NEWS: The Nobel Prize is awarded for research on human evolution

The Nobel Prize in Phys­i­ol­o­gy or Med­i­cine has been award­ed to Svante Paabo of Swe­den for his work on human evolution.

The award com­mit­tee said he had accom­plished the “seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble” task of unrav­el­ing the genet­ic code of Nean­derthals, one of our extinct relatives.

He also accom­plished the “sen­sa­tion­al” feat of dis­cov­er­ing a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown hominid called Denisova.

His dis­cov­er­ies helped us explore our own evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry and how humans spread across the globe.