Beneath the waters of Alexandria's bay lie the remains of the Ptolemaic royal palace, the lighthouse foundations, and colossal statues. Underwater …
Read the article →9,500 years ago in Anatolia, thousands of people lived packed into rooftop-access houses, buried their dead beneath the floors and decorated their …
Read the article →At Kromdraai in South Africa, palaeoanthropologist Jose Braga unearthed two children aged 2.5 million years side by side: one Homo, one Paranthropu…
Read the article →Hisarlik, Turkey: for 150 years, archaeologists have been excavating the site believed to be Homer's ancient Troy. Between myth and reality, scienc…
Read the article →Negative hand stencils in Maltravieso cave (Spain) have been dated to over 66,000 years ago - long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe. The evidence that Neanderthals practised symbolic art.
Discovered in 2013 in a nearly inaccessible cave in South Africa, Homo naledi combines a primitive australopith-sized brain with almost modern feet and potentially funerary behaviors. Dated to 335,000 to 226,000 years ago, its remains represent one of the most puzzling paleontological discoveries of the 21st century.
A study in Current Biology analyses the DNA of 521 woolly mammoths and reveals that human butchery sites contain 70% females, versus 66% males in natural deposits. An unprecedented genetic signature of Palaeolithic hunting.
A University of Helsinki team has detected 396 geoglyphs buried beneath the Brazilian forest using lidar. These remains belong to the Aquiry civilization, which may have counted up to 3 million inhabitants between 100 and 300 AD.
New cosmogenic nuclide burial dating places the Yunxian fossil skulls (Hubei, China) at 1.77 million years, some 700,000 years older than previous estimates. The result challenges timelines of Homo erectus dispersal out of Africa and may require rethinking the species' own origins.
Discovered in 1924 at the Abri des Merveilles in the Dordogne, a translucent scraper knapped from rock crystal challenged as early as 1931 the received image of Neanderthals. At least 45,000 years old, this deliberate choice of raw material testifies to an unsuspected visual sensibility.
Archaeologists from Freie Universität Berlin have dated the Amnya site in western Siberia to more than 8,000 years old. These fortifications -- palisades, ditches, earthen banks -- were built not by farmers, but by taiga hunter-gatherers. The oldest known defensive site in the world.
A new study in PLOS ONE redates the mammoth ivory boomerang from Oblazowa Cave, Poland, to between 39,000 and 42,000 years ago, making it the oldest known boomerang in the world -- twice as old as the initial estimate, which had been corrupted by conservation materials.
University of Tubingen archaeologists have presented two 2cm bird figurines carved in mammoth ivory, dated to the Aurignacian (40,000 years ago) and excavated in 2025 from Hohle Fels cave in Germany. The smallest yet found in the Swabian Jura.
A Tubingen team has discovered two miniature mammoth ivory bird figurines in Hohle Fels Cave in the German Swabian Jura. Dated to 40,000 years ago, they are among the smallest Upper Paleolithic artworks ever documented.
Study of specimen Qafzeh 25, a Homo sapiens from the Levant dated 92,000 years ago, reveals a sharp-force jaw wound, partial healing suggesting received care, and deliberate burial -- one of the most complete prehistoric human portraits ever documented.
A proteomic analysis of dental enamel from 20 <em>Homo naledi</em> individuals detected no male markers whatsoever. All fossils from Rising Star Cave may be female -- a statistically improbable result that challenges our understanding of this species.
Discovered in 1999 at Lomekwi, Kenya, and described in 2001, Kenyanthropus platyops is a 3.5-million-year-old hominin with a strikingly flat face, contemporary with Lucy. Its validity as a distinct genus is debated, but its existence demonstrates the remarkable diversity of Pliocene African hominins.
Read more →Described in 2019 from 13 fossil specimens found in Callao Cave in the Philippines, Homo luzonensis lived on Luzon 67,000 years ago. Its multi-rooted teeth and curved phalanges match no other known species, and its presence on an island with no land bridge raises fascinating questions about the navigational abilities of ancient hominins.
Read more →Emerging in Africa 300,000 years ago, <em>Homo sapiens</em> colonised the entire planet in under 60,000 years. This dossier traces the evolution, migrations, encounters with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and cultural revolution of our species.
Read more →Beneath the frozen steppes of Mongolia and the Altai, Scythian kurgans have kept their secrets intact for over 2,500 years: tattooed mummies, ancient carpets, sacrificed horses. A journey into these timeless burials.
Watch the documentary →For eight years, a Franco-Saudi mission excavated Hegra (Mada'in Saleh), the ancient Nabataean capital of Arabia. Over 130 monumental tombs, a sophisticated hydraulic network, and Aramaic inscriptions reveal a crossroads city at the heart of ancient caravan routes.
Watch the documentary →Beneath the sands of Saqqara, the world's oldest royal necropolis keeps delivering: 59 sarcophagi in 2020, a gold-covered 4,400-year-old mummy, the Serapeum's underground labyrinth. Imhotep built for eternity.
Watch the documentary →