Archaeology

According to a study by Jean-Claude Marquet of the University of Tours, France, and colleagues, which was published on June 21, 2023, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the oldest known engravings made by Neanderthals can be found on a cave wall in France. The cultural complexity of Neanderthals has been the subject of extensive research over the past few decades. However, their artistic or symbolic expression is poorly understood. Neanderthals are only known to have produced a small number of symbolic works, and how these works are interpreted is frequently up for debate. In this study, Marquet and his

At the beginning of the new millennium, just over two decades ago, it appeared that our ancestors' more than 50,000-year-old footprints were exceedingly uncommon. At that point, there had only been four reports of sites across all of Africa. Two were from East Africa: Koobi Fora in Kenya and Laetoli in Tanzania; Nahoon and Langebaan, both from South Africa, were the others. In fact, the first hominin tracksite ever described was the Nahoon site, which was discovered in 1966. In 2023, the circumstances will be altogether different. It would appear that people weren't looking in the right places or with

A group of specialists, including a Virginia District College teacher, has found uncommon ancient instruments produced using the bones of birds going back over 12,000 years, as per discoveries distributed Friday in the diary Logical Reports. The seven aerophones, or flutes, that were discovered at the Eynan-Mallaha site in northern Israel belong to the Natufians. These people lived between 13000 and 9700 B.C., and they were some of the last people who hunted and gathered food in the Levant, or Near East, at that time. 1,112 bones belonging to 59 different bird species were found at the site, and Tal

The practices of ancient Native Americans who fished in freshwater have been the subject of research conducted under the direction of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In the paper, "Freshwater and anadromous fishing in Ice Age Beringia," distributed in Science Advances, the anthropologists detail zooarchaeological and biomolecular examinations of fish remains from a few archeological destinations in eastern Beringia, a locale of western The Frozen North. The team looked for fish records at every site that was discovered that was older than 7,000 years. The middle Tanana basin, through which the Tanana River joins

Researchers have discovered the country's oldest archaeological site, which dates back 700,000 years and is associated with the hominin ancestors of modern humans, deep in an open coal mine in southern Greece. The find reported Thursday would drag the beginning of Greek paleohistory back by as much as a fourth of 1,000,000 years, albeit more established hominin destinations have been found somewhere else in Europe. Spain has the oldest, dating back more than a million years. According to a statement from the Culture Ministry, the Greek site was one of five in the Megalopolis region that an international team of

Stone Age people might have made expanded oceanic journeys on the Caspian Ocean, as per another review distributed in the journal Open Antiquarianism. The study looked at ornamental beads made from disk-shaped cockle shells (Didacna sp.). discovered near the eastern Caspian Sea shoreline at the Kaylu rock shelter, a burial ground resembling a cave. During the late Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, Stone Age people made extensive use of kaylu. Because it is analogous to the transition between hunter-gatherer and herding and farming cultures that took place approximately 11,500 years ago in the region, this transition is particularly significant in the

A closer look at the birch tar that was used to attach Neanderthal tools by researchers at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and colleagues in Germany revealed a much more complicated method for creating the adhesive than was previously thought. The team compared various methods of producing birch tar to chemical residues found on ancient Neanderthal tools in their paper, "Production method of the Königsaue birch tar documents cumulative culture in Neanderthals," which was published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. The capacity to synthesize substances and materials that are not found in nature is one of the characteristics of

Flinders University researchers have been able to see through floodplains in the Red Lily Lagoon area of West Arnhem Land in Northern Australia by utilizing subsurface imaging and aerial surveys. These ground-breaking techniques demonstrated how sea levels rose approximately 8,000 years ago, altering this significant Northern Territory landscape. The fact that their find demonstrates that the ocean had reached this now-inland region has significant repercussions for comprehending the archaeological record of Madjedbebe, Australia's oldest archaeological site. The discoveries likewise give a better approach to comprehending the stone craftsmanship in the locale, which is perceived worldwide for its importance and particular

An intriguing look at how Neanderthals and other humans in western Europe hunted and ate has been revealed by a global team of researchers led by the University of Southampton. The researchers analyzed synthetic properties locked inside tooth finishes to sort out how pre-memorable individuals lived off the land around the Almonda Cavern framework, close to Torres Novas in focal Portugal, very nearly a long time ago. According to their findings, which were published in the journal PNAS, Neanderthals in the area hunted fairly large animals over large areas, whereas humans in the same area tens of thousands of years