Grassy beginning for earliest Homo

In 2013, an ASU research team found the oldest known evidence of our own genus, Homo, at Ledi-Geraru in the lower Awash Valley of Ethiopia. A jawbone with teeth was dated to 2.8 million years ago, about 400,000 years earlier ...

Need for social skills helped shape modern human face

The modern human face is distinctively different to that of our near relatives and now researchers believe its evolution may have been partly driven by our need for good social skills.

The origins of laughter

We know the benefits of laughter on health. But why do we laugh? What are the evolutionary origins of laughter and humour? Steven Légaré has asked these questions and has made them the subject of his master's thesis, which ...

Study demonstrates evolution of stereotypes

(Phys.org)—Researchers from Scotland suggest that stereotypes form and evolve over time through social transmission of information, similar to the way in which languages evolve.

Termite creates sustainable monoculture fungus-farming

(PhysOrg.com) -- Food production of modern human societies is mostly based on large-scale monoculture crops, but it now appears that advanced insect societies have the same practice. Our societies took just ten thousand years ...

Ants turn unwelcome lodgers into a useful standing army

Mercenary soldiers are notoriously unreliable because their loyalty is as thin as the banknotes they get paid, and they may turn against their employers before moving on to the next dirty job. Not so in fungus-farming ants, ...

Fluid dynamics may play key role in evolution of cooperation

Believe it or not—it's in our nature to cooperate with one another, even when cheating may be more profitable. Social cooperation is common in every scale of life, from the simplest bacterial films and multicellular tissues ...

page 2 from 11