Hi, I'm John Hawks.
I'm a paleoanthropologist, exploring the ancient world of humans and fossil human relatives.
I write about the science of human origins, and how our ancient past can help make sense of today's world.
You can follow my writing here, or subscribe to have articles sent when they are published. Keep checking in for more changes.
All the hominins made tools
A study of associations between stone tool evidence and fossil hominin remains shows that a wide range of species made stone artifacts.
Ghostbusters of human origins
Humans tend to mix and interact with each other. Geneticists are once again starting to take that seriously, changing their view of our origins.
What color were Neandertals?
Even with whole genomes, scientists can't say very precisely what pattern of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation was in ancient populations like the Neandertals.
Research highlight: Brain of the Taung Child
A new study of the endocast discovered a hundred years ago asks, what if we found this fossil today?
Research highlight: Understanding how Homo naledi walked and ran
A new paper in the Journal of Anatomy presents a reconstructed lower limb based on the Rising Star fossil sample.
The circumstances of the Taung discovery
The textbook story of the fossil leaves out a wider context in which scientists interpreted the first evidence of Australopithecus.
A hard ceiling on modern human dispersal
Neandertal DNA in some of the oldest modern human genomes establishes a short timeline of 50,000 years for the out-of-Africa founder event.
A look at the Maba hominin skull
Found in 1958, the skull is one of a handful of fossil hominins from southern China that may be connected with the Denisovans.
The contribution of segmental duplications to human diversity
New studies based on long-read sequencing open a new way of looking at variation of these structural variants.
A look at the fossil skull from Steinheim
The skull provides some of the best evidence for the ancestral population of Neandertals, and had a tumultuous history in the decades after its discovery.
Top 10 discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2024
New resolution is emerging of some events in ancient human populations, and a clearer view of some parts of the genome.
A sad end for the Journal of Human Evolution
A joint statement announces the resignation of the entire editorial board, while disclosing for the first time the use of AI in article production.
Did scientists miss a fake Neandertal for 25 years?
An investigation claims dozens of cases of misdated bones in Rheinland-Pfalz, including the purported Ochtendung Neandertal.
When hominins walked in each others' tracks
A new study by Kevin Hatala and coworkers finds that Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei walked on the same shores within hours of each other.
“Lucy”, superstar of evolution, at fifty
Today's science has broadened enormously since the 1970s but the iconic fossil still has an important place in understanding our ancient past.
A look at the Neanderthal from Altamura
The exceptional skeleton encased in calcite has started to yield insights about early Neanderthals.
Late Neandertals: more diverse than most scientists thought
The new “Thorin” genome from Grotte Mandrin represents a previously-unknown Neanderthal deep history.
What do we know about the ancestry of Homo erectus?
A creation interest group takes a quote from me, and I look back at a classic paper.
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