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Life

Who are you? How the story of human origins is being rewritten

The past 15 years have called into question every assumption about who we are and where we came from. Turns out our evolution is more baffling than we thought

By Colin Barras

23 August 2017

illustration ape to man

Andrea Ucini

WHO do you think you are? A modern human, descended from a long line of Homo sapiens? A distant relative of those great adventure-seekers who marched out of the cradle of humanity, in Africa, 60,000 years ago? Do you believe that human brains have been getting steadily bigger for millions of years, culminating in the extraordinary machine between your ears?

Think again, because over the past 15 years, almost every part of our story, every assumption about who our ancestors were and where we came from, has been called into question. The new insights have some unsettling implications for…

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