The birth of human consciousness may have truly been magic. Scientists have claimed that the consumption of the fungi psilocybin, also known as'magic mushrooms,' influenced pre-human hominids' brains six million years ago. They analyzed dozens of studies involving psilocybin and consciousness, finding the fungi increased connectivity between networks in the frontal brain region associated with expressive language, decision-making and memory. These'significant neurological and psychological effects' may have been the catalase ancient ancestors to interact with each other and the environment - spurring consciousness among our species. The idea that magic mushrooms sparked the pivotal point in humans has been touted by podcaster Joe Rogan, who has referenced the'Stoned Ape Theory' on his show multiple times.

About 80,000 years ago, the so-called Out of Africa occurred, when part of the human population, which already consisted of modern humans, abandoned the African continent and migrated to other continents, giving rise to all the current populations,

When a game, film or TV show takes on the idea of human evolution, it's usually concerned with the future. But Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey's interpretation is literal. You play as a great ape, part of a small troop in a jungle, swinging through trees, picking up sticks and rocks and trying to figure out how to use them to advance the species. It is a fascinating concept, challenging the player to reconnect with the curiosity and ingenuity that helped our distant genetic ancestors to figure out how to progress. Ancestors opens 10 million years ago with a nature-documentary-style montage of cruel life in the jungle, featuring crocodiles, sabre-toothed cats and giant predatory birds – all eating each other.

The sequencing of ancient Neanderthal and Denisovan fossils supported introgression events into anatomically modern humans (AMH) (out of Africa). However, recent studies also support the presence of gene flow from AMH into Neanderthals, thus suggesting a complex hominin evolution. All modern humans are genetically related to each other at a time depth of up to 300 thousand years ago and share a common African root. The migratory routes used by AMH after the African diaspora and aspects of the interbreeding between AMH and presently extinct hominins living at the time in Eurasia (here referred as Eurasian Extinct Hominins, EEH) are still under debate. Recently, for the first time, deep learning has been successfully used to explain human history, paving the way for this technology to be applied in other questions in medicine, genomics, and evolution.

High tech, meet ancient history. Remember that time the Jetsons met the Flintstones? Well, we have for you today a scientific finding that combines future technology with ancient human evolution. Artificial intelligence discovered a whole new hominoid species. Researchers from Estonia and Spain used deep learning to build a model for human evolution.

The new research comes from Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu. In studies researchers have applied deep learning algorithms and statistical methods to establish the footprint of a new hominid. The application of human DNA computational analysis indicates that the extinct species was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans. At some stage this hominid cross bred with'Out of Africa' modern humans within the region of the world that is now Asia. The scientific theory of recent African origin of modern humans is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens).

Researchers have identified what may be a previously unknown human ancestor, thanks to the help of artificial intelligence. A new investigation into the genome of Asian populations has spotted the footprint of a long-ago hominid that appears to have been bred from two different species of human ancestor – Neanderthal and Denisovan. This ancient hominid, who lived tens of thousands of years ago, then bred with modern humans who arrived to Asia after the'Out of Africa' migration. It comes just months after a different team revealed the discovery of a hybrid'love child' born from a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. And, the new research from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), and the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu suggests such hominid hybrids may not have been all that uncommon after all.

From emotionally cognisant AI friends to experiences that respond to your body language, we're about to go on a tour of some of the most advanced and exciting forms of future human-computer interaction, powered by the emotionally intelligent web. To understand this future, we first have to turn to our distant past. Roughly two million years before the first human, in Africa, we find an early precursor to man: the hominid. At this time, many human-like species were facing extinction. Hominids were under intense evolutionary pressures to survive, competing fiercely with other groups for scarce resources.

In his experiment, Queen Mary University of London researcher Sylvian Alem attached a fake flower sprinkled with sugar water to the end of a string, placed it under a transparent sheet of glass and then put a group of bumblebees to a test. If he trained them to pull the string to get the sugar water, would they be able to learn it – and spread the skill to their colony? When Lars Chittka, a professor at the university, saw the experiment, he was surprised. "What I like about the work," Dr. Chittka said in a press release, "in addition to the experimental and intellectual challenges and insights, is the sheer absurdity of seeing bees solving a string-pulling puzzle. When lead author Sylvain Alem first showed me a bee successfully pulling on the string, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. And even now, looking at the videos still makes me laugh."