Tag: ancient history

1.5-million-year-old Skull Reveals Homo erectus Did Not Evolve the Way Scientists Thought

Homo erectus has long occupied a special place in human evolution. It is a species often portrayed as a clean break from more primitive human ancestors, marked by bigger brains, modern body proportions, and the first great migrations out of Africa.

However, a newly reconstructed fossil from Ethiopia suggests that this evolutionary milestone was anything but tidy.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers report a detailed reconstruction of a 1.6–1.5 million-year-old skull from Gona, Ethiopia, known as DAN5/P1. The results reveal a striking mosaic of traits that blurs the boundary between early members of the genus Homo and classic Homo erectus. This challenges the traditional view that our ancestors underwent rapid transformation in clearly distinct stages, highlighting instead how overlapping features complicate a simple evolutionary narrative.

In the study, researchers argue that the emergence of Homo erectus was not a simple evolutionary handoff from smaller-brained ancestors to a more advanced, uniform species. Instead, multiple forms of Homo appear to have coexisted in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, evolving along partially independent paths.

“We already knew that the DAN5 fossil had a small brain, but this new reconstruction shows that the face is also more primitive than classic African Homo erectus of the same antiquity,” lead-author and paleoanthropologist at Midwestern University in Arizona, Dr. Karen Baab, said in a press release.“One explanation is that the Gona population retained the anatomy of the population that originally migrated out of Africa approximately 300,000 years earlier.”

A rare and revealing skull

The DAN5/P1 fossil is unusually important because of its completeness and the location where it was found. The specimen was recovered from the DAN5 locality at Gona in northeastern Ethiopia, a region already well known for preserving some of the earliest stone tools and hominin remains in the archaeological record.

Excavated during systematic fieldwork in sediments dated to roughly 1.6 to 1.5 million years ago, the fossil was initially identified as a partial cranium. Crucially, fragments of the braincase, face, and dentition were preserved together rather than scattered across the landscape. That kind of association is rare for the Early Pleistocene, when erosion and geological processes typically leave researchers with isolated pieces rather than intact individuals.

In the case of DAN5/P1, the fragments came from a single individual and retained clear anatomical relationships. This enabled researchers to apply high-resolution micro-CT scanning and advanced virtual reconstruction techniques to digitally reassemble both the cranial vault and much of the face. The result is one of the most complete early Homo crania ever recovered from the Horn of Africa.

The timing of the fossil makes it especially significant. DAN5/P1 dates to a pivotal moment in human evolution, around 1.6 million years ago, when Homo erectus is thought to have firmly established itself in Africa and begun spreading beyond the continent.

Classic African Homo erectus fossils from Kenya—such as KNM-ER 3733 and the famous “Turkana Boy”—already display many hallmark traits by this period, including larger brains, prominent brow ridges, and reduced teeth.

However, DAN5/P1 reveals contrasts with this established story.

While parts of the skull, especially the brow ridge and overall cranial architecture, resemble Homo erectus, the face and teeth retain more primitive features associated with earlier species, such as Homo habilis. The brain size, estimated at about 36.5 cubic inches, is small, overlapping with early Homo and well below the average for African Homo erectus.

This combination makes DAN5/P1 one of the clearest examples yet of a morphological “in-between”—a single individual that preserves traits evolutionary textbooks often separate into neat categories.

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The moment the earliest known man-made fire was uncovered

A stunning discovery at an archaeological dig in the UK is rewriting the timeline of when humans first made fire.

Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago.

The new discovery, in the village of Barnham, pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought.

The ability to create fire was the moment that changed everything for humans. It provided warmth at will and enabled our ancestors to cook and eat meat, which made our brains grow. It meant we were no longer a group of animals struggling to survive – it gave us time to think and invent and become the advanced species we are today.

The team say they found baked earth together with the earliest Stone Age lighter – consisting of a flint that was bashed against a rock called pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, to create a spark.

BBC News has been given world exclusive access to the prehistoric site.

