We are sure that our closest living relatives are chimpanzees, and that our lineage split from theirs about 7 million years ago. The road to humanity was a long one, however. Nearly 4 million years...

A new study—citing genetic evidence from a disorder that in some ways mirrors elements of domestication—suggests modern humans domesticated themselves after they split from their extinct relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, approximately 600,000 years ago.

Apes lived far and wide from Europe to China, though we have found them especially in Africa, where sediments of ancient volcanoes preserve their remains. Author’s chart detailing the main...

The quick answer is that humans didn't actually evolve from modern apes. But we did both evolve from a common ancestor who happened to look more like an ape than a human. So where did the ape-like ancestor go? Why did this ancestor evolve into humans and modern apes?

Over the past 30,000 years or so, humans have domesticated all manner of species for food, hunting, transport, materials, to control pests and to keep as pets. But some say that before we...