All  

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ Mobile

Kenya

Rows of shallow pits drilled into rock are thought to be where ancient people played a version of the game Mancala.	Source: Courtesy of Veronica Waweru/Yale University

Yale Archaeologist Discovers Ancient Mancala Game Boards in Kenya's Highlands

In a remarkable fusion of local knowledge and academic expertise, Yale University's Veronica Waweru has uncovered what she thinks is an ancient "arcade" of Mancala game boards in central Kenya,...
Turkana stone beads. Credit: Carla Klehm

Turkana Stone Beads Tell a Story of Herder Life in East Africa 5,000 Years Ago

On the shores of Lake Turkana in east Africa, about 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, pastoralists buried their dead in communal cemeteries that were marked by stone circles and pillars. The north-west Kenya...
View of the hominin tibia from Koobi For a, with magnified area that shows cut marks that are evidence of possible prehistoric cannibalism. 	Source: Jennifer Clark/Smithsonian

Prehistoric Cannibalism Revealed? Human Relatives Butchered Each Other 1.45 Million Years Ago

A human leg bone dating back to 1.45 million years ago is marked with 11 tiny cut marks. A new study shows that while two were made by an animal, probably a lion, the remaining 9 suggest another...
Kenyan Cave Child Grave Declared Africa’s Earliest Human Burial!

Kenyan Cave Child Grave Declared Africa’s Earliest Human Burial!

78,000 years ago someone buried a young child in a cave. Now, researchers say that child’s grave in Kenya is the earliest known example of a deliberate human burial by modern humans in Africa. The...
Humanity’s First Ancestor is 2 Million Years Old, Skull Fragment Reveals

Humanity’s First Ancestor is 2 Million Years Old, Skull Fragment Reveals

The story of human evolution is a contested one. A basic narrative with certain elements of truth exists in the popular realm which is that the earliest human beings evolved from apes. That stage of...
The Curse of the Mijikenda Vigango Statues

The Curse of the Mijikenda Vigango Statues

During the 1980s, Coastal Kenya experienced the largest heist of ancestral artifacts in history. Over 300 wooden Vigango statues were taken from the sacred grounds of several Mijikenda tribes. These...
Selection of artifacts collected at Panga ya Saidi cave.

Cave Provides 78,000 Years of Cultural and Technological Evolution in East Africa

An international, interdisciplinary group of scholars working along the East African coast have discovered a major cave site which records substantial activities of hunter-gatherers and later, Iron...
A. afarensis reconstruction, an adult left ulna of Australopithecus afarensis. Several fossilized teeth have also been found in the Kantis site. Credit: Image courtesy of Kyoto University

Australopithecus Fossils Found East of the Great Rift Valley

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...
One of the smashed skulls from Lake Nataruk, Kenya.

Earliest War Grave Found with 27 Slain People Dates Back 10,000 Years

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...
Deriv; Lake Turkana - Central Island - Flamingo Lake (CC BY-SA 3.0), aranthropus aethiopicus fossil hominid found at Lake Turkan

Online fossil hunters wanted: Citizen Science Project seeks help to discover prehistoric fossils

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 “...
Researchers said in 2010 these animal bones, found in sediment dated about 3.4 million years ago, had been deliberately cut, apparently by a creatures of a pre-human hominin species, Australopithecus.

Pre-human ancestors may have used tools to butcher animals 3.4 million years ago

Some animals, including chimpanzees, crows, elephants, sea otters and dolphins, are known to use tools to extract food from their environment and for other functions. But what really sets people...

3.3-million-year-old stone tools overturn archaeological record, predate early humans

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...
A 3D scan of a 22,000-year-old skull fragment from a modern human found in Kenya.

Unusual 20,000-year-old human skull shows diversity of prehistoric humanity

A unique Stone Age skull found in Kenya is reshaping what scientists know about the diversity of early humanity. The 20,000-year-old partial skull was found at Lukenya Hill in the 1970s and stored in...