Why archaeology needs to come out of the cave and into the digital age

Far from being stuck in a stuffy past, the unifying message of modern archaeology is vital for steering us towards a positive future

It's nearly end-of-year "listicle" season, and 2016 has offered plenty of fascinating archaeological discoveries - my favourite is the Neanderthal-made stalagmite construction, which truly deserves the epithet "mysterious". But let's look beyond the past 12 months for a tale of hope amidst fear: the most important human origins discovery of the past three decades, and why it matters now more than ever.

Test-tubes, not trowels, have provided the greatest advances in prehistoric research in the past 30 years. The "Oldest X", or "Earliest Y" isn't our most important discovery, instead it's the profound connectedness of humanity we've discovered through genetics. Everyone alive today is deeply and closely related: we are more similar to each other than two groups of chimpanzees separated only by a river. Even more important, most of our differences in genetic terms are found within populations, not between them.