The Antikythera Mechanism, the Bronze Computer That Predicted the Sky
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 w…
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.
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 w…
Read →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 …
Read →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.
At Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran, a survey meant to test instruments revealed an unknown 28 m circle beneath the moor: twelve pit-anomalies in a ring, perhaps a Neolithic timber or stone circle.
Stemmed points 14,000 years old, contemporary with or older than Clovis, show that several traditions coexisted. The 'Clovis first' model crumbles further.
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,…
Read →By combining climate and terrain, researchers place in Iran's Zagros Mountains the zone where Homo sapiens and Nea…
Read →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.
Eukaryotes originally reproduced by cloning. But environmental stress favoured the emergence of sexual reproduction around 2 billion years ago: a strategy for producing genetically diverse offspring better suited to hostile environments.
A 2024 study in <em>Nature</em> by Bo Xia and colleagues demonstrates that a mobile genetic element of the AluY type, inserted into the TBXT gene 20 to 25 million years ago, suppressed the tail in great apes and our own lineage.
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 …
Read →Discovered in 1936 in a First Dynasty mastaba at Saqqara, thé 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 cleaning, a social bonding behaviour whose roots stretch back millions of years.
Read →At Tell Nabasha, site of ancient Imet in thé Nile Delta, Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered thé fragments of a…
Read →Récent research pushes back human occupation of thé Grand Canyon to more than 12,000 years, from Clovis hunters to…
Read →At Héliopolis, thé spiritual heart of ancient Egypt now engulfed by Cairo, Egyptian archaeologists have discovered…
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