Under the treetops of Barnham Forest lies an archaeological treasure, buried a few metres beneath the Earth, that dates back to the furthest depths of human pre-history.

Around the edges of a clearing, tangled green branches frame the scene like a curtain, as if the forest itself were slowly revealing a long-buried chapter of its past. Prof Nick Ashton of the British Museum leads me through the trees and we both step into his astonishing story.

“This is where it happened,” he tells me in a reverent tone.

We walk down onto a dirt floor carved into deep, stepped hollows of raw earth and pale sand.

This was an ancient fireplace at the heart of a prehistoric “town hall”, around which early Stone Age people came together hundreds of thousands of years ago.

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New discovery: The ‘sacred boundary’ surrounding Stonehenge

Some 4,500 years ago, people dug a series of deep, wide pits in the area near Durrington Walls in southern England. They were gemometrically arranged, forming a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) wide circle that enclosed over three square kilometers (1.16 square miles).

Long mistaken for naturally occuring features, the circle of human-made shafts has now come to be understood as a colossal project that lends new dimensions to the Stonehenge landscape.

An invisible ring around Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls is just a stone’s throw from the small English town of Amesbury, and just three kilometers, or about half an hour on foot, from Stonehenge. Each pit or shaft is approximately 10 meters (32.8 feet) wide and 5 meters deep.

Of the 20 pits discovered so far, a new study suggests that at least 15 form a huge, even circle around the henge of Durrington Walls. A henge is a type of prehistoric earthwork consisting of a ring-shaped bank, fortified with an inward ditch, encircling a flat circular area.

They were likely used for ceremonial purposes, to congregate or perform rituals. At the center of Durrington Walls used to be a circular structure of wooden posts, driven deep into the ground and surrounded by a settlement.

The pits were discovered years ago, but the newest research is just now uncovering more details, and providing deeper understanding. Scientists have now been able to date the structure to about 2480 BCE using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).

The OSL method is a fairly precise way of pinpointing a sediment’s last exposure to light — and by extension, the last time it was covered or buried — by measuring the natural radiation captured in certain minerals like quartz and feldspar. This technique relies heavily on the quality of the sample and has a margin of error of about 5-10%.

The recent study shows that the circular structure did not accidentally form over centuries, but was the result of intentional efforts in a planned, momunental project. The pits were actively used as part of the cultural landscape — and traces of humans, plants and animals indicate deliberate coordination.

A ‘sacred boundary’ mapped with astounding precision

None of the shafts examined can be attributed to natural erosion of the chalky landscape — the pits’ sheer size and number clearly suggest they were dug by humans. They form a near-perfect circle, and are spaced at even intervals. The width and distance of the pits follow a clear pattern.

This means that the humans involved were able to mark distances, count steps or measurements, and work out a coordinated plan — all before they started digging. And so, what at first glance seemed like an assortment of strange holes became a rare testament to the fact that numbers, measurements, and large-scale planning were already part of the daily lives of Neolithic people living in the area.

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The Oldest Known Eclipse Record is Shedding Light on Early Celestial Mysteries, Revealing the Location of a Misplaced Ancient Chinese City

Using ancient Chinese records, scientists have calculated Earth’s variable rotational speed back to 709 BCE, based on the earliest datable total solar eclipse.

The team’s work sought evidence to support the recently developed reconstruction of the solar cycle stretching back to the 8th century BCE. To do so, they analyzed descriptions of the solar corona produced in the ancient Chinese Lu Duchy’s capital, Qufu, which provided new information about the Earth’s rotational speed over time, as revealed in a new paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Eclipse Records of the Lu Duchy Court

Written in the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Lu Duchy court, it is reported that on July 17, 709 BCE, “the Sun was totally eclipsed.”

Ancient Chinese rulers filled their courts with ancient astronomers, tasked not with understanding the physical nature of the universe but with interpreting the signs and portents the night skies might hold. Notable astronomical events, such as auroras and eclipses, were believed to provide insight into whether cosmic forces approved of an emperor’s decision-making. The scrutiny placed on interpreting the meaning of these events led China to keep the ancient world’s best astronomical records.

