Ancient news stories

A genomic study of Native peoples in the San Francisco Bay Area finds that eight present-day members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe share ancestry with 12 individuals who lived in the region several hundred to 2,000 years ago…the study challenges the notion that the Ohlone migrated to the area between A.D. 500-1,000…

While the Conservative party’s proposed dash for wind power is good news for the climate it could be bad news for archaeology, with rapid offshore windfarm development sealing off access to some of the best-preserved and most complete evidence of early human communities in the world.

Individual artifacts might be detectable with an advanced telescope that captures particles made in outer space.

A trio of researchers from Universidad de Cantabria and the University of Cambridge has found evidence suggesting that up to a quarter of all ancient handprints found on cave walls in Spain were made using children’s hands.

A Stone Age woman who lived 4,000 years ago is leaning on her walking stick and looking ahead as a spirited young boy bursts into a run, in a stunning life-size reconstruction now on display in Sweden.

Archaeologists discover burial sites “of remarkable scientific quality” below the fire-damaged cathedral

Imagine a cup of tea. Wrap a piece of string around the circumference of the cup, and measure the length of the string.

Prehistoric sites are full of stone tools that appear to have two life cycles: They’ve been crafted, used, and discarded before being picked up a second time and used again. A new study puts forward an interesting hypothesis as to why this is.

Evidence suggests surface minerals of outer main-belt asteroids, proposed to have sourced building blocks of Earth’s water and life, are only stable at low temperatures. These asteroids formed in distant orbits and may help explain Earth’s composition

Scientists have found the oldest known ancestor of octopuses – an approximately 330m-year-old fossil unearthed in Montana. The researchers concluded the ancient creature lived millions of years earlier than previously believed, meaning that octopuses originated before the era of dinosaurs.

New date of 58 million years undercuts idea that strike triggered recent 1000-year plunge in temperatures.

Scientists discovered traces of carbon—the element on which life on Earth is based—that appear to have come from the Cambrian Explosion.

Archaeologists have uncovered a Pictish symbol stone close to the location of one of the most significant carved stone monuments ever uncovered in Scotland.

The Venus of Willendorf, one of the world’s oldest pieces of artwork, was made of rock mined in Italy, more than 600 kilometres from her final resting place in Austria, according to new research.

Scientists discovered remnants of an Old Stone Age culture, less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Beijing, where ancient hominins used a reddish pigment called ochre and crafted tiny, blade-like tools from stone. The archaeological site, called Xiamabei, offers a rare glimpse into the life of Homo sapiens and now-extinct human relatives who inhabited the region some 40,000 years ago.

Archaeologists may have just uncovered evidence for the oldest known practice of mummification. Human remains interred 8,000 years ago in the Sado Valley in Portugal, during the Mesolithic, appear to have been deliberately treated for mummification prior to burial.