Judean jars that keep the memory of Earth's magnetic field
Fired nearly 2,800 years ago, jars stamped by the Kingdom of Judah froze the state of Earth's magnetic field into their clay. They reveal a spectacular anomaly, and…
Read →Prehistory news
From 3 million years ago to the dawn of our era: archaeological discoveries, palaeogenetics, cave art and the great transformations of human societies.
Fired nearly 2,800 years ago, jars stamped by the Kingdom of Judah froze the state of Earth's magnetic field into their clay. They reveal a spectacular anomaly, and…
Read →What if the Neanderthals' demise was due not only to climate or competition from Sapiens, but to a hidden flaw in their blood? A blood-group incompatibility may hav…
Read →Neanderthal dental tartar betrays an unexpected menu: insect larvae and eggs, eaten regularly. Their digestion could break down chitin, an ability lost in modern Europeans.
The deformed skull of a prehistoric girl, unearthed in Spain, bears the mark of a rare malformation. That she lived to 8 or 10 suggests her kin surrounded her with care, one of the oldest signs of empathy.
At Jabal al-Tayr in Middle Egypt, a vast necropolis five millennia old reveals the evolution of funerary architecture, from the tombs of earliest pharaonic Egypt to the first pyramids.
A First Art team, with the Max Planck Institute, has recovered ancient human DNA straight from the walls of eleven caves in Spain and Portugal. The walls could become genuine "biological archives".
Read →By sequencing DNA from 27 Neanderthals across ten caves in Belgium and France, a Max Planck team shows they formed…
Read →A re-examination of a 120,000-year-old fossil child reveals a mosaic of sapiens and Neanderthal traits, one more p…
Read →Some sixty footprints fossilised in gypsum push back human arrival in North America by several millennia.
Read →At this twin site of Göbekli Tepe, a monolith nearly 12,000 years old bears a sharply defined human face. Never seen before.
A University of York study published in Antiquity shows that Mohenjo-daro, the largest city of the Indus Civilisation, became more egalitarian as it prospered , challenging the assumption that economic growth inevitably widens inequality.