John Hawks

John Hawks

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modern human origins

Did Levallois tools make Neanderthals human?
Evaluating a recent hypothesis from the geneticist David Reich, focusing on range expansion from Africa.
 • John Hawks
Matrilineal networks may be the key to understanding Neanderthal mixture
A new study focusing on the X chromosome finds repeated maternal dispersal bias in Neanderthal and modern evolution.
 • John Hawks
What the heck are chins for?
A human characteristic that remains an enduring evolutionary enigma.
 • John Hawks
Rock art may be far older than modern humans in Sulawesi
Dating of a panel with two handprints puts their production sometime before 68,000 years ago.
 • John Hawks
Top 10 discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2025
In a year full of Denisovan discoveries, I look at some of the top highlights of research.
 • John Hawks
Bringing emotional cognition to deep time
In a new article, my coauthors and I draw upon cognitive science to draw out archaeological traces of ancient social lives
 • John Hawks
Deep history from the genomes of India
People carrying Neanderthal mixture entered the subcontinent after 50,000 years ago, meeting Denisovans
 • John Hawks
A shorter, sharper Out-of-Africa story is emerging
A new study of genomic ancestry in Papua New Guinea supports a short timeline for the dispersal of modern people
 • John Hawks
Ghost populations in human origins
Genetic models are finding more and more unknown lineages. How real are they?
 • John Hawks
Flexed burials on the right: A sign of Neanderthal-modern exchange?
New work at a site of similar age to Skhūl and Qafzeh suggests cultural sharing among groups of different biological ancestry.
 • John Hawks
A hard ceiling on modern human dispersal
Neandertal DNA in some of the oldest modern human genomes establishes a short timeline of 50,000 years for the out-of-Africa founder event.
 • John Hawks
Ghostbusters of human origins
Humans tend to mix and interact with each other. Geneticists are once again starting to take that seriously, changing their view of our origins.
 • John Hawks
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