Investigations & syntheses
Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
Discovered in 2008 by a 9-year-old boy at Malapa Cave, Australopithecus sediba reshapes the human evolutionary tree with its unique mosaic anatomy, halfway between australopith and Homo.
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 →1.9 million years ago, Homo ergaster redefined human evolution: modern body proportions, enlarged brain, Acheulean handaxes. Discover the Turkana Boy and the revolution he represents.
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 →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 →Ancient DNA overturns long-held assumptions: in Peru 9,000 years ago, women were buried with complete hunting toolkits. 41 percent of the studied hunter burials contained female remains.
Read more →Discovered in 1960 at Olduvai Gorge, Homo habilis is the first undisputed member of the genus Homo. Its Oldowan tools, expanded brain, and complex foraging strategies opened the way for all subsequent human evolution over two million years.
Read more →From Neolithic trepanation to the 31,000-year-old surgical amputation at Borneo, prehistoric surgeons operated with surprising technical mastery and remarkable survival rates.
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 →At Tell es-Sultan in the Jordan Valley, excavations uncovered an 11,000-year-old stone tower and dwellings dating to −10,000. Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, a laboratory for the transition from nomadic life to permanent settlement.
Read more →Between 2686 and 2160 BCE, Egypt built the pyramids, invented centralised government and reached a peak of power. Then everything collapsed. A complete multi-part feature.
Read more →Emerging from an Alpine glacier in 1991, the Similaun man is the oldest and most thoroughly studied natural mummy on Earth. His skin, tools, last meal and the arrowhead lodged in his back tell of a Copper Age murder.
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