Ancient DNA from Ukraine uncovers the earliest evidence of the arrival of the ‘steppe ancestry’ – the last piece of the modern Western European genetic puzzle.
Around 400 local children have been involved in this archaeological project in Cardiff, Wales.
Vivian Paul Thomas
Since 2011, professional and amateur archaeologists in Cardiff have been unearthing prehistoric artefacts. But last summer, they began to discover something even more extraordinary.
To test the ballistic properties of the stone points found in the Mandrin cave, modern duplicates were created and hafted on to shafts, as they may have been 54,000 years ago.
Laure Metz, Ludovic Slimak
Laure Metz, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU); Jason E. Lewis, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York), and Ludovic Slimak, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
In 2022 we detailed the discovery of 1,500 stone points in France’s Madrin cave. Experiments now show that they could were used as arrowheads, pushing back evidence of archery in Eurasia by 40,000 years.
Artwork in the Djourab desert, Chad, gives a taste of how our oldest ancestors got around.
Sabine Riffaut, Guillaume Daver, Franck Guy / Palevoprim / CNRS – Université de Poitiers / MPFT
These findings represent the earliest evidence for Homo sapiens on the Arabian Peninsula, and demonstrates the importance of Arabia for understanding human prehistory.
The footprints of over 20 different prehistoric people, pressed into volcanic ash thousands of years ago in Tanzania, show possible evidence for sexual division of labor in this ancient community.
Somewhere between the early Buddhist times and today, worries about game addiction have given way to scientific understanding of the benefits of play, rather than its detriments.
The exploitation of fossil fuels emits CO₂, the main cause of global warming.
Zbynek Burival/Unsplash
The Earth’s past shows the key role of CO₂ on climate for 4.45 billion years, and how human industrial activity has disrupted its cycle at an unprecedented rate over the past 160 years.
Fossilised burrows are changing what we know about the evolution of life.