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Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest-known musical instruments in the world.The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens. Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old. The findings are described in the Journal of Human Evolution. A team led by Prof Tom Higham at Oxford University dated animal bones in the same ground layers as the flutes at Geissenkloesterle Cave in Germany's Swabian Jura. Prof Nick...

Fossils of what could be the oldest animal bodies have been discovered in Australia, pushing back the clock on when animal life first appeared on Earth to at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought. The results suggest that primitive sponge-like creatures lived in ocean reefs about 650 million years ago. Digital images of the fossils suggest the animals were about a centimeter in size (the width of your small fingertip) and had irregularly shaped bodies with a network of internal canals. The shelly fossils, found beneath a 635 million-year-old glacial deposit in South Australia, represent the earliest evidence...

WASHINGTON – The story of humankind is reaching back another million years as scientists learn more about "Ardi," a hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. The 110-pound, 4-foot female roamed forests a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor. This older skeleton reverses the common wisdom of human evolution, said anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University. Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, the new find provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor — but each...

Earliest horse figures of Anatolia in Eskiºehir Tuesday, February 27, 2007 ANKARA – Turkish Daily News Horse figures painted on rock formations in Eskiºehir are the oldest in Anatolia, according to new archaeological research. The research revealed that the first known horse figures date back to 6,000 B.C. and that the area was settled in the early Neolithic period. The excavation and studies of Anatolia in Eskiºehir's Sivrihisar district were conducted jointly by Eskiºehir-based Anadolu University and the Eskiºehir Archaeology Museum. The Eskiºehir province lies directly to the west of Ankara.Ali Umut Türkcan of Anadolu University said rock paintings featuring...

China's Earliest Handicraft Workshop Discovered? One of the world's oldest handicraft workshops, dating back more than 3,600 years, may have been discovered by Chinese archaeologists in the country's Henan Province. Covering about 1,000 square meters the workshop used turquoise to make elaborate and ornate works of art. The workshop was found in the village of Erlitou of Yanshi City and is part of the ruins of the imperial city belonging to the Xia dynasty (2100 BC-1600 BC), China's earliest. The imperial city was discovered two years ago. At the workshop crafts people made ornaments with inlaid turquoise, said Xu Hong,...

WASHINGTON - A new spaceship could be ready to replace the nation's aging shuttle fleet by 2011 — three years ahead of schedule — if lawmakers added money to NASA's proposed budget, the head of the space agency told a congressional panel on Tuesday. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said that date is the earliest the new spaceship, or crew exploration vehicle, could be developed no matter how much money the agency received. Currently, the target date for building a new vehicle is 2014. With his pitch to Congress, Griffin underscored a point he has made previously about completing the spaceship...

Hobbits may be earliest Australians Carmelo Amalfi and Leigh Dayton December 08, 2005 THE tiny hobbit-like humans of Indonesia may have lived in Australia before they became extinct about 11,000 years ago. The startling claim comes from archaeologist Mike Morwood, leader of the team that in 2003 uncovered remains of the 1m-tall hominid at Liang Bua cave on Indonesia's Flores island. They believe the pint-size person - known officially as Homo floresiensis and unofficially as the "Hobbit" - was wiped out by a volcanic eruption that spared their Homo sapiens neighbours. Speaking at a public lecture in Perth, Professor Morwood...

China Exclusive: Chinese archaeologists discover world earliest millets (Xinhua) Updated: 2005-09-02 16:14 Chinese archaeologists have recently found the world earliest millets, dated back to about 8,000 years ago, on the grassland in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A large number of carbonized millets have been discovered by Chinese archaeologists at the Xinglonggou relics site in Chifeng City. The discovery has changed the traditional opinion that millet, the staple food in ancient north China, originated in the Yellow River valley, Zhao Zhijun, a researcher with the Archaeology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua on Friday. Carbon-14...

Earliest European 31,000 years old Agençe France-Presse Thursday, 19 May 2005 Radiocarbon dating of human remains found in the Czech Republic has confirmed they come from the oldest European found so far (Image: iStockphoto) Fossilised human bones found in the Czech Republic have been dated back to some 31,000 years, which scientists say confirms them as the oldest known examples of Homo sapiens found in Europe. Austrian and US scientists publish their carbon-dating results in today's issue of the journal Nature. An upper jaw, teeth and the skull of a female were found in a cave in Moravia in the...

Earliest states possibly in shape 5,000 years ago www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-11 15:56:15 JINAN, May 11 (Xinhuanet) - Dozens of prehistoric states might have been developing in eastern China as early as 5,000 years ago,thousands of years before the birth of the first textually attested state that existed in Xia Dynasty (2100 B.C.-1600 B.C.), said a Sino-US archaeological research team. The presumption was based on a decade-long regional survey and excavation in Rizhao, a coastal city in east China's Shandong Province. Archaeologists with the team are almost sure they have identified the ruins of a prehistoric state dating back between 3,000 B.C....

