Archaeology
- Anthropology
Prehistoric ‘Iceman’ gets ceremonial twist
Rather than dying alone high in the Alps, Ötzi may have been ritually buried there, a new study suggests.
- Archaeology
Lucy’s kind used stone tools to butcher animals
Animal bones found in East Africa show the oldest signs of stone-tool use and meat eating by hominids.
- Archaeology
Serbian site may have hosted first copper makers
Newly identified remnants of copper smelting at a 7,000-year-old Serbian site fuel debate over where and when this practice began.
- Archaeology
Jamestown settlers’ trash confirms hard times
Analyses of discarded oyster shells confirm a deep drought during the Virginia colony’s earliest years.
- Anthropology
Hobbit debate goes out on some limbs
A new analysis of fossil hobbits’ limb bones links them to much earlier hominids, and immediately attracts criticism.
- Archaeology
Stone Age engraving traditions appear on ostrich eggshells
Fragments indicate symbolic communication on 60,000-year-old water containers.
- Archaeology
Skeleton of Western man found in ancient Mongolian tomb
A genetic analysis of a skeleton from an ancient Asian tomb illuminates the spread of Indo-Europeans.
- Archaeology
Ancient hominids may have been seafarers
Researchers have discovered hundreds of African-style stone hand axes on Crete, suggesting that sea-going hominids reached the island hundreds of thousands of years ago en route to Europe.
- Anthropology
Stone Age campers set up separate activity areas
Hominids displayed advanced organizational thinking almost 800,000 years ago
- Anthropology
Macaws bred far from tropics during pre-Columbian times
Colorful birds possibly raised for ceremonial and trade purposes long before Spanish arrival
- Anthropology
Stone Age twining unraveled
Plant fibers excavated at a cave in western Asia suggest that people there made twine more than 30,000 years ago.
- Archaeology
Europe’s oldest stone hand axes emerge in Spain
Researchers report identifying Europe’s oldest stone hand axes at Spanish sites dating to 900,000 and 760,000 years ago.
