Ancient news stories

Results of a study we published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution show that the way the different parts of the human brain evolved separates us from our primate relatives. In a sense, our brains never grow up. We share this “Peter Pan syndrome” with only one other primate—the Neanderthals.

Stone Age dots, lines and Y-shaped marks might represent a type of proto-writing created by hunter-gatherers who lived in Europe at least 20,000 years ago.

A scientist from Tokyo Metropolitan University has shown that large gamma-ray-emitting bubbles around the center of the Milky Way were produced by fast, outward-blowing winds and an associated “reverse shock.”

The Bering Land Bridge, a stretch of land that once connected Asia with North America, came into existence much later than experts previously thought, but humans likely crossed not long after it formed, according to a new study.

Ancient bones retrieved from an archaeological site in Germany suggest that archaic humans were peeling bears for their skins at least 320,000 years ago.

Mummification may never have been intended to preserve the bodies of ancient Egyptians after death, experts say, a sharp contrast to the popular understanding of the practice.

In re-examining artifacts from a significant 4,000-year-old Bronze Age burial site near Stonehenge in the UK, archaeologists discovered a toolkit for working with gold objects and coatings that hadn’t previously been identified.

Oregon State University archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons.

From France to Indonesia and Australia, ancient life is painted across the walls of darkened caves, seemingly motionless silhouettes in earthen colors that echo an earlier time.

A new survey revealed nearly 1,000 Maya settlements, with pyramids and ballcourts, that date back more than 2,000 years.

A team of researchers at the University of Patras’s, OCEANUS- Lab has found evidence suggesting that early human ancestors (extinct hominids) may have sailed across the Aegean Sea.

A smattering of stars scattered throughout the center of the Milky Way is the remnants of the ancient galactic core, when our galaxy was still new.

When prehistoric people re-sharpened cutting tools 300,000 years ago, they dropped tiny chips of flint—which today yield evidence of how wood was processed by early humans.

Archaeologists have identified a 4000-year-old goldworking toolkit amongst the grave goods from an important Bronze Age burial near Stonehenge.

A new study exploring the behavior of wild chimpanzees suggests the evolution of bipedalism may in fact have been a strategy that first emerged while still moving about the branches of trees.