April 21, 2005 Clue to earliest American may lie in Suffolk grave By David Sanderson A SAMPLE from the bones of a Suffolk woman buried 400 years ago is to be exhumed by scientists seeking to discover more about an English explorer who is the unsung founding father of America. Archaeologists are to crosscheck DNA from remains they believe belong to the explorer Bartholomew Gosnold with samples from his sister, who was thought to have been buried in a Suffolk churchyard in the 1600s. Church officials have given their backing to the project, which is thought to be the first...

Earliest Depiction of a Rainbow Found? By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Dec. 21, 2004 — An ancient bronze disc that looks a bit like a freckled smiley face may show the world's earliest known depiction of a rainbow, according to a report published in the new issue of British Archaeology magazine. If the rainbow interpretation proves to be correct, the rare image also would be the only known representation of a rainbow from prehistoric Europe. The round bronze object, called the Sky Disc, was excavated in 1999 at Nebra in central Germany. It was said to have been found at...

Earliest palace city discovered in Henan www.chinaview.cn 2004-07-25 09:57:20 The undated file photo shows part of the Erlitou site in Yanshi, central China's Henan Province. Archaeologists said that the palace city discovered last spring at the Erlitou site may be the earliest palace city ever discovered in China. (Xinhua Photo)> The undated file photo shows part of the Erlitou site in Yanshi, central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua Photo) The undated file photo shows relics unearthed from the Erlitou site in Yanshi, central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua Photo) ZHENGZHOU, July 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists said that the palace city discovered last...

Shell Beads From South African Cave Show Modern Human Behavior 75,000 Years Ago ARLINGTON, Va.- Perforated shells found at South Africa's Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75,000 years ago-making them 30,000 years older than any previously identified personal ornaments. Archaeologists excavating the site on the on the coast of the Indian Ocean discovered 41 shells, all with holes and wear marks in similar positions, in a layer of sediment deposited during the Middle Stone Age (MSA). "The Blombos Cave beads present absolute evidence for perhaps the earliest storage of information outside the human brain,"...

Charred remains may be earliest human fires 19:00 29 April 04 NewScientist.com news service Archaeologists in Israel may have unearthed the oldest evidence of fire use by our ancestors. The site, on the banks of the Jordan River, dates to about 790,000 years ago. There are older sites in Africa, but the evidence from these is much more hotly contested. The moment that our ancestors discovered how to control fire has long occupied an iconic place in the popular imagination. Chimpanzees, our closest living ancestors, have demonstrated impressive feats of language and tool use, but fire use "is the most...

Posted on Tue, Dec. 09, 2003 French student looks for lefties among earliest cave painters By ALEXANDRA WITZE The Dallas Morning News Prehistoric shamans used to mark the transition from the real world to the spirit world, anthropologists think, by blowing pigments around their hands onto cave walls. These ghostly hand prints, which still dot European caves more than 10,000 years later, now serve a less ethereal purpose — telling scientists how many of those shamans were left-handed. New research shows that the frequency of left-handed painters — 23 percent — is the same today as it was back then....

Source: Southern Connecticut State University Released: Mon 03-Nov-2003, 14:00 ET Earliest Stone Tools and Bones Site Discovered An assistant professor of anthropology has discovered the earliest direct evidence of stone tool manufacture and use in a controlled setting, in an excavation in Gona, Ethiopia. His research team dates the tools they found to 2.6 million years old. Newswise — Michael Rogers, an assistant professor of anthropology at Southern Connecticut State University, has discovered the earliest direct evidence of stone tool manufacture and use in a controlled setting, in an excavation in Gona, Ethiopia. Rogers and his research team date the...

New road reveals Stone Age site Archaeologists believe they may have stumbled upon a major Stone Age site - on the route of a new bypass. The site dates back between 250,000 and 300,000 years and may even provide evidence of one of the earliest uses of fire. Archaeologists discovered a range of items at the location in Harnham, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, including 44 "very rare" flint hand axes - the earliest form of tool used by man. Yet the dig was only organised after the county council unveiled plans to build a relief road for the village. One...

Earliest British cemetery dated A cave in the Mendip Hills in southwest England has been revealed as the earliest scientifically dated cemetery in Britain. The age of the cemetery makes it an important European site The site at Aveline's Hole, near Burrington Combe, contained human bone fragments that have now been confirmed to be between roughly 10,200 and 10,400 years old. The specimens - representing about 21 individuals - were originally removed from the cave in the early years of the 20th Century and were held in a museum in Bristol. There, the collection was largely destroyed in a World...

Earliest Domesticated Dogs Uncovered By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Skull of a Stone Age Dog April 7, 2003 — The skulls of two Stone Age dogs believed to be the earliest known canines on record have been found, according to a team of Russian scientists. The dog duo, which lived approximately 14,000 years ago, appear to represent the first step of domestication from their wild wolf ancestors. Mikhail Sablin, a scientist at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, along with his colleague Gennady Khlopachev, analyzed the dog remains, which were found at the Eliseevichi...