Ancient news stories

The hidden animals were revealed on cave walls in Spain with ‘Magic Eye’-style techniques.

Ancient rocks excavated from a site inhabited by early humans some 1.4 million years ago may represent attempts at achieving perfect geometry. The research has been published in Royal Society Open Science.

Excavation of an ancient Greek temple has yielded a variety of figurines, possibly offerings to Poseidon.

The study, which was led by researchers at the University of Portsmouth and the University of Montpellier, sheds new light on the evolution of life on our planet and the rise of atmospheric oxygen.

The monument dates to between 4000 and 3000BC and is thought to be the only complete example in Britain.

A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals. See the paper here.

Bees may be the source of pollen near remains, but evidence still suggests bodies were buried with care. See the research here.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of unique early Neolithic burial practices in Galería del Sílex in Spain, following an analysis of ceramic vessels found with human remains in two pits. The study has been published in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Peruvian archaeologists have uncovered the 3,000-year-old remains of what is believed to be one of the first priests of the ancient north Andean region.

Research led by Complutense University, Madrid, has discovered an array of ancient cave paintings hidden among previously described cave art. In a paper, “Animals hidden in plain sight: stereoscopic recording of Paleolithic rock art at La Pasiega cave, Cantabria,” published in Antiquity, the team fills in details missing from previous photographic images.

A new fossil ape from an 8.7-million-year-old site in Türkiye is challenging long-accepted ideas of human origins and adding weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago. See the study here.

The team extracted DNA from the samples by adapting a protocol previously used for other porous materials, such as bone. The results are published in Scientific Reports.

The find provides a rare glimpse into the role played by sound and dance in ancient societies. See the research here.

When archaeologists recently carried out an excavation at Vinjeøra in southern Trøndelag County, they made a surprising discovery that they had only dreamed of finding.

Studies suggest that H. sapiens last shared a common ancestor with Neanderthals somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 years ago, though the exact date of the split is debated. Neanderthals arose as a distinct population between 400,000 and 350,000 years ago and went extinct around 40,000 years ago, though exactly why isn’t clear.

In a new study, published in August 2023, we sought to understand changes that were happening in California during the last major extinction event at the end of the Pleistocene, a time period known as the Ice Age.