Ancient news stories

Extinction of North America’s largest animals likely caused by ancient climate change
18th February 2021 | independent.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

Earlier studies have suggested that growing numbers of “big-game” hunting humans in the Americas some 14,000 years ago led to large mammals being wiped out.

Image from: Merikanto (Wiki Commons)

Most southerly evidence of Neanderthals revealed in cave in Palestine
17th February 2021 | nhm.ac.uk | Ancient, Humans

The fossilised tooth of a nine-year-old child found in Shuqba (or Shukbah) Cave is the most southerly evidence of Neanderthals ever discovered.

Scientists believe they have discovered where asteroid which wiped out dinosaurs came from
17th February 2021 news.sky.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A “sungrazed” comet may be responsible for the extinction event around 66 million years ago.

Neanderthals and Homo sapiens used identical Nubian technology
15th February 2021 | eurekalert.org | Ancient, Humans

Long held in a private collection, the newly analysed tooth of an approximately 9-year-old Neanderthal child marks the hominin’s southernmost known range. Analysis of the associated archaeological assemblage suggests Neanderthals used Nubian Levallois technology, previously thought to be restricted to Homo sapiens.

What Happens When You Swap a Human Gene With a Neanderthal’s?
15th February 2021 | wired.com | Ancient, Humans, Tech

Now that we’ve gotten a look at the genomes of archaic humans, researchers are trying to determine whether our differences are due to genetics.

World’s oldest known beer factory may have been unearthed in Egypt
15th February 2021 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Humans

Archaeologists have unearthed what could be the oldest known beer factory at one of the most prominent archaeological sites of ancient Egypt, a top antiquities official said on Saturday.

Stonehenge: Did the stone circle originally stand in Wales?
12th February 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Humans

One of Britain’s biggest and oldest stone circles has been found in Wales – and could be the original building blocks of Stonehenge.

 

Modern human origins cannot be traced back to a single point in time
12th February 2021 | nhm.ac.uk | Ancient, Humans, Tech

Genetic and fossil records do not reveal a single point where modern humans originated, researchers have found.

Ancient Queensland fish ‘close living relative’ to humans, scientists believe
12th February 2021 | abc.net.au | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Researchers say the Australian lungfish, native to the Burnett and Mary Rivers, is the closest living fish relative to humans and other land dwellers.

Ancient hunter-gatherer seashell resonates after 17,000 years
11th February 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Humans

Archaeologists have managed to get near-perfect notes out of a musical instrument that’s more than 17,000 years old.

Evidence St Kilda was inhabited 2,000 years ago
9th February 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Humans

Scotland’s remote St Kilda archipelago was inhabited as long as 2,000 years ago, according to archaeologists

How Indigenous Oral Tradition Is Guiding Archaeology and Uncovering Climate History in Alaska
9th February 2021 | discovermagazine.com | Ancient, Humans

Scientific research and indigenous oral traditions have long been separated. But increased interaction is bringing new insight into the past.

Story of human evolution gets another rewrite with DNA analysis of Chinese teeth
9th February 2021 edition.cnn.com | Ancient, Humans

Experts hailed the discovery in 2015 as “stunning” — 47 teeth found in a cave in southern China dated back to 80,0000 to 120,000 years ago, challenging widely accepted ideas about human evolution.

Gut stubborn
8th February 2021 cosmosmagazine.com | Ancient, Humans

Some useful human microorganisms have long, long histories.

Did the Amazon female warriors from Greek mythology really exist?
8th February 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Humans

Were the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology — fierce female warriors said to have roamed a vast area around the Black Sea known as Scythia — real?

Archaeologists unearth bronze age graves at Stonehenge tunnel site
8th February 2021 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Humans

Bronze age graves, neolithic pottery and the vestiges of a mysterious C-shaped enclosure that might have been a prehistoric industrial area are among the finds unearthed by archaeologists who have carried out preliminary work on the site of the proposed new road tunnel at Stonehenge.

News stories covering history, archaeology, ancient Egypt, and mysteries of the past.