A later addendum to the record in the first century CE states that the eclipse “penetrated the center of the Sun, and it was completely yellow above and below.” However, there is no documented provenance to support the claim that this quote originated with a witness to the event.

“What makes this record special isn’t just its age, but also a later addendum in the ‘Hanshu’ (Book of Han) based on a quote written seven centuries after the eclipse,” explained lead author Hisashi Hayakawa, Assistant Professor from the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research and Institute for Advanced Research at Nagoya University. 

“It describes the eclipsed Sun as ‘completely yellow above and below.’ This addendum has been traditionally associated with a record of a solar corona,” Hayakawa continued. “If this is truly the case, it represents one of the earliest surviving written descriptions of the solar corona.”

Locating Qufu from an Eclipse

The work not only revealed information about the Earth and Sun, but also about the geography of ancient China. Where the Lu Court at Qufu was believed to reside at the time would not have had the view of the eclipse described in the annals. The implication, therefore, is that earlier historical research obviously must have had the city’s location wrong. 

Matching historical sources and modern archaeology to discern the actual location was a task unto itself. Eventually, the researchers pinpointed a new site some 8 kilometers from the previously purported location of Qufu. With his PhDs in both solar physics and Asian history, Hayakawa was uniquely suited to the task.

“This correction allowed us to measure the Earth’s rotation during the total eclipse accurately, calculate the orientation of the Sun’s rotation axis, and simulate the corona’s appearance,” Hayakawa said.

Our planet has not always rotated at the same speed. At the time of the observation, 2,700 years ago, due to a variety of factors, including the Moon’s pull on the tides, it rotated faster than it does today. By correlating the revised location of Qufu with the date, the researchers were able to accurately measure the Earth’s rotational speed between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE.

“This new dataset fixes coordinate errors in previous Earth rotation studies. Additionally, it improves the accuracy of dating and reconstructing historical astronomical events,” Mitsuru Sôma, coauthor from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, said.

“This unique historical addendum for the possible solar coronal structure is critical for providing a spot reference on solar activity reconstructions from tree rings and ice cores, as well as providing independent validation of solar activity models,” explained Mathew Owens, coauthor and professor of Space Physics at the University of Reading.

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“Bronze Age People Didn’t Do That”: English Team Unearths “Unprecedented” Evidence of 4500-Year-Old Ancient Monument

British archaeologists have made a discovery they believe points to an unusual ancient monument that once stood in Northwest England 4,500 years ago.

The unique find, made by avocational archaeologists with the Wigan Archaeological Society, was discovered on a farm in the Greater Manchester area, after aerial photography of the region revealed an unusual, dark circular area in a farmer’s field.

Initial excavations at the discovery site had revealed what the Wigan team believed to be a burial site near Aspull, a village in the greater Wigan area. However, further studies at the site have revealed that there may be more to this ancient English mystery.

“We think it’s been repurposed from an earlier monument,” said Bill Aldridge, a member of the Wigan Archaeological Society, in a statement. Aldridge and others say the unique evidence they have unearthed, which includes a massive, oval-shaped ring ditch encircling the area, points to the existence of “a neolithic henge” that once stood there.

Such structures were unique to the Neolithic period and were not associated with later groups that occupied the area.

“Bronze Age people didn’t do that,” Aldridge recently told the BBC about his team’s discovery.

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Neanderthals’ Disappearance May Not Have Been from Extinction, Controversial New Study Argues

The disappearance of the Neanderthals—our archaic hominin cousins—remains one of the great unresolved riddles of ancient human history. Now, new research puts forward an intriguing theory: they may not have truly gone extinct.

At least not in the conventional sense of extinction, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports that argues the Neanderthals may have instead simply interbred with humans until they were essentially “absorbed” over long periods, as evidenced by new mathematical modeling.

