Yunxian Skulls: Homo erectus at 1.77 Million Years Upends Human Chronology
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 re…
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From 3 million years ago to the dawn of our era: archaeological discoveries, palaeogenetics, cave art and the great transformations of human societies.
Negative hand stencils in Maltravieso cave (Spain) have been dated to over 66,000 years ago - long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe. The evide…
Read the article →Discovered in 2013 in a nearly inaccessible cave in South Africa, Homo naledi combines a primitive australopith-sized brain with almost modern feet…
Read the article →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 n…
Read the article →A University of Helsinki team has detected 396 geoglyphs buried beneath the Brazilian forest using lidar. These remains belong to the Aquiry civili…
Read the article →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 re…
Read →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 Nea…
Read →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.
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.
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…
Read →Study of specimen Qafzeh 25, a Homo sapiens from the Levant dated 92,000 years ago, reveals a sharp-force jaw woun…
Read →A proteomic analysis of dental enamel from 20 <em>Homo naledi</em> individuals detected no male markers whatsoever…
Read →Paintings dated to at least 17,100 years ago in Bacon Hole Cave on the Gower Peninsula, Wales, are confirmed as th…
Read →In 2023, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger claimed that Homo naledi, a hominin species with a very small brain, had buried its dead and produced rock art. A critical analysis published in the Journal of Human Evolution by four international researchers concludes that these claims lack sufficient scientific foundations: the cave is inaccessible to independent researchers, natural processes have not been excluded, and the wall markings have not been directly dated.
Long attributed to Ramesses II, a painted sandstone block at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been reattributed to Amenhotep II, c. 1400 BCE, showing that pharaonic military propaganda battle scenes existed three centuries earlier than previously believed.
In the Wadi Khamila in the southern Sinai, a team from the University of Bonn has discovered the oldest known representation of an act of Egyptian conquest on foreign territory: a standing figure dominating a kneeling captive, arms bound, pierced by an arrow. Dated to around 3100 BC, this engraving is accompanied by the name of the god Min and a boat -- evidence of organised mining expeditions before the First Dynasty to exploit copper and turquoise from the Sinai.
The University of Leiden archaeological mission discovered in July 2026 on the west bank of Luxor an intact Ramesside tomb dating to around 1200 BC. Its owner, a certain Paser whose title remains unknown, left frescoes showing hi…
Read →During railway construction near Kojetin in Moravia, Czech Republic, archaeologists uncovered bronze tools deliber…
Read →Two long stone embankments on the Dahshur plateau, attributed since 1897 to simple hauling ramps, have just been r…
Read →In July 2026, two climatologists from Stockholm University published in Science Advances a simulation of eight tho…
Read →In Germany, preventive excavations ahead of the SuedOstLink power line project have uncovered a 5,000-year-old ritual pit complex attributed to the Salzmünde culture: burned buildings, isolated skulls, dog sacrifices, and intact …
Read →In the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, renewed excavations at Shanidar Cave by the University of Cambridge ha…
Read →Genomic analyses of the domestic silkworm and archaeological discoveries in China show that silk production dates …
Read →The Egtved Girl, buried around 1370 BCE in Denmark, was identified by isotopic analysis as a long-distance travele…
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