Tag: ancient history

A Fingerprint Taken From Stonehenge Changes Everything We Know About Its Mystical Origins

Stonehenge offers mysteries aplenty. Just when we think we’ve solved one, we have to re-solve questions we thought were already answered. Such is the case with the origin story of the Altar Stone—one of the roughly 80-plus stones still on site in southern England.

The stones of Stonehenge feature a variety of compositions and originate from a number of potential source locations. Scholars previously believed that they knew most of what there was to be known about the Altar Stone—the largest of the non-sarsen stones on site, which is now partially buried beneath two fallen stones. But researchers led by a team from Curtin University may have upended that history, writing that a stone long believed to originate from Wales actually hails from Scotland.

By studying the age and chemistry of mineral grains within fragments of the six-ton Alter Stone—a thick sandstone block measuring 16 feet by 3 feet in the center of the iconic Wiltshire circle—the team crafted a chemical fingerprint of the stone. That chemical composition matched that of rocks from northeast Scotland, and clearly differentiated it from Welsh bedrock.

“Our analysis found specific mineral grains in the Altar Stone are mostly between 1,000 to 2,000 million years old, while other minerals are around 450 million years old,” Anthony Clarke, lead author and Ph.D. student from the Timescales of Mineral Systems Group at Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in a statement. “This provides a distinct chemical fingerprint suggesting the stone came from rocks in the Orcadian Basin, Scotland, at least 750 kilometers [466 miles] away from Stonehenge.”

According to English Heritage, the Altar Stone is a large slab of greenish Old Red Sandstone. Recent geological research had pinpointed the source of the stone to the Brecon Beacons area of southeast Wales. But the study, which was published in the journal Nature, discounts that reigning theory.

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The oldest mummies in the world may hail from southeastern Asia and date back 12,000 years

Scientists have discovered what’s thought to be the oldest known mummies in the world in southeastern Asia dating back up to 12,000 years.

Mummification prevents decay by preserving dead bodies. The process can happen naturally in places like the sands of Chile’s Atacama Desert or the bogs of Ireland where conditions can fend off decomposition. Humans across various cultures also mummified their ancestors through embalming to honor them or send their souls to the afterlife.

Egypt’s mummies may be the most well-known, but until now some of the oldest mummies were prepared by a fishing people called the Chinchorro about 7,000 years ago in what’s now Peru and Chile.

A new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pushes that timeline back.

Researchers found human remains that were buried in crouched or squatted positions with some cuts and burn marks in various archaeological sites across China and Vietnam and to a lesser extent, from the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Studying the bones further, scientists discovered the bodies were likely exposed to heat. That suggested the bodies had been smoke-dried over a fire and mummified by hunter-gatherer communities in the area.

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New Homo naledi evidence supports intentional burial practices

Anthropologist Lee Berger and his team at the University of the Witwatersrand, working within the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, have published their most extensive evidence yet of deliberate burial by Homo naledi, a small brained hominin that walked the Earth with several current modern human cousins over 240,000 years ago.

It began with a Facebook call for short, skinny and fit anthropologists who “must not be claustrophobic.” There is a backstory to the beginning of course, but it is here in this Facebook advert for the smallest in stature and bravest of heart to drop everything and fly to South Africa where the team was assembled.

Their task: delve 30 meters down and explore an over 100 meter-long topography of a treacherous and at times impossibly narrow cave system.

The original announcement of the find in 2015 was met with amazement, some skepticism and a hint of controversy. Amazing because it was impossible to imagine the discovery of a new species of hominin, not by a single bone or fragmented skull, but by a trove of over 1,500 well-preserved fossilized bones from a minimum of 15 individuals, many articulated in place, buried in a cave that had been undisturbed for possibly more than 300,000 years.

With so many fossils awaiting excavation, the team dubbed the most concentrated area within the Dinaledi Chamber the “Puzzle Box.”

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Archaeologist says his team has finally discovered lost city of Atlantis as they unveil compelling evidence

Joe Rogan was left speechless when his guest discussed the possible discovery of the lost city of Atlantis.

Plato’s writings describe an advanced civilization that built grand temples and massive harbor walls before being swallowed by the sea more than 11,000 years ago. 

Independent researcher Ben van Kerkwyk was a recent guest on the Joe Rogan Experience, where he discussed a discovery off the coast of Spain that could be the mythical city.

‘There’s a guy named Michael Donnellan…And he thinks he’s found, at least, if not Atlantis, a part of Atlantis off the coast of Spain. And they 100 percent found some s*** in the waters,’ van Kerkwyk said.

Rogan, looking stunned, could only respond with ‘Wow,’ mentioning Donnellan’s upcoming documentary ‘Atlantica’ that reveals massive linear structures and enormous concentric circular walls littering the seafloor. 

Donnellan, an independent archaeologist, told the Daily Mail that descriptions in Plato’s writings, which perfectly match their findings of ruins, prehistoric settlements and ancient mines in the region of Gades, are the strongest evidence for an Atlantic civilization. 

