from nothing, we first need to explore the different types of nothing

Four-legged robot dogs learned to perform new tricks by practising in a virtual platform that mimics real-world obstacles – a possible shortcut for training robots faster and more accurately

From seed oils to olive oil, we now have an overwhelming choice of what to cook with. Here’s how they all stack up, according to the scientific evidence

From nuclear strikes to giant spikes, discover the systems in place to prevent a collision and test your decision-making to see if you could avoid a catastrophic impact

The controversies surrounding football’s video assistant referee (VAR) system highlight our troubled relationship with uncertainty – and point to potential solutions

Reaching net-zero emissions is essential for halting climate change - but even after we achieve this goal, parts of the planet will continue to warm. Delaying net zero will worsen these effects

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map

DNA from bones found in a cave in Germany has been identified as from Homo sapiens, showing that our species endured frigid conditions there as they expanded across the continent

Experiments with a replica suggest that a piece of mammoth ivory with carved holes found in a cave in Germany was used by ancient humans to make ropes

A Greek philosopher’s musings on pleasure, contained in ancient papyrus scrolls buried by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption 2000 years ago, have been rediscovered with the help of AI

Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea

Fossil evidence shows that humans have been practising cannibalism for a million years. Now, archaeologists are discovering that some of the time they did it to honour their dead

A genetic study of nearly 2700 individuals has revealed the ancestry of Indian people, and gets scientists closer to reconstructing the genomes of ancient Neanderthals

Korolevo, a site in Ukraine where early humans made stone tools, has been dated to 1.4 million years ago, suggesting early humans moved from Ukraine into the rest of Europe

Lake sediments reveal the ancient history of Aboriginal people’s use of fire to manage the landscape, a tradition that has benefits for biodiversity

Wooden tablets containing a language of glyphs called Rongorongo may be evidence that the people of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, created their own writing system without the influence of European language

Intact human brains 12,000 years old or more have been found in unexpected places such as shipwrecks and waterlogged graves, but it is unclear what preserved them

A settlement in the east of England burned down in a fire 3000 years ago, falling into a muddy waterway that preserved everything inside the houses including tools, fabric, cooking pots and more

Italian canoes capable of transporting people and goods have been dated to the Neolithic period, suggesting there was a bustling trade across the Mediterranean Sea

A unique site in Brazil features rock carvings closely associated with dinosaur tracks, suggesting prehistoric people saw the footprints as meaningful

Why childhood is so protracted has long been mysterious, now a spate of archaeological discoveries suggest an intriguing explanation

An excavation on an island in the Coral Sea shows that Indigenous Australians were producing ceramics long before the arrival of Europeans

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlier than we thought

The skull of Shanidar Z was found in the Shanidar cave in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and has been painstakingly put back together

Around 3000 years ago, several empires and kingdoms in the Mediterranean collapsed, with a group of sea-faring warriors implicated as the culprit. But new evidence shows that many of our ideas about this turbulent time need completely rethinking

Genetic analysis of 50,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons has uncovered the remnants of three viruses related to modern human pathogens, and the researchers think they could be recreated

An excavation on Timor reveals humans first settled on the island 44,000 years ago, long after the earliest occupation of Australia – suggesting migration to the latter took another route

Cut marks on a 4000-year-old skull suggest ancient Egyptian doctors tried to treat a man with nasopharyngeal cancer

Rock art is a truly global phenomenon, with discoveries of cave paintings and etchings on every continent that ancient humans inhabited – but how many times was it invented over human history?

An urn found in a tomb in Spain contained the cremated remains of a man, a gold ring and about 5 litres of liquid, which has been identified as now-discoloured white wine

Historians have claimed the people of Easter Island overexploited natural resources, causing a population crash, but new evidence suggests they lived sustainably for centuries

A fossil bone displaying features consistent with Down’s syndrome belonged to a Neanderthal child who survived beyond 6 years old, adding to evidence that these extinct humans cared for members of their community

The skeletons of ancient Egyptian scribes reveal the health toll of sitting on the floor while performing administrative tasks like writing

Wooden sticks found in an Australian cave appear to match the accounts of a 19th-century anthropologist, suggesting the GurnaiKurnai people practised the same ritual at the end of the last glacial period

Thousands of bones found in a Tibetan cave have been analysed to learn how mysterious ancient humans known as Denisovans lived

A new radiometric dating technique reveals that cave paintings on Sulawesi, Indonesia, are even older than previously thought, pushing back the earliest evidence of storytelling

DNA evidence from tombs in Sweden and Denmark suggests major plague outbreaks were responsible for the Neolithic decline in northern Europe

Recent fossil finds suggest that big brains weren't an evolutionary asset to our ancestors but evolved by accident – and are likely to shrink again in the near future

Prehistoric mammal bones found at a construction site in Argentina appear to have been cut with stone tools, suggesting that humans lived in the region much earlier than previously thought

In an effort to understand ancient Neanderthal food preparation techniques, researchers butchered five wild birds using flint stone tools and roasted them

An analysis of 20,000 metal objects from Bronze Age Europe suggests human economic behaviour may not have changed much over the past 3500 years

We know that modern humans took one of two routes to first reach Australia, and now an ancient chunk of plant resin has tipped the evidence towards the northern option

The use of cocaine only took off in Europe during the 19th century, after the drug was chemically isolated from coca leaves, but new evidence suggests much earlier use

Ancient humans are said to have evolved to leave the trees, where our primate ancestors lived, in favour of open grassy savannahs – but we may have this idea wrong

DNA analysis shows that people from Easter Island had contact with Indigenous Americans around the 1300s, and finds there was no population crash before the arrival of Europeans

Analysis of DNA from a Neanderthal fossil found in a French cave indicates that it belonged to a group that was isolated for more than 50,000 years

DNA and protein analysis has identified a white substance smeared on mummies in China as a kind of kefir cheese, made from cow and goat milk

For an undercover operative, Sadie Smith takes unnecessary risks as she infiltrates an eco-activist group. Why? And where do the Neanderthals fit into Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner's Booker-shortlisted climate fiction novel? Emily H. Wilson loved finding out

New research is revealing that common sense is a lot more idiosyncratic than we thought, with important implications for tackling political polarisation and the future of AI