Ancient news stories

A 31,000-year-old skeleton missing its lower left leg and found in a remote Indonesian cave is believed to be the earliest known evidence of surgery, according to a peer-reviewed study that experts say rewrites understanding of human history.

Archaeologists at the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology have used satellite imagery to identify and map more than 350 monumental hunting structures known as “kites” across northern Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq—most of which had never been previously documented.

It is a dispute that has taken a long time to reach boiling point. Seven million years after an apelike creature – since nicknamed Toumaï – traversed the landscape of modern Chad, its means of mobility has triggered a dispute among fossil experts.

You can view the virtually reconstructed face of a woman who lived about 5,700 years ago in what is now Malaysia, now that researchers have put a face to a person whose full identity remains a mystery.

Humpback whales throughout the entire South Pacific Ocean are connected to each other via shared song, according to new research.

The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa — and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth — has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds.

An international team of researchers with a central contribution from researchers at the Dept. of Biological Physics at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) has unravelled the evolutionary origins of animals and fungi.

Imag from: Geograph Britain and Ireland (Wiki Commons)

A new study led by Leiden University has analyzed recent archaeological excavations from the Middle/Upper Paleolithic in Western Romania at the site of Româneşti, which is one of the most important southeastern European sites associated with the earliest Homo sapiens on this continent. These excavations offer a significant glimpse of how modern humans adapted to their new environment after reaching Europe.

A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 BCE and 1800 BCE in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings.

A team of researchers has found evidence that shows the Khufu branch of the Nile River once ran so close to Giza that it could have been used to carry the stones that were used to build the famous pyramids.

Palaeontologists at Adelaide’s Flinders University have used cutting edge micro-CT scanning and 3D printing technology to look inside a 100-million-year-old dinosaur fossil. But this was no ordinary fossil.

Archaeologists in Romania have discovered an extraordinary cache of ancient gold rings that a 6,500-year-old woman wore in her hair.

Three skeletons uncovered in a rock shelter adorned with red pigment rock art reveal burial rituals of early humans who followed well-trodden paths through Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda Islands, albeit thousands of years apart.

In a trio of papers published simultaneously in the journal, Science reports a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological, genetic and linguistic hypotheses.

The switch to walking on two legs instead of four is a major moment in the evolution of our species, which is why scientists are keen to pinpoint exactly when it happened – and a new study puts the adaptation as happening around 7 million years ago.

Radiocarbon analysis of the material suggests that the mounds were built over thousands of years, with construction of Mound B starting around 11,000 years ago.