These discoveries, including underwater structures and sediment-covered sites indicating sudden destruction, align with Plato’s accounts of climate, societal structures, and ancient mythologies, providing a comprehensive context for their claims.

‘All those details align perfectly with the region we’re studying, as our investigations reflect Plato’s texts with extraordinary precision, truly to a perfect degree,’ Donnellan said.

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Archeologists discover 1.8 million-year-old human jawbone — possibly the oldest artifact of early humans outside Africa

A jaw-dropping discovery.

A 1.8 million-year-old human jawbone has been unearthed in the hills of Georgia — and scientists say the fossil could offer major clues into some of the earliest prehistoric human settlements in Eurasia.

The ancient mandible was uncovered by archaeologists at the Orozmoni site, roughly 62 miles southwest of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, in a prehistoric goldmine smaller than two parking spaces.

Experts believe the bone may be one of the oldest remains of early humans excavated outside of Africa, offering clues to the patterns of Homo erectus, a hunter-gatherer species that scientists believe began migrating roughly two million years ago.

“The study of the early human and fossil animal remains from Orozmani will allow us to determine the lifestyle of the first colonizers of Eurasia,” said Giorgi Bidzinashvili, a professor of stone age archaeology at Ilia State University in Tbilisi.

“We think Orozmani can give us big information about humankind.”

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Rethinking Human Origins: Why the Out-of-Africa Model No Longer Holds

For decades, the Out-of-Africa (OoA) model dominated narratives about modern human origins. According to this theory, Homo sapiens evolved exclusively in Africa around 200,000–300,000 years ago and later migrated out in a single wave approximately 60,000–70,000 years ago, replacing archaic human populations across Eurasia with little or no interbreeding. This narrative, elegant in its simplicity, has shaped textbooks, museum exhibits, and public understanding of human evolution for over half a century.

However, the accumulating evidence genetic, fossil, and archaeological no longer supports such a clean, linear model. While Africa remains a crucial part of the story, recent discoveries suggest that human evolution was neither geographically isolated nor genetically unidirectional. Instead, the emerging picture points to a complex, braided stream of evolution involving structured populations across Africa, Eurasia, and the Levant. This shift is not a mere refinement it is a foundational rethinking of what it means to trace human origins.

Genetic Diversity Is Not Proof of Geographic Origin

One of the central pillars supporting the Out-of-Africa model is the observation that African populations exhibit the greatest genetic diversity and the largest inferred ancestral population sizes (Ne). This has been interpreted as evidence that Homo sapiens originated in Africa, on the premise that older populations should retain more genetic variation.

However, high diversity does not inherently indicate source status. In structured population systems, a region that functions as a recipient of gene flow from multiple external populations can accumulate more genetic variation over time. As studies such as Durvasula & Sankararaman (2020) have shown, African genomes contain 2–19% DNA from archaic “ghost” hominins that no longer exist. These findings suggest that Africa may have been a demographic sink as much as a source drawing in lineages from elsewhere and preserving them through repeated introgression events.

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80,000-year-old stones in Uzbekistan may be the world’s oldest arrowheads — and they might have been made by Neanderthals

Tiny stone artifacts discovered in Uzbekistan may be the oldest known arrowheads, a new study suggests.

It remains unclear whether these stone tools were created by modern humans, Neanderthals or some other group.

Archaeologists found the tools at the site of Obi-Rakhmat in northeastern Uzbekistan. Previous excavations uncovered a variety of stone tools at the site, such as thin and wide blades, and smaller “bladelets.” But numerous small, triangular points — called “microliths” — were overlooked in prior work because they were broken.

Now, in a study published Aug. 11 in the journal PLOS One, the researchers argue that these “micropoints” are too narrow to have fit onto anything other than arrow-like shafts. The stones also display the kind of damage that would be expected from used arrowheads, study co-author Hugues Plisson, an associate scientist at the University of Bordeaux in France, told Live Science.

These micropoints, which are about 80,000 years old, may therefore be the oldest arrowheads in the world — around 6,000 years older than 74,000-year-old artifacts unearthed in Ethiopia, the researchers say.

The scientists expect their work to raise doubts.

“The bows themselves and the arrow shafts have not been preserved, so some skepticism from colleagues is expected,” study co-author Andrey Krivoshapkin, director of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, told Live Science.

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Burial Pits in France Reveal Grisly Evidence of Brutality During Warfare and Captivity in Neolithic Europe

Archaeologists working in France have discovered new evidence for the antiquity of human brutality in war, discovering Neolithic prisoner abuse dating back to between 4300 and 4150 BCE.

Described in a new paper in Science Advances, the sites at the center of the study were two burial pits in Achenheim and Bergheim, located in northwest France. The signs of brutality discovered in some of the human remains align with other archaeological evidence for military invasions between communities in the Upper Rhine Valley at the time.

