Ancient DNA is turning human prehistory into something startlingly intimate. Instead of a clean handoff from one species to another, the last 50,000 years look more like a long, tangled story of ...

A teenager who lived in southern Europe around 12,000 years ago has become the earliest person in history to receive a ...

Scientists analyzing ancient DNA from a 12,000-year-old double burial in southern Italy uncovered genetic evidence of a rare inherited growth disorder in two closely related prehistoric individuals. A ...

Ancient DNA from a 5,500-year-old skeleton in Colombia reveals the oldest genome of "Treponema pallidum" yet, sharpening ...

Experts reconstructed the genome of Treponema pallidum from 5,500-year-old human remains in Colombia, revealing an unknown ...

From a 5,500-year-old human shin bone, scientists have discovered a close cousin of the pathogen that causes syphilis, ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. When early modern humans encountered Neanderthals and Denisovans, these archaic humans contributed DNA to our genomes. But how many archaic human ...

A previously unknown strain of syphilis bacteria has been discovered in human remains in Colombia, dating back 5,500 years.

A new study study has revealed that the DNA of the inhabitants of Mesa Mani (Inner Mani) constitutes a unique "genetic island" in Europe.

This ancient people lived in the Sahara when it was a much more welcoming environment.

Researchers have reconstructed ancient herpesvirus genomes from Iron Age and medieval Europeans, revealing that HHV-6 has been infecting humans for at least 2,500 years. Some people inherited the ...

Long before the Black Death killed millions across Europe in the Middle Ages, an earlier, more elusive version of the plague spread across much of Eurasia. For years, scientists were unsure how the ...