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.
The Egtved Girl, buried around 1370 BCE in Denmark, was identified by isotopic analysis as a long-distance traveler from southwestern Germany. Her identity as a fem…
Read →Ancient DNA analyses of hundreds of skeletons confirm that the populations who built Stonehenge, Carnac, and the Irish dolmens were replaced by up to 90% by steppe …
Read →A systematic spatial analysis of decorated sites in the Basque Country and Cantabria shows that Palaeolithic artists deliberately organized their compositions according to a logic shared across distant sites, suggesting a genuine common iconographic program.
A Levantine skull dating to approximately 100,000 years ago displays a penetrating lesion on the facial bones interpreted as intentional interpersonal violence, pushing far back in time the earliest direct evidence of conflict in our species.
Discovered by chance in the tin mines of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria, Nok sculptures dated between the 9th century BC and the 2nd century AD constitute the oldest known sculptural tradition in sub-Saharan Africa. Their discovery, initiated by archaeologist Bernard Fagg in 1943, profoundly transformed our understanding of ancient African societies.
Excavations at Karain Cave reveal that two human species shared the same Anatolian territories for millennia, redrawing the map of their coexistence at the crossroads of Europe and the Near East.
Read →Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers had dark skin despite tens of thousands of years on thé continent. Ancient DN…
Read →A study published in Science on July 30, 2026 reveals that the human genome contains DNA from unknown hominin line…
Read →At thé San Esteban rock shelter in Texas, archaeologists have uncovered a 6,500-year-old Archaic weapons cache: an…
Read →Discovered in 2012 in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region, the Burtele fossil foot dates to 3.4 million years ago. With its divergent big toe and absent plantar arch, it belongs to a hominin distinct from Australopithecus afarensis yet contemporary with Lucy. Proof that in the Pliocene, multiple species with divergent locomotor strategies shared the same territory.
Off the island of Sein in Finistere, archaeologists have uncovered several alignments of submerged granite blocks dating to 5,800-5,300 BCE. These structures, without parallel in France, reveal unsuspected social organization and technical capabilities among Early Neolithic coastal communities.
At Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa, a study published in PLoS One documents burned mammal bones dating between 1.07 and 1.79 million years ago, found 30 metres inside thé cave, confirming deliberate fire use by Homo erectus.
Carbonised wooden beams dating to thé Babylonian conquest of 586 BCE have been discovered in thé City of David. Paradoxically preserved by thé very fire that destroyed them, they could transform thé dating of thé end of thé First…
Read →A genomic study published in Science Advances reveals the existence, 6,000 years ago on the Bogota altiplano, of a…
Read →The San Juan ante Portam Latinam (SJAPL) site in Laguardia, Spain, contained the remains of 338 individuals, 23% o…
Read →A granite pebble bearing a red ochre stain and a complete fingerprint, attributed to a Neanderthal individual, has…
Read →Near East prehistorians have long known about thé plaster-coated skulls of thé Pré-Pottery Neolithic. An expérimental study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences followed thé décomposition of plaster-encased bo…
Read →In Liang Metanduno cave on the Indonesian island of Muna, a negative hand stencil with claw-like fingers has been …
Read →In the Liang Tebo cave in eastern Borneo, the remains of an individual who died 31,000 years ago reveal that their…
Read →Small spouted ceramic vessels found in children's graves in Bavaria and dated from 1200 to 450 BCE contain residue…
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