The Violence of Neolithic Europe

Life in ancient Europe was harsh, and often made so by humans themselves. Previous studies have revealed massacres of entire communities, raids aimed at abducting young women, and even evidence of ritualized killings or mutilation, practices considered rare among the relatively egalitarian societies of the region.

Beyond isolated acts of violence, the Upper Rhine Valley also shows signs of major cultural upheaval, suggesting a broader war of conquest. The area’s original inhabitants followed Bruebach-Oberbergen cultural traditions, but sometime between 4295 and 4165 BCE, these were supplanted by Western Bischheim practices brought by groups from the Paris Basin.

Investigating the Burial Pits

Until recently, the identities of those buried in Achenheim and Bergheim were unclear. Researchers sought to determine whether the dead were locals or foreigners, and whether they showed evidence of being prisoners of war. Their analysis included 82 sets of remains, yielding a wide spectrum of findings.

In each location, one pit contained clear victims of violence, including individuals with severed upper limbs and unhealed skull fractures. Other pits, by contrast, showed orderly burials with no signs of violent injury, suggesting natural deaths among local residents. Isotopic analysis confirmed significant differences between those with violent injuries and those without, leading researchers to conclude that the violent burials contained members of rival groups. Intriguingly, these victims appeared to come not from a single enemy community, but from several distinct groups.

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Neanderthal Workshop Reveals Advanced Tool Maintenance 70,000 Years Ago

Archaeologists in Poland have unearthed compelling evidence of sophisticated Neanderthal behavior at a 70,000-year-old workshop site in the Zwoleńka River Valley. The remarkable discovery demonstrates that these ancient humans operated specialized tool maintenance centers where they repaired and sharpened implements used for butchering massive Ice Age animals including mammoths, rhinoceroses, and horses.

The excavation, conducted jointly by the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw, the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Archaeology, and the University of Wrocław’s Institute of Archaeology, represents the most significant Neanderthal research currently underway in Poland. Dr. Witold Grużdź, project manager from the State Archaeological Museum, confirmed that radiocarbon dating places the site’s activity between 64,000 and 75,000 years ago, firmly within the Middle Paleolithic period, reports Science in Poland.

Unprecedented Preservation in Open-Air Environment

What makes this Mazovian site extraordinary is its open-air nature, where organic materials have survived for millennia. Most Neanderthal sites in Poland are concentrated in southern cave systems within the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland and Lower Silesia regions. The Zwoleńka discovery marks the northernmost confirmed Neanderthal presence in the country, in an area that was largely ice-covered during their occupation.

Dr. Katarzyna Pyżewicz from the University of Warsaw emphasized the rarity of such finds:

“Neanderthal discoveries are uncommon, and whatever emerges from this region carries immense scientific value. These archaeological sites typically lie buried several meters beneath the surface, making detection extremely challenging.”

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Shocking Discovery: Neolithic Farmers Cannibalized Enemy Families

A gruesome archaeological discovery in Spain has revealed that 5,700 years ago, Neolithic farmers engaged in systematic cannibalism against entire families, challenging the peaceful image of early agricultural societies. The disturbing evidence from El Mirador cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca suggests that violent inter-group warfare, not survival or ritual, drove these acts of human consumption according to a new study.

Researchers led by Francesc Marginedas from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution have uncovered the butchered remains of at least 11 individuals – including children as young as seven – showing unmistakable signs of cannibalistic processing. The comprehensive study published in Scientific Reports provides the most detailed evidence yet of warfare-driven cannibalism among Europe’s earliest farming communities.

The victims, ranging from infants to elderly adults, were systematically skinned, dismembered, cooked, and consumed in what researchers describe as an act of “ultimate elimination” by a rival group. This horrifying discovery adds to mounting evidence that the Neolithic period was far more violent than previously imagined.

Systematic Butchery Reveals Horrific Details

The analysis of over 650 bone fragments revealed extensive evidence of deliberate processing. Cut marks, percussion fractures, and boiling traces indicate that the victims were methodically butchered for consumption over several days. Microscopic examination showed that skin and muscle were sliced off, bones were cracked open for marrow extraction, and some remains were translucent from boiling.

“The pattern of modifications found on the modified Neolithic human bones of El Mirador cave is inconsistent with ritual or survival scenarios,” the researchers explain in their study. “Instead, the evidence supports a comprehensive butchering process involving meat, viscera, bone marrow, and brain extraction.”

Human tooth marks found on smaller bones provide particularly disturbing evidence that the perpetrators chewed on their victims’ remains. The extensive nature of the processing suggests this was not an opportunistic act of desperation but a deliberate and systematic consumption of defeated enemies.

The victims included three children, two juveniles, and six adults, representing what appears to be an entire extended family wiped out in a single violent episode. Significantly, the age distribution doesn’t match what researchers would expect from famine-driven cannibalism, which typically affects the most vulnerable populations.

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