Numbers of animal species react to the natural phenomenon of fire, but only humans have
learnt to control it and to make it at will. Natural fires caused overwhelmingly by lightning are …

The human cerebral cortex is vastly expanded relative to other primates and
disproportionately occupied by distributed association regions. Here we offer a hypothesis …

Human evolutionary scholars have long supposed that the earliest stone tools were made
by the genus Homo and that this technological development was directly linked to climate …

An account of the different ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the
human body, from prehistory to the present. An increasingly influential school of thought in …

Background Until recently, the evolution of the genus Homo has been interpreted in the
context of the onset of African aridity and the expansion of open grasslands. Homo erectus …

In Africa, the scarcity of hominin remains found in direct association with stone tools has
hindered attempts to link Homo habilis and Homo erectus with particular lithic industries …

The timing of the human control of fire is a hotly debated issue, with claims for regular fire
use by early hominins in Africa at∼ 1.6 million y ago. These claims are not uncontested, but …

Striding bipedalism is a key derived behaviour of hominids that possibly originated soon
after the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages. Although bipedal gaits include …

Hominin evolution took a remarkable pathway, as the foraging strategy extended to large
mammalian prey already hunted by a guild of specialist carnivores. How was this possible …

Long-standing speculations and more recent hypotheses propose a variety of possible
evolutionary connections between language, gesture and tool use. These arguments have …