When Darwin wrote The Descent of Man in 1871, it was the first substantial foray into theorizing about human evolution—but it stood on hypotheses with thin evidence as few hominid fossils predating modern humans had yet been found. Today, we know a great deal more about human evolution thanks not only to paleoanthropology but fields such as genetics too. This article from Scientific American traces the remarkable progress scientists have made in understanding the complex origins of Homo sapiens as well as outlining the mysteries that remain.
