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Most people alive today carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. Now scientists are gaining a more intimate understanding of the ancient encounters that put it there.

Neanderthals 400,000 years ago were striking flints to make fires, researchers have found.

For centuries, we’ve imagined Neanderthals as distant cousins. But modern humans and Neanderthals didn’t just cross paths; they repeatedly interbred, shared genes, and even merged populations over nearly 250,000 years.

Neanderthals possessed the vocal machinery for speech and were sufficiently similar to modern humans that multiple instances of successful interbreeding occurred. But their brain structure and possibly their thinking were significantly different.

Inviting a Neanderthal for the holidays? That's a good thing. Not only are they the closest relative of homo sapiens, but there's a bit of Neanderthal in almost all of us. New findings about them are coming thick and fast.

DNA evidence shows that H. sapiens mated with groups including Neanderthals and Denisovans. It even reveals evidence of other “ghost populations” — groups who are part of our genetic code, but whose fossils we haven’t found yet.

Ancient DNA from closely related individuals offers fresh insight into Neanderthals’ lives and social structures.

Scientists have discovered a mutation that increases the production of brain cells and seems to have set our ancestors apart from other hominins.