Investigations & syntheses
Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
Automatic crossbows, mercury rivers and a burial chamber sealed for 2,200 years: the mausoleum of China's first emperor is one of the most enigmatic sites in world archaeology. A complete dossier on what lies beneath the Xi'an mound and why archaeologists refuse to open it.
Read more →Described in 2019 from 13 fossil specimens found in Callao Cave in the Philippines, Homo luzonensis lived on Luzon 67,000 years ago. Its multi-rooted teeth and curved phalanges match no other known species, and its presence on an island with no land bridge raises fascinating questions about the navigational abilities of ancient hominins.
Read more →From 7 to 0.78 million years ago, Africa dried out, savannas spread, and the megafauna of large mammals reached its peak. A world in upheaval that forced hominins to innovate.
Read more →At Dmanisi in Georgia, five skulls aged 1.8 million years revolutionize the history of human evolution. Discover the oldest hominins ever found outside Africa.
Read more →In 1987, the chance discovery of a circular Bronze Age city buried in the southern Ural steppe shook our understanding of Eurasian protohistory. Arkaim and the Sintashta culture, its builders, are now at the heart of debates about the origins of Indo-European peoples, the invention of the war chariot, and the rise of the first warrior societies of the steppe.
Read more →For 1.8 million years, Homo erectus colonised three continents, invented the Acheulean handaxe, tamed fire, and cared for its elderly. This dossier traces the history of the most long-lived human species: its discoveries, anatomy, migrations, and the mysteries it still poses.
Read more →3,500 years ago, navigators bearing distinctive geometric pottery set out from Melanesia to colonise the immensity of the Pacific. Lapita culture is the foundation of all Polynesian and Micronesian civilisations — one of the greatest human adventures ever undertaken.
Read more →Between 2600 and 1900 BCE, a sophisticated urban civilisation flourished in the Indus basin. Grid streets, advanced plumbing, an undeciphered script: Harappa and Mohenjo-daro remain among Antiquity's greatest mysteries.
Read more →Discovered in 2003 in Liang Bua cave (Indonesia), Homo floresiensis stood barely a metre tall. Tiny brain, stone tools, hunting of dwarf elephant: this island cousin upends everything we thought we knew about human evolution in South-East Asia.
Read more →From Peking Man to the bronzes of Sanxingdui, from Yangshao painted pottery to Shang oracle bones: a 25-minute journey through one of the longest and most diverse regional prehistories in the world.
Read more →From a single finger bone dug up in Siberia, genetics conjured an unknown humanity. Denisovans still live on in the DNA of Asian and Oceanian peoples, and one of their genes now helps Tibetans breathe at altitude.
Read more →Reaching Australia from Asia meant crossing open sea, never seeing the far shore. 65,000 years ago, people did it, the oldest open-water voyaging in human history.
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