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The cultivation of wheat, barley and maize, which are easily stored and taxed, seems to have led to the emergence of large societies, rather than agriculture generally ...

Our brain wiring seems to undergo four major turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83, which could influence our capacity to learn and our risk of certain conditions ...

Quantum theory fails to explain how the reality we experience emerges from the world of particles. A new take on quantum cause and effect could bridge the gap ...

There are widespread concerns that deep-sea mining for metals will damage fragile ecosystems. But if mining ever goes ahead, hydrogen plasma could shrink the carbon footprint of smelting the metal ores ...

Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm's molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago ...

As the impact of global warming becomes more obvious, you might expect countries to step up climate action and preparation, but we're seeing the opposite happen ...

The 194 countries still taking part in UN climate negotiations reaffirmed the Paris Agreement following the US withdrawal, even if they agreed on little else ...

From woolly mammoths to giant sloths, via some lesser-known ice-age beasts like 'killer koalas', the visuals in this documentary are simply astounding ...

The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes ...

Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They're expected to get worse as the world warms ...