The Clay Bison of Tuc d'Audoubert: Magdalenian 3D Masterpieces
Deep in an Ariège cave, two bison sculpted in clay 14,000 years ago stand as some of the finest sculptures of the Paleolithic era.
Some 25,000 years ago, a Gravettian hand carved the first recognizable human face in mammoth ivory. Just 3.65 cm that change everything.
Read the article →For centuries, Egyptian hieroglyphs kept their secrets. How did Champollion and the Rosetta Stone unlock one of Antiquity's greatest mysteries?
Read the article →Before the Maya and the Aztecs, the Olmecs established the first great Mesoamerican civilization between 1500 and 400 BCE, leaving behind colossal …
Read the article →Some 12,000 years ago, a young man with severe acromegaly survived for years in a Calabrian cave. Someone fed him, helped him. A rare testament to …
Read the article →Deep in an Ariège cave, two bison sculpted in clay 14,000 years ago stand as some of the finest sculptures of the Paleolithic era.
Excavations at Bacho Kiro cave (Bulgaria) have revealed Homo sapiens remains dating to 43,000 to 46,000 years ago, or possibly more. This is the earliest confirmed presence of our species in central Europe, pushing back previous chronologies by several millennia.
In Gargas cave (Hautes-Pyrenees, France), 231 hand prints 27,000 years old line the walls. Most have missing fingers. Ritual mutilation, gestural code or disease? The most debated enigma in European cave art remains unsolved.
In El Sidron cave (Asturias, Spain), thé remains of 13 Neanderthals dating to 49,000 years ago have revealed secrets of their social organisation: thé mâles were related to one another, thé females came from outside. A model of patrilocal exogamy comparable to modern hunter-gatherers.
Négative hand stencils in Maltravieso cave (Spain) have been dated to over 66,000 years ago - long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe. Thé évidence that Neanderthals practised symbolic art.
Discovered in 2013 in a nearly inaccessible cave in South Africa, Homo naledi combines a primitive australopith-sized brain with almost modern feet and potentially funerary behaviors. Dated to 335,000 to 226,000 years ago, its remains represent one of the most puzzling paleontological discoveries of the 21st century.
A study in Current Biology analyses the DNA of 521 woolly mammoths and reveals that human butchery sites contain 70% females, versus 66% males in natural deposits. An unprecedented genetic signature of Palaeolithic hunting.
A University of Helsinki team has detected 396 geoglyphs buried beneath the Brazilian forest using lidar. These remains belong to the Aquiry civilization, which may have counted up to 3 million inhabitants between 100 and 300 AD.
New cosmogenic nuclide burial dating places thé Yunxian fossil skulls (Hubei, China) at 1.77 million years, some 700,000 years older than previous estimâtes. Thé result challenges timelines of Homo erectus dispersal out of Africa and may require rethinking thé species' own origins.
Discovered in 1924 at the Abri des Merveilles in the Dordogne, a translucent scraper knapped from rock crystal challenged as early as 1931 the received image of Neanderthals. At least 45,000 years old, this deliberate choice of raw material testifies to an unsuspected visual sensibility.
Archaeologists from Freie Universität Berlin have dated the Amnya site in western Siberia to more than 8,000 years old. These fortifications -- palisades, ditches, earthen banks -- were built not by farmers, but by taiga hunter-gatherers. The oldest known defensive site in the world.
A new study in PLOS ONE redates the mammoth ivory boomerang from Oblazowa Cave, Poland, to between 39,000 and 42,000 years ago, making it the oldest known boomerang in the world -- twice as old as the initial estimate, which had been corrupted by conservation materials.
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 →In thé frozen burial mounds of thé Altai, archaeologists found mummified Scythian warriors alongside their horses, weapons, and carpets. This documentary dives into thèse exceptional tombs preserved for 2,500 years.
Watch the documentary →Discovered in 1961 in Afghanistan, Ai Khanoum is one of thé few Greek cities excavated in Central Asia. This documentary traces thé fascinating history of this Hellenistic city founded in thé wake of Alexander's conquests.
Watch the documentary →Founded by thé Ptolemies in thé 3rd century BCE, thé Library of Alexandria was thé greatest collection of knowledge in thé ancient world. This documentary explores what we know -- and what we do not -- about this monument of human intellect.
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