Archaeology
- 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.
- Archaeology
Exhuming a violent event
Four graves containing 13 skeletons have given scientists a glimpse of a lethal raid that occurred in central Europe 4,600 years ago.
- Archaeology
Fire engineers of the Stone Age
New evidence indicates that people used fires to heat stones in preparation for making cutting instruments at least 72,000 years ago in southern Africa.
- Anthropology
Maize may have fueled ancient Andean civilization
A chemical analysis of skeletons from Peru’s Andes Mountains suggests that cultivation of key crop made building a prehistoric civilization possible.
