Researchers have reconstructed ancient herpesvirus genomes from Iron Age and medieval Europeans, revealing that HHV-6 has been infecting humans for at least 2,500 years. Some people inherited the ...

We often tell ourselves a comforting story about the history of disease: it’s the price of civilization. For most of human ...

Scientists have recovered a genome of Treponema pallidum—the bacterium whose subspecies today are responsible for four ...

A seven-million-year-old fossil may mark the moment our ancestors first stood up and walked.

The first known outbreak of syphilis in Europe began at the turn of the 16th century, but on the distant continent of South ...

For centuries, rocket engines evolved alongside war, science, and human ambition. From primitive gunpowder weapons to the ...

From “experimental archaeology” to the mysterious appeal of exploration, the wide-ranging subjects detailed in these titles captivated Smithsonian magazine’s science contributors this year Joe Spring, ...

Over 40 years, experimenters watched as hundreds of Black Americans went blind, suffered from organ failure, and died of a ...