The 2023 discoveries that made us rethink the story of human evolution

This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox for free every month.

At this point it’s a truism that the story of human evolution is being rethought. Discoveries in recent years have forced us to rethink many crucial points, such as how old our species is – about 300,000 years old as opposed to 200,000 – and what extinct hominins like the Neanderthals were really like.

2023…