Ancient news stories

The oldest human-crafted bone tools on record are 1.5 million years old, a finding that suggests our ancestors were much smarter than previously thought, a new study reports. They published their findings Wednesday (March 5) in the journal Nature.

University of Tokyo researchers have investigated the origin and dispersal scenarios of Homo sapiens into East Eurasia. The team examined how migration routes, genetic contributions from archaic humans, and environmental adaptations helped shape modern populations and found an improbable flaw in one origin idea. See the study published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology.

Archaeologists have discovered rare, 2,400-year-old puppets in El Salvador that may have been used in public rituals to perform well-known events that were “mythical or real.” The finding suggests that the people of El Salvador were more integrated into the wider Central American culture than previously thought, a new study finds

After an intense study of the mammoth’s genetic code, scientists have engineered ‘woolly’ mice with altered fur thickness, color, and texture to recreate the extinct elephant’s adaptations to the cold. The study can be found at bioRxiv.

The Andromeda Galaxy…is surrounded by a swarm of nearly 3 dozen dwarf galaxies, which circle it like bees around a hive. These “satellite galaxies” have been studied in unprecedented detail in a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Water may have first formed 100–200 million years after the Big Bang, according to a modeling paper published in Nature Astronomy. The authors suggest that the formation of water may have occurred in the universe earlier than previously thought and may have been a key constituent of the first galaxies.

Archaeologists in China have discovered a 2,800-year-old fortified wall that predates the country’s first emperor.

New research has demonstrated the precise relationship between past ice ages and each wobble, tilt, and angle of the planet’s path, unlocking a new tool for predicting the future fluctuations of our global climate. The team’s research has been published in Science.

An “extraordinary” timber circle believed to be thousands of years old and connected to Stonehenge in England has been discovered in the ground in Denmark.

The earliest evidence that humans inhabited rainforests has been found in Africa, a surprising find which pushes human settlement in these habitats much further back than previously thought…As a result, rainforests have often been overlooked as important habitats in the evolution of early modern humans. New research published in Nature has put a dent in this assumption.

How a pandemic travel restriction led to a revolutionary discovery about early humans.

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably tried, at some point, to navigate the supermarket with a trolley and at least one child in tow. But our new study suggests there was an ancient equivalent, dating to 22,000 years ago.

Research into the shape of Neanderthal inner ears challenges the theory that the extinct human species originated out of an evolutionary event that led to a loss of part of their genetic diversity. The findings, published in Nature Communications, are based on fossils from across Europe and Western Asia.

Prehistoric people in Spain severed the heads of dead people and drove giant nails through their skulls for very different reasons: to celebrate the community’s ancestors and to intimidate their enemies, a new analysis of Iron Age skulls suggests.

The ancient peoples of the Philippines and of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) may have built sophisticated boats and mastered seafaring tens of thousands of years ago—millennia before Magellan, Zheng He, and even the Polynesians. The paper was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The researchers suggest that this could be linked to violence between groups of ancient humans at the end of the last Ice Age.