Shared designs for stone tools across southern Africa show early humans had wide social connections before beginning to migrate to the rest of the world.
The Grotte Mandrin rock shelter saw repeated use by Neanderthals and modern humans over millennia.
Ludovic Slimak
Stone artifacts and a fossil tooth point to Homo sapiens living at Grotte Mandrin 54,000 years ago, at a time when Neanderthals were still living in Europe.
Knowing that our North African ancestors were making handaxes helps scientists to understand how our human ancestors spread across the African continent.
Would we see Neanderthals (right) as human if they were around today?
wikipedia
Combining evidence from archaeology, geochronology and paleoenvironmental science, researchers identified how ancient humans by Lake Malawi were the first to substantially modify their environment.
The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than any other place on Earth.
Kevin Xu Photography via Shutterstock
A new environmental record for a prehistoric site in Kenya helped researchers figure out how external conditions influenced which of our ancient ancestors lived there, with what way of life.
Archaeological discoveries in a jungle cave in central Indonesia suggest humans arrived there 18,000 years ago and decided to stay a while, hunting in the jungle and building canoes.
Tool made out of horse bone.
UCL Institute of Archaeology
Capuchin monkeys in Brazil use big stones to crush the shells of nuts they want to eat. An experiment in the field investigated how these monkeys prepare to use new, unfamiliar tools.
Representative stone tools (handaxes) recorded in the study area.
Author Supplied
Ben Marwick, University of Washington; Bo Li, University of Wollongong, and Hu Yue, University of Wollongong
A fresh look at museum artifacts fills in a gap in the Asian archaeological record and refutes the idea that an advanced technique was imported from the West by early modern humans.
Karnatukul during excavation in 2014, note the square holes dug below the rock walls..
Peter Veth
Jo McDonald, The University of Western Australia and Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia
They were looking to study rock art at a remote desert site but what they found showed people had been using the place almost since the first people arrived in Australia.
Looking for food, water and maybe adventure?
Unsplash
Archaeologists have dug deeper at an old dig site on an Indonesian island, revealing more stone tools made by the ancient inhabitants of the place. But who they were remains a mystery.
Researchers work on the archaeological site in Spain, known as Porto Maior, where the tool deposits were found.
Eduardo Méndez Quintas
New tools add to an emerging view of the past as a turbulent “Game of Thrones” style scenario, with distinct early human ancestors living in Eurasia before Homo sapiens arrived.