Features

Prehistory

Upper Palaeolithic: the Creative Explosion of Homo sapiens in Europe (40,000 to 10,000 BP)

Between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, the first Homo sapiens of Europe produced an unprecedented cultural flowering: Lascaux, Altamira, Chauvet, the Venus figurines of Willendorf and Hohle Fels, the bone flutes of the Swabian Jura, the decorated burials of Sungir. This dossier traces the great cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic -- Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian -- their contributions to human history, their relationships with the last Neanderthals, and what ancient genomics reveals about the repeated migrations that shaped glacial Europe.

Prehistory

Homo floresiensis: the Hobbit of Flores, the Smallest Known Human

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.

Australopithecus and Paranthropines: Lucy, thé Taung Child, and thé Robust Ones

From Lucy to thé paranthropines: three million years of australopithecine history, when Africa hosted a diverse array of bipedal hominins with contrasting evolutionary fates.

Palaeolithic

First Hominins: from Toumai to Ardipithecus, 7 Million Years of Evolution

From Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumai, 7 Ma) to Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, 4.4 Ma), a journey through the four species that open the book of human evolution, long before tools and the savanna.

Tartessos: the Lost Civilisation of the West

Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, before Rome and before Carthage, a brilliant civilisation flourished for five centuries. Tartessos, rich in gold, silver and tin, dazzled the Greeks, traded with the Phoenicians, and vanished mysteriously in the 5th century BC.

Palaeolithic

Pedra Furada: When Brazil Challenges the Timeline of the Americas Peopling

In Brazil's Piaui state, hearths dated to 48,000 years ago and extraordinary rock paintings have shaken the consensus on when humans first arrived in the Americas.

The Lithic Industry: 3.3 Million Years of Stone-Knapping

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.

Civilizations

Norte Chico and Caral: The Oldest Civilization in the Americas

Five thousand years ago, on the north-central coast of Peru, the Norte Chico civilization emerged as the oldest in the Americas. Its pyramids at Caral, sunken circular plazas, and cotton-for-fish economy reveal a unique path to social complexity.

Palaeoanthropology

Paranthropus: the robust cousin that almost ruled Africa

For over a million years, a [[hominide|hominin]] with extraordinary jaws coexisted with the earliest members of our genus across eastern and southern Africa. Paranthropus is not our ancestor, but its fate sheds light on what made Homo a success.

Indus Civilisation

Mohenjo-daro: a 4,500-year-old metropolis with no visible king

Gridded streets, calibrated bricks, sewers, a Great Bath: Mohenjo-daro was one of the largest cities of the Bronze Age world. Yet with no palace, no monumental temple, no clearly identified king. A different idea of civilisation.

Upper Palaeolithic

Dolní Věstonice: the world's oldest ceramic

In South Moravia, the Gravettian site of Dolní Věstonice yielded the oldest fired ceramic figurine in human history, the Venus of Věstonice, −26,000 years, a spectacular triple burial, and the remains of a 28,000-year-old kiln. Our ancestors' art and technology reached unsuspected sophistication here.

Indus Civilisation

Dholavira: how an Indus city survived in the desert

On an island in the Rann of Kutch, the Harappan city of Dholavira thrived for fifteen centuries thanks to a genius for water: cut reservoirs, dams and channels. A masterpiece of urban planning in an arid land.

Palaeogenetics

Rakhigarhi: the genome that sheds light on the Indus Civilisation

In 2019, the DNA of a Harappan woman from Rakhigarhi revealed a profile with no steppe ancestry: a mix of South Asian hunter-gatherers and an ancient Iranian lineage. One genome, a thousand debates, to be handled with care.

Megalithism

Malta's temples, older than the pyramids

On the island of Gozo, Malta, the Ġgantija temples were built between −3,600 and −2,500. They are the world's oldest freestanding stone structures, more than a millennium older than the pyramids of Giza. The civilisation that built them vanished without known descendants.

Rock art

Bhimbetka: the painted shelters of prehistoric India

In the heart of Madhya Pradesh, over 700 rock shelters preserve paintings from the Mesolithic to historic times: hunts, dances, animals. Proof that rock art was a global phenomenon, not only a European one.

Neolithic

Mehrgarh: the village that came before Harappa and Mohenjo-daro

In Balochistan, long before the cities of the Indus, the site of Mehrgarh tells eight millennia of village life: the first wheat, the first herds, mud-brick houses, figurines and even 9,000-year-old dentistry.

Megalithism

Newgrange: Ireland's solar tomb

Built around −3,200 in Ireland, Newgrange is a passage mound 85 metres across whose burial chamber floods with light at the winter solstice sunrise, with a precision that required centuries of astronomical observation. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids, it remains one of European megalithism's greatest mysteries.

Bronze Age

The Ugarit Divorce: when repudiating a princess became a matter of state

Around 1250 BCE, King Ammistamru II of Ugarit repudiated the daughter of the king of Amurru. On a clay tablet, the Hittite great king Tudhaliya IV personally arbitrated this oldest known royal divorce, turned into a diplomatic crisis between vassals.