Features

hominides

Homo sapiens: 300,000 years of history, from African origins to the entire world

Emerging in Africa 300,000 years ago, <em>Homo sapiens</em> colonised the entire planet in under 60,000 years. This dossier traces the evolution, migrations, encounters with Neanderthals and Denisovans, and cultural revolution of our species.

europe

Iron Age and Protohistory: Celts, Scythians and the threshold of written history (−800 to 0)

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.

dossiers

The Denisovans: the third human species revealed by its genome

In 2010, a single finger bone discovered in a Siberian cave revealed the existence of an entirely unknown human species: the Denisovans. Cousins of the Neanderthals, they populated Asia for hundreds of thousands of years before merging genetically into us.

Arkaim and the Sintashta Civilisation: The Enigma of the Ural Bronze Age

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.

Palaeolithic

First Hominins: from Toumai to Ardipithecus, 7 Million Years of Evolution

From Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumai, 7 Ma) to Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, 4.4 Ma), a journey through the four species that open the book of human evolution, long before tools and the savanna.

Palaeoanthropology

Prehistoric Arabia: humanity's overlooked crossroads

Now a vast desert, the Arabian Peninsula was repeatedly transformed into lush savanna crossed by lakes and rivers. Footprints 120,000 years old, an Homo sapiens finger bone dating to 88,000 years, and monumental rock engravings 12,800 years old reveal one of humanity's most crucial crossroads.

Palaeoanthropology

Human evolution: eight million years, a bush of species

From Sahelanthropus tchadensis (−7 Ma) to Homo sapiens, the human lineage is not a straight march but a dense bush populated by australopithecines, paranthropus and a dozen Homo species that coexisted, migrated and sometimes interbred. A complete tour of every known species.

Peopling

Out of Africa: how Homo sapiens conquered the planet

From an African cradle to every continent: routes, population genetics, bottleneck and interbreeding. The odyssey that peopled the world.

Peopling

Sahul: the great crossing to Australia, 65,000 years ago

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.