Ephedra seeds found in an ancient burial pit may be the earliest evidence yet for the medicinal use of plants. Stone Age people once occupied a cave called Grotte des Pigeons near Taforalt in the ...

Plants make substances called alkaloids to protect themselves, and humans have long taken advantage of these chemicals, using ...

Plants have been part of our diet as long as meat has, with new evidence showing that Neanderthals, early Homo sapiens and even earlier Homo hominins were using and processing starches, grass seeds, ...

A groundbreaking study led by researchers from the University of Oxford and published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution has revealed that wild chimpanzees in ...

Seeking plants with potential medical properties, a team of researchers in Gabon looked to the practices of two distinct groups: traditional healers living on the fringes of Gabon’s Moukalaba-Doudou ...

The common belief about our ancient human ancestors is that they were primarily carnivores, hunting animals for the main source of food. This "Paleolithic meat-eater" trope is widely believed by both ...

A new review of recent studies shows that chimpanzees use some of the same medicinal plants as humans. In Uganda, the great apes have been observed applying plants with known beneficial phytochemicals ...