homo sapiens

A piece of hematite found in Denisova cave was used as a crayon for art work in the cave.

16 December, 2018 - 14:13 ancient-origins

Ancient Colored ‘Pencil’ Up To 50,000-Years-Old Found in Siberia

Cave-dwellers used hematite crayon for art work in Altai Mountains, say archeologists investigating a latest find in Siberia. The pre-historic artists were not Homo sapiens but Denisovans - a long-...

Inside the Tham Lod rockshelter - Thailand

22 September, 2018 - 02:17 Gisele Santos

Magnificent Tham Lod Rockshelter Sheds Light on Earliest Humans in Thailand

The Tham Lod Rockshelter (a shallow cave) in Mae Hong Son Province, in Northwest Thailand is a prehistoric area that had been the center for burial and tool–making in the late Pleistocene to the late...

West African rain forest during amazing sunset, Liberia, West Africa

7 September, 2018 - 22:56 ancient-origins

Human Evolution: Secrets of Early Ancestors Could Be Unlocked by African Rainforests

By Eleanor Scerri / The Conversation Think of African rainforests and the picture is inevitably one of a dark and forbidding realm where life is abundant, yet alarmingly cryptic. Rather than the...

The concave hole found in the Catalonia cave

15 August, 2018 - 00:47 Joanna Gillan

Discoveries in Spanish cave suggest Neanderthals had hot water and bedrooms

Archaeologists in Spain have made a number of discoveries inside an ancient cave in Catalonia which suggest that Neanderthals had hot water and separate living quarters around 60,000 years ago. The...

Our species is ecologically unique in its ability to occupy, and specialize in, a variety of different environments as it began to colonize the entire planet between approximately 300 and 60 thousand years ago.

1 August, 2018 - 19:02 ancient-origins

Adapt, Diversify, Find a Niche: Survival Tactics of Homo Sapiens That Brought World Domination

Our species' ability to occupy diverse and 'extreme' settings around the world in the Middle and Late Pleistocene (300-12 thousand years ago) stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of...

Eritrean Grand Canyon, East African rift valley.

16 July, 2018 - 19:00 ancient-origins

Rethinking Homo sapiens? The story of our origins gets dizzyingly complicated

By Darren Curnoe / The Conversation You might say it’s the ultimate prize of science, to discover when, where and why humans evolved. For a long time, the evidence has been overwhelming that Homo...

An image of white-tailed eagle talons from the Krapina Neanderthal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130,000 yars ago, may be part of a jewelry assemblage.

15 June, 2018 - 02:36 ancient-origins

Did Neanderthals make jewelry 130,000 years go? Eagle claws provide clues

Krapina Neanderthals may have manipulated white-tailed eagle talons to make jewelry 130,000 years ago, before the appearance of modern human in Europe, according to a study published March 11, 2015...

Fossilized jawbone, dubbed Penghu 1, found submerged in seafloor near Taiwan. Dated between 10,000 and 190,000 years ago. Credit: Y. Kaifu,

31 May, 2018 - 03:42 lizleafloor

Taiwan Jaw Bone Connected to the Origins of Humanity, May Reveal Entirely New Prehistoric Species

The first ancient human fossil found in Taiwan may indicate the presence of an unknown archaic species of humans who lived in Asia during the Pleistocene era, possibly hundreds of thousands of years...

Human Brain by J.M. Bourgery, 1831-1854.

24 May, 2018 - 02:00 ancient-origins

Why do humans have such large brains? (And why aren’t they larger?)

Mauricio Gonzalez Forero / The Conversation Most animals have brains in proportion to their body size – species with larger bodies often have larger brains. But the human brain is almost six times...

The older set of bones found on Tuyana site dated to 50,000 years ago. Source: Vesti Irkutsk

23 May, 2018 - 14:00 ancient-origins

50,000-year-old Siberian bones may be the ‘oldest Homo sapiens' outside Africa and Middle East

By: The Siberian Times reporter Bones unearthed in eastern Siberia could be the oldest modern humans outside Africa and the Middle East. The discovery would change thinking about the arrival of man...

Rick Potts, director of the National Museum of Natural History’s Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian, surveys an assortment of Early Stone Age hand-axes discovered in the Olorgesailie Basin, Kenya.

17 March, 2018 - 00:59 ancient-origins

New Insights into Rapid Advance in Human Innovative Thinking

The first evidence of human life in the Olorgesailie Basin comes from about 1.2 million years ago. For hundreds of the thousands of years, people living there made and used large stone-cutting tools...

Handle of one of the wooden tools from the Poggetti Vecchi site.

6 February, 2018 - 22:56 ashley cowie

171,000-Year-Old Fire Forged Tool Discovered Beneath a Giant Elephant

171,000 years ago, in Tuscany, a set of ancient tools were crafted and forged with fire. Archaeologists in Florence, Italy, made an incredible discovery during construction work at Poggetti Vecchi. A...

The 177,000 to 194,000-year-old maxilla (upper jaw) of Misliya-1 hominin

25 January, 2018 - 22:49 ancient-origins

Jawbone of Earliest Modern Human Outside of Africa Discovered in Israel

A large international research team, led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University and including Rolf Quam from Binghamton University, State University of New York, has discovered the earliest...

Artists impression of a group of australopith

12 January, 2018 - 19:12 ancient-origins

The Origin of ‘Us’: What We Know So Far About Where We Humans Come From

The question of where we humans come from is one many people ask, and the answer is getting more complicated as new evidence is emerging all the time. For most of recorded history humankind has been...

