Investigations & syntheses
Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
4.2 million years ago, the oldest confirmed australopith already walked the Kenyan savanna. Discover Australopithecus anamensis and the complete skull that reshapes our understanding of its origins.
Read more →In 2010, a single finger bone discovered in a Siberian cave revealed thé existence of an entirely unknown human species: thé Denisovans. Cousins of thé Neanderthals, they populated Asia for hundreds of thousands of years before merging genetically into us.
Read more →42,000 years ago, the Earth's magnetic field fell to less than 6% of its current intensity. This "Adams Event" may have accelerated the extinction of Neanderthals, triggered the Aurignacian cultural explosion, and decimated Australian megafauna -- all within a few centuries.
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 →Paranthropus boisei and robustus thrived in Africa for over a million years with their massive jaws and giant molars. Discover the Nutcracker Man and the fate of these specialized hominins.
Read more →For millennia, two humanities coexisted on the same continent: Neanderthals, masters of Europe for 200,000 years, and Homo sapiens, freshly arrived from Africa. Between 130,000 and 40,000 years ago, they may have exchanged goods, reproduced together, and developed the first symbolic behaviours. Then one disappeared. This dossier traces this encounter through morphology, Mousterian culture, the first burials, migration routes and the genetic revolution that revealed 2% Neanderthal DNA in our genomes.
Read more →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 →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 →In the Mayo-Louti department, some 500 abstract geometric engravings were carved into calcite marble slabs -- between 300 and 3,000 years ago. The Bidzar site, reported in 1933 and a UNESCO heritage candidate, is a unique prehistoric treasure in Central Africa.
Read more →In the east, a quartz-knapping workshop 9,000 years old in the Faleme hills. In the west, over 1,000 laterite stone circles raised along the Gambia River -- the largest megalithic concentration in the world, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2006.
Read more →Inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1982, the Tassili n'Ajjer preserves more than 15,000 rock paintings and engravings: a unique visual archive of 10,000 years of Saharan human history.
Read more →From the Mask of Agamemnon to the Uluburun shipwreck, from the Nebra sky disk to the cuneiform tablets of Sumer: this dossier traces the revolution of metals and writing that gave birth to the first great civilisations. In less than 2,500 years, humanity invented bronze, writing, the city, the state, law and international trade -- before a catastrophic systemic collapse around 1,200 BCE reduced this complex world to ashes. Ancient genomics, Mediterranean archaeology, cuneiform and archaeometallurgy: a comprehensive and fully sourced overview.
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 →From thé Eastern European plains to Siberia, Russia holds one of thé world's richest Upper Palaeolithic héritages. Kostenki with its 60 sites, thé Venus of Zaraysk, thé mammoth-bone dwellings of Avdeevo, and thé beaded burial of Sungir reveal a hunter-gatherer civilization of astonishing sophistication.
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