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Neanderthal Child’s Tooth Found in Palestinian Cave Tells A Tale of Africa

Neanderthal Child’s Tooth Found in Palestinian Cave Tells A Tale of Africa

A team of archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute recently reexamined a set of artifacts recovered from the Shuqba Cave, which included a Neanderthal child’s tooth. It is the first evidence that...
The Great Berber Kingdom of Numidia in the Shadow of Rome

The Great Berber Kingdom of Numidia in the Shadow of Rome

The ancient Romans placed a lot of the world under their heel and into their sphere of influence. Numerous cultures, nations, and civilizations fell in their wake. Centuries of blossoming was...
Human Evolutionary Theory Needs Updating, Again

Human Evolutionary Theory Needs Updating, Again

Until now the Middle Stone Age is thought to have ended about 30,000 years ago. However, new evidence unearthed in Africa suggests the tools which define this period of African prehistory between the...
Mansa Musa: The Richest Man in History

Mansa Musa: The Richest Man in History

When people think of the richest people in history , more often than not they think of industrialists from the modern era, such as the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, or the Carnegies. Perhaps some...
Glass Beads Help to Map Unknown Medieval African Trade Routes

Glass Beads Help to Map Unknown Medieval African Trade Routes

For several decades, a team of researchers have been carrying out excavations at old cemeteries and villages at sites in central Mali and eastern Senegal. Over the years they’ve come across a handful...
Lake Nyos Tragedy: A Deadly Demonic Fog in Cameroon

Lake Nyos Tragedy: A Deadly Demonic Fog in Cameroon

On August 21, 1986, in northwestern Cameroon , a massive froth shot up into the sky from the waters of Lake Nyos, followed by a thick ghostly fog which covered the surrounding landscape. In an...
The Little Ice Age and Its Giant Impact on Human History

The Little Ice Age and Its Giant Impact on Human History

The Little Ice Age is a period tentatively defined as running from the 13 th /14 th to the 19 th century in which the northern hemisphere of Earth endured a limited but substantial cooling period...
The flooding is threatening the Al-Bajrawiya archaeological site, home to almost two hundred Sudanese pyramids and the ancient burial site of the Kingdom of Kush. Source: zampe238 Adobe Stock

Worst River Nile Flooding in Over a Century Threatens Sudanese Pyramids

The mysterious pyramids of Sudan that have stood for centuries are now threatened by floods. The River Nile has burst its banks and it has already killed many people in the African country. Rising...
The ancient city of Petra, Jordan

Petra, Jordan: Gorgeous Rose-Red City and Wonder of the World

Petra, Jordan is one of the world's most famous archaeological sites, where ancient Eastern traditions blend with Hellenistic architecture. The lost city of Petra - named as one of the new 7 Wonders...
Male and female Neanderthals were one of our ancestors, but recent DNA research suggests we also have a mysterious archaic human ancestor.  Credit: Gorodenkoff / Adobe Stock

DNA Study Reveals We Have a Mystery Human Ancestor

A new method for analyzing modern and archaic human DNA has thrown up some fascinating results. It appears that modern humans ( Homo Sapiens ) mated earlier and more frequently with an archaic human...
Paper co-author Steven Goldstein discussing pottery traditions associated with early farmers in Kenya with Christopher Kirwa of NMK Source: Jennifer Miller

Mixture and Migration Brought Food Production to Sub-Saharan Africa

A new interdisciplinary study reports on 20 newly sequenced ancient genomes from sub-Saharan Africa, including the first genomes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana, and Uganda. The...
Man using bow and arrow. Credit: Oksana Volina / Adobe Stock

45,000-Year-Old Weapons Discovered In Sri Lankan Cave

Evidence of the earliest use of the bow and arrow by humans outside of Africa has been discovered in Sri Lanka , dating back around 45,000 to 48,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic Period began...
Edward Colston Statue in Bristol City Centre Has Been Toppled   Source: CC BY-SA 2.0

