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The removal of meat from a bone using a replica of the Revadim tiny flake tool. Source: Professor Ran Barkai, Tel Aviv University
17 September, 2019 - 23:14 ancient-origins

Acheulian Culture Had ‘Surgical’ Skills in Butchery

The Acheulian culture endured in the Levant for over a million years during the Lower Paleolithic period (1.4 million to 400,000 years ago). Its use of bifaces or large cutting tools like hand axes...
Ancient human. Credit: procy_ab / Adobe Stock
21 August, 2019 - 13:55 ancient-origins

Surprise Discovery of 45,000-Year-Old Tools in Mongolia Indicates Early Human Migration

Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, about 10,000 years earlier than...
The scientists dug out the remains of the mammoth skeleton from the thawing permafrost and discovered a nearby weapons making site. Source: Innokenty Pavlov
24 June, 2019 - 22:03 ancient-origins

Researchers Discover Ancient “Weapon Making Site” Near Skeleton of Woolly Mammoth

By Anna Liesowska / The Siberian Times Evidence found on an Arctic island shows how 10,000 or more years ago people carved sharp slices off tusks to use for killing and cutting. Palaeontologists made...
Researchers found the collection of ‘Oldowan’ flaked stone tools in the Afar region of north-eastern Ethiopia. Source: Erin DiMaggio.
4 June, 2019 - 14:02 Ed Whelan

World’s Oldest Stone Tools and Weapons Found in Ethiopia

Researchers have unearthed some deliberately sharpened tools that date from over 2.5 million years ago. These artifacts are changing our understanding of the invention of tools and showing that our...
Giza pyramids where the Dixon relics were discovered. Source: kanuman / Adobe.
30 May, 2019 - 18:55 Morgan Smith

Lost Artifacts of the Great Pyramid: The Mysterious Case of the Dixon Relics

There is a certain perception of the Great Pyramid as an utterly void arrangement of empty halls and chambers, strangely bereft of artifacts and inscriptions that might offer clues to its...
Ancient carpenter, woodworking. Source: deanjs / Public Domain.
24 May, 2019 - 14:01 Rachel Brown

How Ancient Woodworkers Sculpted Civilization

Humans have a remarkable relationship with trees . Trees not only provide the oxygen we need to breathe, but also wood in its rawest form. For millennia, woodworking by carpenters, turners, and...
New research suggests Neanderthal extinction was earlier than previously believed.
22 January, 2019 - 19:00 Ed Whelan

New Evidence Questions the Time and Place of Neanderthal Extinction

In recent years there have been a series of finds that have revolutionized our understanding of the Neanderthals and their extinction in Eurasia. It is widely held in academic circles that...
Insert: Example of a Howiesons Poort stone tool found at the Klipdrift Shelter. Background: Overview of Klipdrift Complex From Sea. (Credits Magnus Haaland). Experts have found that similar tools were found hundreds of kilometers away in the Stone Age in South Africa.
10 November, 2018 - 01:50 ancient-origins

Social Ties in Stone Age South Africa: Experts Find Stone Tools Connected Far Away Communities

Stone tools that were discovered and examined by a group of international experts showed for the first time that various communities that lived during the Middle Stone Age period were widely...
Artistic impression of primitive “Stone Age” man
28 August, 2018 - 00:12 ancient-origins

Australian archaeologists dropped the term Stone Age decades ago, and so should you

“Stone Age” is a term often used to refer to early periods in human cultural evolution, when deliberately manufactured sharp stone flakes were the main cutting tool. But it’s also used to describe...
Picture taken at the site of the discovery of ancient tools in China.
12 July, 2018 - 13:57 ancient-origins

New Find Indicates Humans Left Africa Earlier than Believed

Ancient tools and bones have been discovered in China by archaeologists that suggest early humans left Africa and arrived in Asia earlier than previously thought. The artifacts show that our earliest...
Ötzi Memorial, Austria (GFDL), Ötzi Arrow (Wierer et al), Ötzi Reconstruction (CC BY SA 3.0 )
22 June, 2018 - 02:00 ancient-origins

The Final Days of Otzi: Stone Tools Reveal What the Iceman Endured

Stone tools found with a 5,300-year-old frozen mummy from Northern Italy reveal how alpine Copper Age communities lived, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ursula...
Reconstruction of a Neanderthal holding a spear
8 April, 2018 - 13:54 ancient-origins

Oldest Neanderthal Wooden Tools Found in Spain Were Made 90,000 Years Ago

Archaeological excavations in Northern Spain have revealed several episodes of Neanderthal occupations with preserved wooden remains. The excavation revealed two very well preserved wooden tools; one...
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...
View and colour rendered model of the hominin track P-01, belonging to the left foot of an adult
17 February, 2018 - 02:00 ancient-origins

What ancient footprints can tell us about what it was like to be a child in prehistoric times

Western society has a rather specific view of what a good childhood should be like; protecting, sheltering and legislating to ensure compliance with it. However, perceptions of childhood vary greatly...
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...
A large hand axe found in the Wadi Dadsa.
30 December, 2017 - 02:00 Theodoros Karasavvas

Ancient Stone Artifacts Could Tell the Story of When Early Humans Spread Out of Africa

A team of archaeologists has announced the discovery of over a thousand stone artifacts, with some of them being up to 1.76 million years old. The discovery took place at Wadi Dabsa, in southwest...

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