Map of sites and postulated migratory pathways associated with modern humans dispersing across Asia during the Late Pleistocene.

13 December, 2017 - 02:11 ancient-origins

Updates on Out of Africa – Revising the Story of the Dispersal of Modern Humans Across Eurasia

Most people are now familiar with the traditional "Out of Africa" model: modern humans evolved in Africa and then dispersed across Asia and reached Australia in a single wave about 60,000 years ago...

A re-analysis of the Dali skull is helping rewrite the story of human origins.

17 November, 2017 - 23:00 Alicia McDermott

Rewriting Our Origins: Skull Found in China Promotes a Wider Perspective on Human Evolution

Most people discussing the origins of our species suggest that Homo sapiens can be traced back to Africa about 200,000 years ago. However, an increasing amount of evidence suggests that there may be...

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Myths & Legends

The Last of the Siberian Unicorns: What Happened to the Mammoth-Sized One-Horned Beasts of Legend?

Elasmotherium, also known as the Giant Rhinoceros or the Giant Siberian Unicorn, is an extinct species of rhino that lived in the Eurasian area in the Late Pliocene and Pleistocene eras. They have been documented from 2.6 million years ago, but the most recent fossils come from around 29,000 years ago.

The symbol of the Swastika and its 12,000-year-old history

Lovelock Cave: A Tale of Giants or A Giant Tale of Fiction?

The Real Story of Medusa and the Gorgons

Mount Meru – Hell and Paradise on One Mountain

The Ballad of Hua Mulan: The Legendary Warrior Woman Who Brought Hope to China

Human Origins

The origins of human beings according to ancient Sumerian texts

Sumer , or the ‘land of civilized kings’, flourished in Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, around 4500 BC. Sumerians created an advanced civilization with its own system of elaborate language and...

Rh-Negative Blood: An Exotic Bloodline or Random Mutation?

The human skull that challenges the Out of Africa theory

Where are Ashkenazi Jews from? Their Origins May Surprise You

Facing the Facts: Just How Accurate Are Facial Reconstructions?

They’re Alive! Megalithic Sites Are More than Just Stone

Ancient Technology

Stone of the Pregnant Woman, an example of ancient high-tech stonework in Hajar al Hibla at Baalbek in Lebanon.

The High-Tech Stonework of the Ancients: Unsolved Mysteries of Master Engineers

There are many stone artifacts from the ancient world made from the hardest stone on the planet such as granite and diorite, which have been cut and shaped with such quality, precision and accuracy that the standard explanations of their manufacture are simply inadequate.

Ancient Journeys: What was Travel Like for the Romans?

Both a Princess and a Priestess, What Did the First Known Author Have to Share with the World?

They’re Alive! Megalithic Sites Are More than Just Stone

The revolutionary invention of the wheel

Ten amazing inventions from ancient times

Ancient Places

Were the Women of Petra More Important Than the Men?

The Nabataeans were a society who inhabited Arabia and the Southern Levant from the 3rd century BC to approximately 106 AD when the Nabataean kingdom was annexed by the Roman Empire.

Trance Rock Art of Nsangwini - Communing With the Spirits

The Colossal Hand of Hercules, So Where is the Rest of Him?

Eridu: The Sumerian Garden of Eden and the Oldest City in the World?

The Where, When and How of Quarrying Stonehenge 'Bluestones' Is Revealed in New Report

Hill of Crosses: A Hundred Thousand Times Lithuania Has Stood Up

Opinion

The astronomical ceiling at the Pronaos, Detail of the first Band west from the center. From left to right: two wind creatures (the winged ram with four heads personifies the south wind), the snake- and frog-headed eight goddesses and gods of the Ogdoad who ruled the cosmos before the creation of the world and Osiris seated on a throne sails across the sky as personification of the full moon accompanied by the seated goddesses Nephtys (left) and Isis on the right (Maat stands near the bow of the ship). Siri

Changing Colors and Scampering Across the Night Sky: What Did the Ancients Say about Sirius?

In Egypt, Sirius was the Star of Isis, Isis being the companion and rescuer of the god Osiris. In a very deep way, Osiris was Egypt.

Cracking the Code to Discover Ancient Tarot Symbolism and Forgotten Universal Knowledge

The Secret Strategic Plans of Darius the Great

The Secrets of the Kabbalists Garden

Alchemy and Generating Lifeforce —Global Temples Made in the Shape of Lingams: Shaivite Bull Cult Part II

From Green Man to Bull Son, The Universal Shaivite Bull Cult – Part I

Our Mission

At Ancient Origins, we believe that one of the most important fields of knowledge we can pursue as human beings is our beginnings. And while some people may seem content with the story as it stands, our view is that there exists countless mysteries, scientific anomalies and surprising artifacts that have yet to be discovered and explained.

The goal of Ancient Origins is to highlight recent archaeological discoveries, peer-reviewed academic research and evidence, as well as offering alternative viewpoints and explanations of science, archaeology, mythology, religion and history around the globe.

We’re the only Pop Archaeology site combining scientific research with out-of-the-box perspectives.

By bringing together top experts and authors, this archaeology website explores lost civilizations, examines sacred writings, tours ancient places, investigates ancient discoveries and questions mysterious happenings. Our open community is dedicated to digging into the origins of our species on planet earth, and question wherever the discoveries might take us. We seek to retell the story of our beginnings.