Edward Colston Statue Sunk in Bristol Harbor

A historic but very controversial statue has been toppled in Bristol, England. Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors pulled down a statue of a figure who was prominent in the development of the...
Archaeology shows the damaging impact of pandemic outbreaks and how the ancient Africans dealt with them. From social distancing to more extreme measures of burning settlements, what lessons can be applied today?    Source: Fxquadro / Adobe stock

Archaeology Shows How Ancient African Societies Managed Pandemics

Every so often, a pandemic emerges that dramatically alters human society. The Black Death (1347 - 1351) was one; the Spanish flu of 1918 was another. Now there’s COVID-19 . Archaeologists have long...
The Engare Sero footprint site, which preserves at least 408 prehistoric footprints dated to between 19,100 and 5,760 years ago. An eruption of Ol Doinyo Lengai, the volcano in the background, produced the ash in which the human footprints were preserved.   Source: Cynthia Liutkus-Pierce / Nature

400 Prehistoric Footprints Reveal Clues to Our Ancestors

Scientists reveal a volume of new data about the group of hunter-gatherers who left their prehistoric footprints in mud. In the shadow of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano in Tanzania , the Engare Sero...
34 million-year-old monkey teeth found in Peru indicate they crossed the Atlantic from Africa.            Source: edojob / Adobe Stock

Teeth Indicate Monkeys Sailed Across the Atlantic from Africa

Keck School of Medicine of USC Four fossilized monkey teeth discovered deep in the Peruvian Amazon provide new evidence that more than one group of ancient primates journeyed across the Atlantic...
Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba

Queen Nzinga: A Courageous Ruler who Set Her People Free

Queen Anna Nzinga, also known as Ana de Sousa Nzinga Mbande, was a queen of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms (occupying what is today the country of Angola in the southern part of Africa) who lived...
An iron currency ring and human skull found in the rare cave burial in Gabon, Africa. Source: NOT Engineers

Rare Cave Burial Might Resolve Africa’s Black Death Mystery

A team led by a geo-archaeologist and a speleologist have discovered a rare cave burial in Africa containing 30 skeletons, drilled cats’ teeth, and iron artifacts. The 14th-century underground burial...
Ostrich eggshell beads have been used to cement relationships in Africa for more than 30,000 years.  Source: John Klausmeyer, Yuchao Zhao & Brian Stewart / University of Michigan

Prehistoric Ostrich Egg Unravels Clues to Human Life 33,000 Years Ago

A team of scientists have discovered 33,000-year-old ostrich egg beads in the Lesotho Highlands, about a 1,000 kilometers away from where ostriches roamed. This establishes hitherto unknown...
The archeological site of Antongona             Source: Photo by Tom Brouns

Antongona and the Mystery of the Early Madagascans

Madagascar is an island nation off the southeast coast of Africa and is most famous for its exquisite environment and unique wildlife, especially lemurs . It is the 4 th largest island in the world...
Neanderthal ancestry found in Africans.        Source: procy_ab / Adobe Stock

Neanderthal Ancestry Detected in Africans For the First Time

When the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced, using DNA collected from ancient bones, it was accompanied by the discovery that modern humans in Asia, Europe and America inherited approximately 2%...
The Shum Laka rock shelter in Cameroon, home to an ancient population that bears little genetic resemblance to most people who live in the region today.    Source: Pierre de Maret

Ancient DNA From West Africa Reveals ‘Ghost’ Lineage

Saint Louis University Africa is the homeland of our species and harbors greater human genetic diversity than any other part of the planet. Studies of ancient DNA from African archaeological sites...
The lower jaw of the 7.175 million-year-old Graecopithecus freybergi (El Graeco) from Pyrgos Vassilissis, Greece (today in metropolitan Athens).

7.2 million-Year-Old Pre-Human Fossil A Challenge to Out of Africa?

A new analysis of two 7.2 million-year-old fossils belonging to a hominin species nicknamed “El Graeco” from Mediterranean Europe, suggests that mankind emerged in Europe and not in Africa. The new...
Southwest Africa, one of the places of human origins. Source: mezzotint_fotolia / Adobe Stock.

New Findings Change the Theories of Human Origins

The evolution and spread of Homo sapiens is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in all of science. Until recently, it was believed that the origins of the species and the ancestors of every person...

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