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years ago) shows that small, elongated, symmetrical objects (bladelets) were mass-produced on-site. Such a standardized production is in line with what archaeologists have already suggested being linked to the bow and arrow introduction.The most typical Ahmarian tool is the el-Wad point, a blade or bladelet made of flint that has an additional, intentional modification, a so-called retouch. They are one of the widespread variants of shaped spear or arrow tips of the early Upper Paleolithic. The new findings suggest that el-Wad points in Al-Ansab likely resulted from attempts to re-shape bigger, asymmetrical bladelet artifacts to reach quality standards of the...

Ancient structures uncovered in Turkey and thought to be the world's oldest temples may not have been strictly religious buildings after all, according to an article in the October issue of Current Anthropology. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto argues that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe may have been houses for people, not...gods. The buildings at Göbekli, a hilltop just outside of the Turkish city of Urfa, were found in 1995 by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute and colleagues from the Şanlıurfa Museum in Turkey. The oldest of the structures at the site are immense...

They probably appeared in Poland approximately 300,000 years ago. The oldest stone tools they used, discovered on the Vistula, are over 200,000 years old, and the remains are over 100,000 years old. "On the bank of the river in Pietraszyno, we discovered an unprecedented amount of flint products - 17,000 - abandoned by Neanderthals approximately 60,000 years ago" - says Dr. Andrzej Wisniewski from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wroclaw. Since 2018, the researcher has been conducting joint excavations with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in the framework of a National Science Centre...

AKSON RUSSIAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION—Russian scientists studied the Zhokhov site of ancient people, which is located in the high-latitude Arctic, and described in detail the way of life of the ancient people who had lived there. It turned out that, despite the sparsely populated area, the ancient people had communicated with representatives of other territories and had even exchanged various objects with them through some kind of the fairs. Zhokhov Island, located at 76º N in the New Siberian Islands, 440 kilometers north of the modern coast of the East Siberian Sea, belongs to the High Arctic. Here, the Zhokhov...

Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows. The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old "stone points", which they say were probably arrow heads. Closer inspection of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone that provided clues about how they were used. The team reports its findings in the journal Antiquity. The arrow heads were excavated from layers of ancient sediment in Sibudu Cave in South Africa. During the excavation, led by Professor Lyn Wadley from the University of the Witwatersrand, the team dug through layers deposited up to 100,000 years ago.

Most people know of the great construction achievements of the dynastic Egyptians such as the pyramids and temples of the Giza Plateau area as well as the Sphinx. Many books and videos show depictions of vast work forces hewing blocks of stone in the hot desert sun and carefully setting them into place. However, some of these amazing works could simply not have been made by these people during the time frame that we call dynastic Egypt. Up until the 7th century BC there was very little iron present in Egypt, as this material only became commonly used once the...

Research carried out at the University of Kent demonstrates that a technique used to produce stone tools that were first found half a million years ago is likely to have needed a modern human-like hand... This research is the first to link a stone tool production technique known as 'platform preparation' to the biology of human hands. Demonstrating that without the ability to perform highly forceful precision grips, our ancestors would not have been able to produce advanced types of stone tool like spear points. The technique involves preparing a striking area on a tool to remove specific stone flakes...

Clovis points are undeniably special. For one thing, they are among the oldest artifacts in America. (Some archaeologists would remove the qualification and say they are THE oldest, but the evidence and arguments for a pre-Clovis human presence in the Americas are compelling -- at least to me.) In addition to being really old, 13,000 years old give or take a century or two, Clovis points also are large, beautifully-crafted, often made from high-quality flint, and at least occasionally were used to kill mammoths and mastodons. Because a few have been found in direct association with the bones of these...

Researchers at the University of Kent have recreated the processes Neanderthals used to produce sharp flint axes, and found that our ancestors were skilled engineers. A modern-day 'flintknapper' replicated the sharpening processes that Neanderthals used to create tools -- a sort of modern 'reverse engineering' of ancient techniques in use by three kinds of early 'hominin' including Neanderthals as early as 300,000 years ago. The researchers found that Neanderthals could shape 'elegant' stone tools -- shaping them to be hard-wearing, easily sharpened and with a perfectly balanced centre of gravity. The reproduction of how Neanderthals worked shows that it is...