The long read: Archaeological discoveries are shattering scholars’ long-held beliefs about how the earliest humans organised their societies – and hint at possibilities for our own

Tools and bones in Moroccan cave could be some of earliest evidence of the hallmark human behaviour

IN 2007 A new documentary called The Pixar Story screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It covered the wild antics of the studio’s founders as they crafted a new kind of movie—a fully computer-animated picture bursting with riotous colors and textures, ultra-­vivid characters, and plotlines subversively seeded with mind-expanding wisdom. During a panel discussion afterward, the interviewer asked a provocative question.

The week Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, I had gone out of town with my parents and in-laws. While my children played, their parents and grandparents sat riveted to our phones, speaking in fragments. Thoughts interrupted. Plates half eaten. Nothing was whole anymore.

Nikki Kenward had a troubled childhood with little opportunity for play. But in her 60s she entered the world of the circus, where ‘anything goes and anything is possible’. When Nikki Kenward was 30, she thought it was time to stop dancing. As a single parent, performance schedules were unforgiving. And, besides, that was the age at which dancers tended to retire. Now, at 67, she has taken up circus.

Robert J. Cipriani arrived in Sydney feeling the way he always did on the eve of a gambling trip: giddy, confident, a hustler with pure intentions. It was August, 2011. Under the pseudonym of Robin Hood 702, Cipriani billed himself as an unorthodox philanthropist: the high stakes blackjack player who used his winnings to benefit those in need. It was an act inspired by his own hardscrabble past in blue-collar Philadelphia, and conceived during regular sojourns to Las Vegas (702 is the city’s area code).

“I always have been sad about it because I felt like I should have been able to wear it if I wanted to,” said Martha Tucker.

A Chinese man has been reunited with his son after a 24-year search that saw him travel over 500,000km (310,000 mi) on a motorbike across the country. Guo Gangtang's son had been snatched aged two by human traffickers in front of their home in Shandong province. His son's disappearance actually inspired a movie in 2015, which starred Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau.

My mental health and substance-use recovery work unearthed a history of trauma. Yet it is the benign ignorance of psychiatrists that has caused me the most pain since finding sobriety.

Freddie Figgers was given his first computer at the age of nine. It was old and didn't work but it was the start of a love affair with technology that turned him into an inventor, entrepreneur and telecoms millionaire - a future that few would have predicted after his tough start in life.

The difference between finding justice and following the letter of the law sometimes takes a simple act of compassion. Where others might have seen an incorrigible offender, one judge saw promise—and following a hunch, he acted on his intuition.

Latonya Young, a 44-year-old single mother of three, received a bachelor’s degree last week. It was a lifelong goal — and she credits one of her Uber passengers with making it possible.

Aaron Wylie learned two things over the course of two searingly emotional days this week. On Tuesday afternoon, he learned that his mother has terminal liver disease. By Wednesday morning, he'd learned that if you put out a desperate call for help, Maritimers are going to answer that call in spades.

Scientists say cave paintings in Spain, thought to have been by our ancestors, were actually by Neanderthals. So did they teach us everything we know?

Nupur Gupta was nearing the end of a two-week stint teaching at a yoga retreat in Goa, India. It was February 2019 and the weather was balmy, bathing Goa's famous beaches in a warm glow. The sea glistened, invitingly. In between yoga practice, Gupta always made time for a swim.

Danny Stewart was rushing to meet his boyfriend for dinner when he ran past something lying on the floor of a New York subway station. Soon he would treasure it more than anything else in the world.

Archaeologist says ability to think and create objects may not have been restricted to homo sapiens

The gray mouse took advantage of the sedentarization of the first human population, 15,000 years ago, to spread around the world., science,biology,AFP

When British man John Carr learned that his father was not a Polish Catholic who had settled in Britain after the war but was in fact a Jew who had escaped from the Łódź ghetto when he was just 13 years old, he had no idea that the shocking revelation would take him on a journey of discovery into the darkest corners of modern history.

Early humans called Denisovans lived in a remote mountain cave between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago, and possibly longer still, raising intriguing questions about their relationship to modern humans.