The Solutrean: Pinnacle of Paleolithic Lithic Industry
Between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, Solutrean craftspeople pushed flint knapping to an unequalled level of perfection, producing the legendary laurel-leaf points.
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Long-form, documented and sourced articles connecting discoveries and telling the great transformations of humankind.
Between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, Solutrean craftspeople pushed flint knapping to an unequalled level of perfection, producing the legendary laurel-leaf points.
Read more →14,500 years ago in thé Levant, hunter-gatherers built stone houses, stored cereals and buried their dead beneath their floors - two to three millennia before thé invention of agriculture. Thé Natufians invented sedentary life.
Read more →In 1879, a little girl and her father discovered polychrome bison 17,000 years old on the ceiling of a Cantabrian cave. The academic world accused them of fraud for twenty years. The story of Altamira is also the story of prehistory's greatest collective mistake.
Read more →Discovered in 1999 at Lomekwi, Kenya, and described in 2001, Kenyanthropus platyops is a 3.5-million-year-old hominin with a strikingly flat face, contemporary with Lucy. Its validity as a distinct genus is debated, but its existence demonstrates thé remarkable diversity of Pliocène African hominins.
Read more →Described in 2019 from 13 fossil specimens found in Callao Cave in the Philippines, Homo luzonensis lived on Luzon 67,000 years ago. Its multi-rooted teeth and curved phalanges match no other known species, and its presence on an island with no land bridge raises fascinating questions about the navigational abilities of ancient hominins.
Read more →Discovered in Ethiopia in 1992, Ardipithecus ramidus is one of thé oldest and most complete hominins ever found. At 4.4 million years old, "Ardi" was already walking bipedally while also climbing trees, challenging our understanding of thé common ancestor shared by humans and chimpanzees.
Read more →From 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals populated Europe and the Near East. Skilled hunters, masters of the Levallois technique, they buried their dead, adorned themselves with jewellery, and left 1 to 4% of their genome in every non-African person alive today.
Read more →Between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago, <em>Homo heidelbergensis</em> dominated three continents. Large-brained, spear-hunting, maker of perfectly symmetrical handaxes: this common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans holds a key role in our evolution -- and remains at the centre of one of palaeoanthropology's great debates.
Read more →42,000 years ago, the Earth's magnetic field fell to less than 6% of its current intensity. This "Adams Event" may have accelerated the extinction of Neanderthals, triggered the Aurignacian cultural explosion, and decimated Australian megafauna -- all within a few centuries.
Read more →From 7 to 0.78 million years ago, Africa dried out, savannas spread, and the megafauna of large mammals reached its peak. A world in upheaval that forced hominins to innovate.
Read more →Inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1982, the Tassili n'Ajjer preserves more than 15,000 rock paintings and engravings: a unique visual archive of 10,000 years of Saharan human history.
Read more →From thé Eastern European plains to Siberia, Russia holds one of thé world's richest Upper Palaeolithic héritages. Kostenki with its 60 sites, thé Venus of Zaraysk, thé mammoth-bone dwellings of Avdeevo, and thé beaded burial of Sungir reveal a hunter-gatherer civilization of astonishing sophistication.
Read more →For 1.8 million years, Homo erectus colonised three continents, invented the Acheulean handaxe, tamed fire, and cared for its elderly. This dossier traces the history of the most long-lived human species: its discoveries, anatomy, migrations, and the mysteries it still poses.
Read more →Discovered in 1960 at Olduvai Gorge, Homo habilis is the first undisputed member of the genus Homo. Its Oldowan tools, expanded brain, and complex foraging strategies opened the way for all subsequent human evolution over two million years.
Read more →More than 200 feminine statuettes carved between 40,000 and 11,000 BP, spanning from the Pyrenees to Siberia: prehistoric Venus figurines form one of the most enduring and enigmatic artistic traditions in human history. A complete dossier, from Aurignacian origins to modern theories.
Read more →In 2004, the discovery in Liang Bua Cave on Flores (Indonesia) of an adult hominin standing 106 cm tall with a 380 cm3 brain overturned palaeoanthropology. Named Homo floresiensis, the Hobbit is neither a pathological dwarf nor a myth: it is a fully distinct species, the result of island dwarfism on an island isolated for millions of years. This dossier traces its discovery, anatomy, tools, the pathology controversy, the 2016 chronological revision, and its place in a genus Homo tree far more complex than previously imagined.
Read more →From Lucy to thé paranthropines: three million years of australopithecine history, when Africa hosted a diverse array of bipedal hominins with contrasting evolutionary fates.
Read more →From the crude pebble tools of the Oldowan to the paper-thin laurel leaves of the Solutrean, the lithic industry traces 3.3 million years of technical innovation. A journey to the heart of humanity's first technology.
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