In Did West Africans live in the Four Corners Region of the United States from 12th Century ? , published in Ancient Origins, I discussed the Mande inscriptions found in the Four Corners region of...
A eunuch is a castrated man who was usually forced to undergo such a procedure without consent. This was done so that the person might perform a specific social role such as harem servant, guardian...
A remarkable discovery was made during excavations in a Neolithic settlement in Omdurman in Sudan – an ancient skeleton with signs of trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull), dating back around 7,...
Over hundreds of thousands of years, the Neanderthal lineage developed successfully in western Eurasia and survived severe fluctuations between colder and warmer climactic cycles of the Ice Age. The...
Most non-Africans possess at least a little bit Neanderthal DNA. But a new map of archaic ancestry--published March 28 in Current Biology--suggests that many bloodlines around the world, particularly...
New fossils from Kenya suggest that an early hominid species -- Australopithecus afarensis -- lived far eastward beyond the Great Rift Valley and much farther than previously thought. An...
Natasha Joseph / The Conversation He lay alone in a shallow grave at the base of a cliff for hundreds of years. Then, in 2008, patrol staff at a game lodge stumbled across the man’s remains - and he...
Mansa (meaning king , emperor or sultan ) Abu Bakr II was a 14th century ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. This period of time, i.e. the 14th century, was a time when the Mali Empire had...
Using several different methods of DNA analysis, an international research team has found what they consider to be strong evidence of an interbreeding event between Neanderthals and modern humans...
The English word tattoo is commonly said to be derived from the Polynesian word tatau or tatu . This Polynesian word means ‘to mark something’. Additionally, this word is an onomatopoeia, and is...
The world’s earliest known mass-homicide grave of 27 adults and children shot with arrows and bludgeoned to death about 10,000 years ago has been found west of Lake Nataruk in Kenya. The authors of a...
Over the past 25 years, scientists have supported the view that modern humans left Africa around 50,000 years ago, spreading to different parts of the world by replacing resident human species like...
The Cabo Verde islands, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean between Africa and South America, were an important hub in the slave trade. Archaeologists have now revealed to the public a church there...
The continent of Africa contains a plethora of ancient wonders, yet very few of them are well-known internationally or attract tourists from across the world. From over a thousand stone circles...
Archaeologists digging in Libya have found evidence of human habitation going back at least 150,000 years and have had a glimpse into the people’s diet: snails whose shells were pierced to get at the...
The word vandal today may be defined as a person who deliberately destroys or damages property. Historically speaking, a Vandal was “a member of a Germanic people who lived in the area south of the...
The Sao Civilization was an ancient culture located in Central Africa, in an area which is today partly owned by the countries of Cameroon and Chad. They settled along the Chari River, which is...
If you have ever wished to be a part of an adventurous archaeology team finding hidden treasures and long-lost fossils from our prehistoric past, now is your chance to get in on the action. A new “...
At least 9,300 years ago, Stone Age hunter-gatherers in a now-submerged area of the Mediterranean Sea accomplished a feat that even most modern humans could not do: They apparently cut a 15-ton...
Around the middle of the 15th century AD, the city of Great Zimbabwe was abandoned. The abandonment of its capital city marked the collapse of the African Kingdom of Zimbabwe. One of the results of...
Scientists have recently reported that ancient burned patches on the ground in southern Africa provide groundbreaking information about the "weak spot" in the Earth's magnetic field - the South...
Our human ancestors may not have been the first to spearhead new technologies millions of years ago. It would seem other hominins were crafting tools 700,000 years before previously thought. A paper...
Half a million years before early humans arrived on the scene, the prehistoric hominins living in East Africa were shaping tools out of stone. These rare artifacts have been discovered by scientists...
The Omo Valley of Ethiopia is known as a beautiful, biologically and culturally diverse land, distinctive and vital for many reasons. The Omo River empties into the unique Lake Turkana in Kenya - the...