Prehistory news
From 3 million years ago to the dawn of our era: archaeological discoveries, palaeogenetics, cave art and the great transformations of human societies.
Two long stone embankments on the Dahshur plateau, attributed since 1897 to simple hauling ramps, have just been reinterpreted as water retention dams by three engi…
Read →In July 2026, two climatologists from Stockholm University published in Science Advances a simulation of eight thousand years of Mediterranean climate. Their model …
Read →In Germany, preventive excavations ahead of the SuedOstLink power line project have uncovered a 5,000-year-old ritual pit complex attributed to the Salzmünde culture: burned buildings, isolated skulls, dog sacrifices, and intact ceramics reveal a society under pressure.
In the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, renewed excavations at Shanidar Cave by the University of Cambridge have uncovered the remains of a Neanderthal woman who died 75,000 years ago. Shanidar Z, the first Neanderthal recovered from the site in more than fifty years, enriches the debate on the funerary practices of our sister species: her body appears to have been laid in a manually hollowed channel, at a site revisited by several generations.
Genomic analyses of the domestic silkworm and archaeological discoveries in China show that silk production dates back at least 7,500 years, long before the establishment of the Silk Road by the Han in the second century BCE.
The Egtved Girl, buried around 1370 BCE in Denmark, was identified by isotopic analysis as a long-distance traveler from southwestern Germany. Her identity as a female ritual specialist fits into a broader European pattern.
Read →Ancient DNA analyses of hundreds of skeletons confirm that the populations who built Stonehenge, Carnac, and the I…
Read →A systematic spatial analysis of decorated sites in the Basque Country and Cantabria shows that Palaeolithic artis…
Read →A Levantine skull dating to approximately 100,000 years ago displays a penetrating lesion on the facial bones inte…
Read →Discovered by chance in the tin mines of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria, Nok sculptures dated between the 9th century BC and the 2nd century AD constitute the oldest known sculptural tradition in sub-Saharan Africa. Their discovery, initiated by archaeologist Bernard Fagg in 1943, profoundly transformed our understanding of ancient African societies.
Excavations at Karain Cave reveal that two human species shared the same Anatolian territories for millennia, redrawing the map of their coexistence at the crossroads of Europe and the Near East.
Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers had dark skin despite tens of thousands of years on thé continent. Ancient DNA from spécimens such as La Brana (Spain) and Loschbour (Luxembourg) confirms it: light skin spread through Europe with Neolithic farmers from Anatolia and steppe pastoralists, between 8,000 and 4,500 years ago.
A study published in Science on July 30, 2026 reveals that the human genome contains DNA from unknown hominin lineages, transmitted before the Out of Africa migration more than 70,000 years ago.
Read →Discovered in 2012 in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region, the Burtele fossil foot dates to 3.4 million year…
Read →Off the island of Sein in Finistere, archaeologists have uncovered several alignments of submerged granite blocks …
Read →Carbonised wooden beams dating to thé Babylonian conquest of 586 BCE have been discovered in thé City of David. Pa…
Read →A genomic study published in Science Advances reveals the existence, 6,000 years ago on the Bogota altiplano, of an unknown prehistoric population -- genetically unrelated to any known Native American group -- that disappeared fr…
Read →The San Juan ante Portam Latinam (SJAPL) site in Laguardia, Spain, contained the remains of 338 individuals, 23% o…
Read →A granite pebble bearing a red ochre stain and a complete fingerprint, attributed to a Neanderthal individual, has…
Read →Near East prehistorians have long known about thé plaster-coated skulls of thé Pré-Pottery Neolithic. An expérimen…
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