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Neanderthals

“The disappearance of Neanderthals remains a subject of intense debate, with competing hypotheses attributing their demise to demographic decline, environmental change, competition with Homo sapiens, or genetic assimilation,” write authors Andrea Amadei, Giulia Lin, and Simone Fattorini in a new paper.

The team relied on a unique mathematical model that allowed them to show how small waves of ancient modern human immigration into populations of Neanderthals led to recurrent interbreeding. The resulting gene-mixing, they argue, “could have led to almost complete genetic substitution over 10,000–30,000 years.”

Computing Ancient Hominin Extinction

The team’s model, which is based primarily on the theory of neutral species drift, holds that most evolutionary changes within a species are due to the random genetic “drift” of mutational alleles—forms of genes that arise due to mutations—and are essentially neutral.

Employing a computational model on this basis allowed the research team to overstep considerations involving selective advantage or unexpected catastrophes that, throughout Earth’s ancient history, have also helped account for the sudden demise of species.

Instead, the team’s model “shows that sustained gene flow from a demographically larger species could account for Neanderthals’ genetic absorption into modern humans,” while also providing a good match for what archaeological data has yielded.

“This scenario aligns with growing evidence of interbreeding and genetic introgression through recurrent H. sapiens immigration waves,” the researchers write, adding that their findings offer an explanation that aligns with researchers’ past perspectives on the abundance of Neanderthal ancestry observed in modern European and Asian populations.

Lingering Questions

Given the abundance of evidence from genetic analysis in recent years that points to mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans, researchers have increasingly moved toward the idea that this ancient human species’ extinction was something more akin to an absorption, which occurred very gradually over time.

In their new study, Amadei, Lin, and Fattorini concede that while their mathematical models lend support to this theory, there are still a few remaining questions about precisely what circumstances may have led to the decline of the Neanderthals.

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Hidden Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, a Tantalizing Discovery May Soon “Write a New Chapter in the History of the Pharaohs”

A remarkable discovery within the Great Pyramid of Giza could potentially reshape our understanding of ancient Egypt, one of the country’s most renowned Egyptologists has said.

The claims were made by Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, who recently hinted at a tantalizing discovery that will come to light sometime in 2026, adding that he expects it will “rewrite history” and offer new insights into the ancient history of Egypt and its rulers.

The 78-year-old Egyptologist made comments during an appearance at the 44th Sharjah International Book Fair, where he described the mysterious discovery as one that will “write a new chapter in the history of the Pharaohs.”

A New Discovery at Giza’s Great Pyramid

Hawass, Egypt’s former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, has conducted work at many of the country’s most renowned archaeological sites in the Western Desert and Nile Delta, among other locations.

During the recent event, Hawass offered additional clues about the forthcoming revelation, stating that “This great discovery is a new 30-meter-long passageway,” which he said had been “detected using advanced equipment,” and appears to lead to a concealed doorway within the Great Pyramid.

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Neanderthals created the world’s oldest cave art

Neanderthals didn’t just survive Europe’s Ice Age landscapes – they ventured into deep caves and made art. What they left isn’t figurative like the later animal scenes of Homo sapiens.

Instead, it is a repertoire of hand stencils, geometric signs, finger-drawn lines, and even built structures. This type of artmaking points to creative intent and symbolic behavior long before our species arrived.

The latest synthesis of discoveries from France and Spain shows that these nonfigurative markings and installations predate modern humans in western Europe by tens of millennia.

The research moves the long-running debate about Neanderthal cognition from speculation to evidence.

Neanderthal art decoded

All confirmed examples so far are nonfigurative – no animals or humans. Instead we see hand stencils made by blowing pigment over a hand, “finger flutings” pressed into soft cave surfaces, linear and geometric motifs, and purposeful arrangements of cave materials.

Neanderthals inhabited western Eurasia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago and have often been caricatured as the archetypal “cavemen.”

Questions about their cognitive and behavioral sophistication persist, and whether they produced art sits at the center of that debate.

Despite proof that Neanderthals used pigments and made jewelry, some researchers resisted the idea that they explored deep cave systems to create lasting imagery.

