Investigations & syntheses
Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
Between 800 BC and the dawn of the Common Era, iron replaces bronze, the Celts conquer Europe, the Scythians dominate the steppes and Rome begins its rise to power. This dossier traces the last great period of European prehistory, on the threshold of written history.
Read more →Before Rome, the Etruscans dominated the Italian peninsula for nearly eight centuries. Masters of the sea, exceptional craftspeople, inventors of the Latin alphabet and founders of practices transmitted to Rome, this people remains one of the most fascinating of antiquity.
Read more →From 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals populated Europe and the Near East. Skilled hunters, masters of the Levallois technique, they buried their dead, adorned themselves with jewellery, and left 1 to 4% of their genome in every non-African person alive today.
Read more →Between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago, <em>Homo heidelbergensis</em> dominated three continents. Large-brained, spear-hunting, maker of perfectly symmetrical handaxes: this common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans holds a key role in our evolution -- and remains at the centre of one of palaeoanthropology's great debates.
Read more →Between 780,000 and 130,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis emerged, the Schöningen spears attested sophisticated cooperative hunting, and the Sima de los Huesos at Atapuerca yielded what may be the oldest funerary gesture in human history. This dossier explores a crucial and often overlooked period during which the humanity that would give rise to both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens was forged.
Read more →Off the northern coast of Scotland, a wind-swept archipelago harbours one of the world's densest and most fascinating archaeological landscapes. Orkney concentrates, within just a few square kilometres, megalithic tombs, giant stone circles and an exceptionally well-preserved Neolithic village. This dossier traces five millennia of human presence in this extraordinary archipelago, from the first hunter-gatherers to the builders of monuments that still astonish us today.
Read more →From the Eastern European plains to Siberia, Russia holds one of the world's richest Upper Palaeolithic heritages. Kostenki with its 60 sites, the Venus of Zaraysk, the mammoth-bone dwellings of Avdeevo, and the beaded burial of Sungir reveal a hunter-gatherer civilization of astonishing sophistication.
Read more →More than 200 feminine statuettes carved between 40,000 and 11,000 BP, spanning from the Pyrenees to Siberia: prehistoric Venus figurines form one of the most enduring and enigmatic artistic traditions in human history. A complete dossier, from Aurignacian origins to modern theories.
Read more →Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, before Rome and before Carthage, a brilliant civilisation flourished for five centuries. Tartessos, rich in gold, silver and tin, dazzled the Greeks, traded with the Phoenicians, and vanished mysteriously in the 5th century BC.
Read more →In South Moravia, the Gravettian site of Dolní Věstonice yielded the oldest fired ceramic figurine in human history, the Venus of Věstonice, −26,000 years, a spectacular triple burial, and the remains of a 28,000-year-old kiln. Our ancestors' art and technology reached unsuspected sophistication here.
Read more →On the island of Gozo, Malta, the Ġgantija temples were built between −3,600 and −2,500. They are the world's oldest freestanding stone structures, more than a millennium older than the pyramids of Giza. The civilisation that built them vanished without known descendants.
Read more →Built around −3,200 in Ireland, Newgrange is a passage mound 85 metres across whose burial chamber floods with light at the winter solstice sunrise, with a precision that required centuries of astronomical observation. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids, it remains one of European megalithism's greatest mysteries.
Read more →Nearly 3,000 stones erected in straight rows across 4 kilometres of Breton moorland: the Carnac alignments remain one of the most imposing and enigmatic megalithic monuments on Earth. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2025.
Read more →From Hohle Fels to Willendorf, nearly two hundred female figurines span 30,000 years. Fertility symbols, portraits, ritual objects? The mystery endures.
Read more →In the Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain, a simple railway cutting opened Europe's richest prehistoric site. The Sima de los Huesos, the 'pit of bones', yielded the remains of 29 individuals aged 430,000 years, offering a unique window onto humanity before the Neanderthals.
Read more →Between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, a wild wolf crossed the invisible threshold that separates fauna from companions. How do palaeogenetics and archaeology reconstruct the birth of humanity's best friend?
Read more →An Altar Stone from Scotland 700 km away, Welsh bluestones transported by humans, lunar alignments, feasting networks spanning the British Isles , a complete overview of 2024, 2026 research.
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