World History

Her unusual anatomy suggests our earliest ancestors didn’t evolve in a straight line from ape to human.

More than four million years ago, a female hominin moved through a world that blended trees and open ground, long before humans looked or behaved the way we do today.

Discovered in Ethiopia and known as Ardi, her skeleton offered scientists a rare chance to study one of the earliest known members of the human family. What they found challenged long-standing assumptions about how human evolution unfolded.

Rather than showing a clean shift from ape to human, Ardi’s anatomy revealed a complex mix of traits, suggesting that early ancestors experimented with multiple ways of moving and surviving before modern humans ever appeared.

Click through to learn more about what made Ardi a unique discovery.

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From pay and time off to exemptions, these details can affect how you respond.

Opening a jury summons can immediately raise questions most people were never taught to answer. Do you actually have to go? Will missing work cause problems? What happens if the timing makes service impossible?

Jury duty is a cornerstone of the U.S. legal system, but for many people, the process feels confusing and intimidating. Part of that confusion comes from how much jury procedures vary by location. Federal courts, state courts, and county courts all operate under slightly different rules, and what applies in one place may not apply in another.

Understanding how a jury summons works matters because ignoring one can carry consequences, while responding correctly can save time, protect your rights, and reduce stress.

Click through to learn what a jury summons really requires and what flexibility most courts allow.

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New evidence suggests the skull belongs to a previously mysterious branch of ancient humans.

For decades, a nearly complete ancient human skull nicknamed “Dragon Man” sat at the center of a scientific mystery. Discovered in China and kept hidden for years, the fossil didn’t fit neatly into any known category of ancient humans.

Its size, facial structure, and heavy brow ridges set it apart, leading some researchers to suggest it represented an entirely new species. New evidence has now brought clarity. By analyzing ancient genetic material and preserved proteins extracted directly from the skull, scientists were able to compare it with known ancient human lineages.

The results show that Dragon Man belongs to the Denisovans, a shadowy group of ancient humans previously known mostly through DNA. This finding helps reshape the human family tree and fills in one of the biggest gaps in our understanding of human evolution in Asia.

Click through to learn how Dragon Man closes a gap in human evolution.

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It’s a defining human trait with no clear survival advantage and no agreed-upon explanation.

Take a close look at the human body and it feels familiar, even predictable. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, limbs built for walking and grasping. At first glance, there’s nothing that seems radically different from what we see in other mammals. Yet hidden in plain sight is a feature so distinctive that it appears in no other living species.

Fossils show it arrived relatively late in our evolutionary story, and modern science still can’t agree on why it exists at all. This mystery matters because it quietly challenges how we think evolution works. We often assume every trait must serve a clear purpose, shaped by survival and reproduction. But this feature doesn’t fit neatly into that idea.

As researchers revisit old assumptions using better fossil evidence and modern imaging tools, it has become a reminder that evolution doesn’t always follow a clean or logical script.

Click through to learn the body part that sets humans apart.

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A routine dig revealed silver hidden since the Viking Age, preserved exactly where it was buried.

At first, the discovery didn’t look like anything unusual to the team from the University of Stavanger’s Archaeological Museum. During a routine survey ahead of farm construction in western Norway, archaeologists noticed thin, twisted lines in the soil that resembled ordinary metal debris.

Fields that have been worked for generations often contain scraps of wire or discarded material from different eras, and most of the time those finds are quickly ruled out as modern. But this time, the archaeologists took a closer look. That pause revealed something far more meaningful: a carefully hidden cache of Viking silver, buried more than a thousand years ago and never recovered.

What began as a standard field survey turned into a rare glimpse of everyday life in the Viking Age, showing how people protected their wealth, responded to uncertainty, and made decisions they believed were temporary.

Click through to see how an ordinary human moment preserved underground until now.

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From church rituals to rowdy feasts, medieval Christmas looked very different than today.

Christmas in the Middle Ages looked very different from the modern holiday most people recognize today. It was not centered on gift exchanges, decorated trees, or a single day of celebration. Instead, Christmas was part of a long religious season shaped by church teachings, local traditions, and the realities of medieval life, where survival through winter was never guaranteed.

For most people, Christmas blended solemn religious observance with moments of release, excess, and community bonding. How it was celebrated depended on geography, social class, and the century in question.

What survives in historical records shows a holiday that mixed faith, food, hierarchy, and occasional chaos, offering a rare break from the strict routines of medieval society.

Click through to step back in time to a Medieval Christmas celebration.

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The surprising true story of a dressed-up squirrel who helped boost morale during WWII.

During World War II, Americans on the home front found comfort and motivation in all kinds of unexpected places. One of the most unusual was a gray squirrel named Tommy Tucker. Far from being just a novelty pet, Tommy became a national symbol of wartime morale, appearing in newspapers, posing for photos, and even helping promote war bond drives.

Dressed in custom-made outfits and accompanied by his owner, Tommy toured public events and captured the public’s imagination at a time when optimism was in short supply. His story reflects how deeply Americans leaned into shared symbols, humor, and warmth to cope with the pressures of war.

What began as a simple relationship between a man and a rescued squirrel turned into one of the strangest and most heartwarming chapters of the WWII home front.

Click through and learn more about Tommy Tucker’s antics.

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New genetic evidence offers a clearer picture of a Roman-era woman found in southern England.

For years, the discovery of a Roman-era skeleton on England’s southern coast was widely cited as evidence of Britain’s earliest known Black resident. Based largely on skull shape and facial reconstruction techniques available at the time, researchers suggested the woman may have had African ancestry.

That interpretation became part of broader conversations about diversity in ancient Britain. But advances in ancient DNA technology are now allowing scientists to revisit such claims with far more precision.

A new genetic analysis of the remains, known as the Beachy Head Woman, suggests she was more closely related to local British populations living during the Roman period. The updated findings don’t erase diversity from Britain’s past, but they do show how science continues to refine historical understanding as tools improve.

Click through to discover where and how she was found.

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New genetic discoveries are painting a very different picture of the first people who lived in Europe.

Ancient DNA has completely changed what we thought we knew about Europe’s earliest settlers. Instead of one group slowly spreading across the continent, scientists have learned there were several waves of people arriving at different times, each adding their own piece to Europe’s story. Research from major genome projects shows that early hunter-gatherers, migrating farmers, and later steppe herders all shaped today’s populations. These findings are nothing like what researchers believed just a few decades ago. And as more ancient DNA is decoded, the story of Europe’s first people keeps getting more surprising.

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A major genetic review suggests the capacity for language emerged far earlier in human history than previously believed.

Pinpointing when humans first began to speak has always been difficult because language doesn’t leave fossils behind. But a new genomic analysis led by linguist Shigeru Miyagawa and colleagues offers one of the strongest clues yet. By examining genetic branching patterns in early human populations, the researchers argue that the biological capacity for language must have existed by around 135,000 years ago. If all modern human groups share core language features, the team says, then those abilities likely emerged before our ancestors began splitting into separate populations. Their findings are reshaping long-held ideas about when speech first appeared.

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