New dating work from researchers at Université de Bordeaux has shifted that view. In three Spanish caves – La Pasiega (Cantabria), Maltravieso (Extremadura), and Ardales (Málaga) – researchers documented linear signs, geometric shapes, hand stencils, and handprints made with pigments.

At La Roche-Cotard in France’s Loire Valley, Neanderthals left suites of lines and shapes in finger flutings (the trails left when fingers move through soft cave mud).

Testing Neanderthal creativity

Deep inside the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France, Neanderthals broke off stalactites into similarly sized sections and assembled them into a large oval structure, then lit fires on top.

It was not a shelter but something stranger – and if you saw it in a contemporary gallery, you might well call it “installation art.”

Now that well-dated examples exist in Spain and France, more finds are likely. The challenge is timekeeping: establishing reliable ages for Paleolithic cave art is technically difficult and often controversial.

Stylistic comparisons and links to excavated artifacts can help, but they only go so far.

Aging art in stone

There are three main ways to anchor ages. First, if black pigment is charcoal, radiocarbon can date when the wood burned.

But many black figures were drawn with mineral pigments (for example, manganese), which can’t be radiocarbon dated, and even genuine charcoal carries a risk. The date reflects when the wood died, not when someone used it.

Second, calcite flowstone (stalactites and stalagmites) that overgrows art is a natural time cap. Uranium–thorium dating can pin down when the calcite formed, giving a minimum age for the pigment or scoring beneath it.

Using this method, researchers dated calcite on top of red motifs in La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales to older than ~64,000 years.

Even at that youngest bound, the imagery predates the first Homo sapiens in Iberia by at least ~22,000 years, and Middle Paleolithic archaeology – the Neanderthals’ “calling card” – is abundant in all three caves.

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Dinosaur egg unearthed in perfect condition after 70M years— and it could hold genetic material

It was in egg-cellent condition.

Argentine paleontologists found a real diamond in the rough after happening across a perfectly preserved 70-million-year-old dinosaur egg during an excavation.

“It was a complete and utter surprise,” Gonzalo Leonel Muñoz, a Vertebrate paleontologist at the Bernardo Rivadavia Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, told National Geographic of the “spectacular” find. “‘It’s not uncommon to find dinosaur fossils, but the issue with eggs is that they are much less common.”

The team of paleontologists was reportedly conducting an excavation campaign in the fossil-rich region of Río Negro, when they stumbled across the primeval embryo.

While dinosaur eggs had been excavated in the area before, finding one this well-preserved was super rare.

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The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Cahokia: Researchers Unearth New Secrets of America’s Greatest ‘Lost’ Ancient Megacity

For centuries, the sprawling earth mounds of Cahokia have stood as silent remnants of a massive, lost American city. Once the largest and most influential urban settlement north of Mexico, this pre-Columbian metropolis near modern-day St. Louis mysteriously flourished, and then vanished, hundreds of years before European colonists arrived. 

Now, a team of researchers has uncovered new clues about Cahokia’s rise and decline, thanks to a single massive wooden monument that once towered over the landscape.

In a study published in PLOS ONE, scientists from the University of Arizona and the University of Illinois used advanced tree-ring dating and isotope analysis to determine that a monumental wooden post known as the “Mitchell Log” was cut around 1124 CE, at the height of Cahokia’s power. 

The analysis also revealed something unexpected and fascinating. The enormous bald cypress tree was not local. It had been transported at least 110 miles (180 kilometers) to the site, likely from southern Illinois or even farther south along the Mississippi River.

This finding reshapes our understanding of Cahokia’s reach and organization. The massive log, originally part of a towering 60-foot (18-meter) ceremonial post, offers a rare and significant timestamp for when the city’s influence stretched across the Midwest and South.

“The date, provenance, and context of the Mitchell Log establish a historical datum for the peak influence of the Cahokia polity,” the researchers write. “[It also] prompts new questions about the long-distance transport of thousands of other such marker posts.”

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