Archaeology
- Anthropology
Human smarts got a surprisingly early start
Human ingenuity began on treks across Asia and in fluctuating African habitats.
- Archaeology
Corn domestication took some unexpected twists and turns
A DNA study challenges the idea people fully tamed maize in Mexico before the plant spread.
- Archaeology
Stone Age people conquered the Tibetan Plateau’s thin air
Stone tools that are at least 30,000 years old suggest that people settled the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau earlier than scientists thought.
- Archaeology
Stone-tool makers reached North Africa and Arabia surprisingly early
Ancient Homo species spread advances in toolmaking far beyond East Africa.
- Archaeology
An exploding meteor may have wiped out ancient Dead Sea communities
An archaeological site not far from the Dead Sea shows signs of sudden, superheated collapse 3,700 years ago.
- Archaeology
A Bronze Age tomb in Israel reveals the earliest known use of vanilla
Residue of the aromatic substance in 3 jugs dates to around 3,600 years ago.
- Archaeology
A Bronze Age game called 58 holes was found chiseled into stone in Azerbaijan
A newly discovered rock pattern suggests that the game traveled fast from the Near East to Eurasia thousands of years ago.
- Ecosystems
How mammoths competed with other animals and lost
Mammoths, mastodons and other ancient elephants were wiped out at the end of the last ice age by climate change and spear-wielding humans.
- Archaeology
Like Europe, Borneo hosted Stone Age cave artists
Rock art may have spread from Borneo across Southeast Asia starting 40,000 years ago or more.
- Archaeology
Fossils hint hominids migrated through a ‘green’ Arabia 300,000 years ago
A once-green Arabia may have enabled Stone Age entries by Homo groups.
- Archaeology
People in the Pacific Northwest smoked tobacco long before Europeans showed up
Ancient indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest used tobacco roughly 600 years before European settlers ventured west with the plant.
- Archaeology
Ancient South Americans tasted chocolate 1,500 years before anyone else
Artifacts with traces of cacao push back the known date for when the plant was first domesticated by 1,500 years.
