Human origins: Search for roots that Darwin started

Today, thanks to a range of discoveries and technologies, we can tell in amazing detail the story that Darwin only guessed at. Read more

Human origins: It began in Africa

A mountain of evidence has accumulated showing that our ancestors emerged in Africa. What is less clear-cut is what spurred their evolution. Read more

Human origins: Rise of the modern mind

Our direct ancestors spread out from Africa long after the first hominid exodus, and they were anatomically and behaviourally much more human. Read more

Human origins: Lessons from an African valley

Our evolutionary history has important lessons for us – all of our closest relatives have gone extinct, leaving only more distant African apes. Read more

Efforts to preserve open-air and cave sites containing fossils will be necessary to combat the growing threats of development and illicit collecting. How successful we are will forever determine how much of the past is accessible to future generations. In the next five decades, aerial drones with digital imaging capabilities will feed real-time, high-resolution images to a global community of remote surveyors. This will enable the systematic survey and monitoring of the large fossil fields that yielded the breakthroughs of the past 50 years. Precise coordinates of newly eroding fossils will be fed to on-site recovery teams.

These activities will expand and harness global interest in human evolution. One thing won’t change, though – it takes expertise to recognise fossils shattered into small pieces when they reach the surface.

Tim White is at the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley

Brilliant Minds Forecast the Next 50 Years – find many more in our exclusive Special Report. You can also have your say on what the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years will be, in our