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.
In a field in south Belfast, archaeologists from Queen's University, working alongside volunteers and local schoolchildren, have uncovered the remains of a Bronze A…
Read →Deep in a valley of Burgundy, where the Seine is born, the Gauls worshipped Sequana, a healing goddess of the waters. Waterlogged soil preserved hundreds of oak ex-…
Read →Raised in 1901 from a Roman shipwreck off a small Greek island, this geared calculator, more than two thousand years old, predicted eclipses, lunar phases and the wandering of the planets. Nothing of comparable complexity would appear for almost a thousand years.
On a hill overlooking the Oued Laou valley in northern Morocco, a recently excavated site reveals a stable farming society between 2200 and 600 BC, long before the Phoenicians arrived. Enough to overturn the stubborn idea of a Maghreb standing "empty", waiting for colonists from the East.
Buried beneath a Portuguese rock shelter almost 28,000 years ago, a child of four or five carries in its bones a puzzling mix of Neanderthal and modern traits. A new dating method has finally pinned down its age and reignited the debate over interbreeding between our two humanities.
Near Bad Camberg in Hesse, an early La Tène elite burial yielded a two-wheeled chariot, gold jewellery and an Etruscan oinochoe, evidence of a Celtic aristocracy and its Mediterranean networks.
Read →At Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran, a survey meant to test instruments revealed an unknown 28 m circle beneath t…
Read →Stemmed points 14,000 years old, contemporary with or older than Clovis, show that several traditions coexisted. T…
Read →Near Armagh, a vast Bronze Age centre gathered, from 1200 BCE, over 200 houses, large communal buildings and gold …
Read →In a Loire Valley cave, finger-flutings made by Neanderthals over 57,000 years ago, sealed until the 19th century, are the oldest unambiguous Neanderthal cave engravings known.
By combining climate and terrain, researchers place in Iran's Zagros Mountains the zone where Homo sapiens and Neanderthals likely met and interbred, between 120,000 and 80,000 years ago.
At Carnac, modelling of 49 radiocarbon dates places the first alignments between 4600 and 4300 BCE, over 1,000 years before Stonehenge. The Gulf of Morbihan, cradle of European megalithism.
At Qafzeh in Israel, a healed cut on the jaw of Qafzeh 25 may be the oldest known trace of sharp-weapon violence between humans. The victim survived.
Read →Eukaryotes originally reproduced by cloning. But environmental stress favoured the emergence of sexual reproductio…
Read →A 2024 study in <em>Nature</em> by Bo Xia and colleagues demonstrates that a mobile genetic element of the AluY ty…
Read →Near Cap Blanc-Nez, 57 bronze axes from Britain outline a Bronze Age exchange hub, between Baltic amber and island…
Read →A 2026 study in <em>Quaternary Science Reviews</em> identifies in the Grotta della Bàsura (Toirano, Italy) traces of five humans including two children, and an adult dog weighing 40 kg, exploring by torchlight 14,400 years ago.
Read →Discovered in 1936 in a First Dynasty mastaba at Saqqara, the trilobate grey schist Sabu Disk remains one of ancie…
Read →Microscopic grooves on fossil hominin and non-human primate teeth reveal an unexpected practice: mutual tooth clea…
Read →At Tell Nabasha, site of ancient Imet in the Nile Delta, Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the fragments of a…
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