For a long time, the common depiction of Neanderthals was a group of unintelligent subhumans who could only communicate through wild gestures and loud grunts. But many researchers were not convinced...
Huw Groucutt / The Conversation The Arabian Peninsula is a vast landmass at the crossroads of Africa and Eurasia. Yet until the last decade almost nothing was known about early humans in the area. In...
Trepanation – the technique of removing bone from the skull by scraping, sawing, drilling or chiselling – has long fascinated those interested in the darker side of medical history. One stock tale is...
Snared in a fishing net at the bottom of the North Sea, on the edge of the continental shelf, the “oldest Dutch work of art” has been found, according to an article published in Cambridge Antiquity...
A startling claim was made almost a year ago: researchers said that they had evidence of hominins in the Americas at least 100,000 years before most people believed. They called for open-minded...
The nomadic musician looked fondly upon the latest of the completed instruments – a mouth harp carefully crafted by splintering the rib of a cow, or was it a horse? No matter, the sound it made when...
The legendary nature of Santa Claus is mostly understood. However, the existence of Saint Nicholas, often said to be the inspiration for the jolly Christmas character, has been less agreed upon. With...
According to folklore of Nepal, the “Yeti,” also known as the “Abominable Snowman,” is an ape-like entity, taller than the average human, that is said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, Bhutan...
Strong allegations have come forward against a controversial theory suggesting that hominins were hacking away at animal bones and chipping out stone tools thousands of years ago in what is now...
In 2015, it was reported that a bronze arrowhead was discovered to have been lodged in the spine of a warrior. Whilst an injury like this would have normally been fatal, it seems that this ancient...
This tiny ankle bone belonged to one of the earliest members of the primate family tree. The 52-million-year-old fossil suggests that the first primates were expert leapers. Discovered more than 30...
A prehistoric human skeleton found on the Yucatán Peninsula is at least 13,000 years old and most likely dates from a glacial period at the end of the most recent ice age, the late Pleistocene. A...
50,000-year-old tools made from deer ribs suggest modern humans may have learned tool-making from Neanderthals. Found in the southwest of France, these artifacts add to a growing body of evidence...
Phys Org reports that in 1937, a 124,000-year-old Neanderthal thigh bone was discovered during excavations near the entrance of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in southwestern Germany. After 80 years its...
An amazing find at an Ice Age site in San Diego, California may dramatically alter the accepted timeline for when early humans first reached North America. 130,000-year-old bones and teeth of a...
Adam Brumm & Michelle Langley / The Conversation A cave dig in Indonesia has unearthed a unique collection of prehistoric ornaments and artworks that date back in some instances to at least 30,...