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Science Norway reports that a stone with a groove running all the way around it was discovered near an islet off the coast of western Norway that is the site of Hespriniholmen, a greenstone quarry estimated to be between 5,000 and 9,000 years old. Greenstone was used to make axes that have been unearthed in western and eastern Norway. Arild Skjæveland Vivås of the Stavanger Maritime Museum said that the team of researchers found the stone, which weighs more than 60 pounds, on an underwater pile of quarry waste. They fastened a rope around the groove and pulled it up...

Today we're doing something a little different. We're taking Curator's Corner on the road! Wiltshire Museum in Devizes has very kindly lent us the objects excavated from Bush Barrow for our upcoming 'The world of Stonehenge' exhibition. But before they were taken off display, we grabbed some time with director David Dawson, to find out what makes the Bush Barrow Chieftain such an important figure for our understanding of British prehistory and the world of Stonehenge. Stonehenge's Richest Man | The Bush Barrow Chieftain Curator's Corner S7 Ep2 | 7:34 The British Museum | 799K subscribers | 221,962 views |...

According to a statement released by the Leibniz Center for Archaeology (LEIZA), Aleksandr Diachenko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Detlef Gronenborn of LEIZA and Johannes Gutenberg University evaluated the roles of population size, production capacity, and information exchange in societal changes through pottery. "We developed a mathematical model to describe how the organization and intensity of pottery production can influence the number of decoration styles," said Diachenko. "Additionally, the model reveals how pottery styles evolve through human information exchange and population growth," he explained. The study examined 7,000-year-old pottery from the Linear Pottery culture unearthed in...

Science in Norway reports that a rescue excavation on southeastern Norway’s Svinesund Plateau, which was led by Carine Rosenvinge of the Museum of Cultural History Oslo, has uncovered a Neolithic gallery grave lined with stone slabs. The bottom of the grave was paved with smaller stones. The structure has been dated to about 4,000 years ago, when early farmers moved into the region. Flint daggers and arrowheads are usually found in such graves and attributed to warriors, Rosenvinge explained. This grave, however, only contained one arrowhead and no daggers. An amber bead, a pottery fragment, and evidence of burning were...

La Brújula Verde reports that a camp used by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers has been found just underneath artifacts left by the first farmers of the Neolithic period in intact archaeological layers in Tina Jama, a mountain cave on the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Federico Bernardini of Ca’ Foscari University, Elena Leghissa of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and their colleagues suggest that farmers arrived in the region some 7,500 years ago. Prior to the arrival of farming in the region, hunter-gatherers built a hearth in the most sheltered part of the cave. They also closed off the...

Roughly seven thousand years ago, something erased the majority of men from the human gene pool. Not a plague. Not a famine. Something else entirely, and the evidence is still sitting in your own DNA. We dig into the genetic study that first uncovered this bottleneck, the mass graves across Neolithic Europe that back it up, and the invention sitting at the center of it all, one so ordinary you would never suspect it. When Our Simplest Invention Killed 95% Of All Men Alive | 22:04 The First Dawn | 17.8K subscribers | 240,685 views | August 3, 2026

In central Libya, the endless flat desert of the Sahara gives way to something unexpected: a jet-black ocean of frozen rock. Covering more than 40,000 square kilometers, Al Haruj is one of the largest volcanic fields in Africa, shaped over millions of years by repeated eruptions. Hundreds of extinct cinder cones and ancient fissure vents rise from its sun-baked plateau, where dark basalt flows meet the shifting sands. In this documentary, we explore the volcanic history of this remote landscape and how vast lava flows reshaped the Sahara, leaving behind one of North Africa's most desolate and striking geological monuments....

The Mystery of the Neolithic Marked Arrowheads | 10:22 MegalithHunter | 24.7K subscribers | 557 views | August 29, 2026 00:00 New Discovery of Incised Arrowheads 00:54 Where Have These Arrowheads Been Found? 02:46 Tepecik-Çiftlik Archaeological Site 06:11 Looking For A Pattern

Archaeologists at Göbeklitepe in southeastern Turkey have uncovered rectangular buildings that may offer new evidence of everyday life and homes at the Neolithic settlement. The structures lie just below the modern surface in a newly opened excavation area. Researchers believe they belong to Göbeklitepe’s second phase of occupation. Unlike the site’s famous monumental enclosures, the buildings contain fewer large stone pillars and have interiors that may have supported domestic activities. Excavation director Prof. Dr. Necmi Karul said the team’s initial impression is that some may have been homes. Researchers, however, say more evidence is needed before they can determine how...

A new study compares the carved symbolism of Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone with ritual imagery from the Trypillia culture, suggesting that early farming societies in Anatolia and Eastern Europe may have shared cosmological ideas about time, death, sacred space and the movement of the heavens.At Göbekli Tepe, the famous Vulture Stone has never been easy to read. Its carved birds, snakes, scorpion, abstract signs and headless human figure have inspired competing interpretations for decades. Was it a scene of death ritual, an astronomical code, a mythic narrative, or something more complex? A new study argues that the answer may not...

In Norway’s highest mountains, experts are scouring perilous terrain for pieces of the past, long stored in mint condition in ice patches. As temperatures rise across the world, glacial archaeologists must find the emerging artifacts before they degrade forever This arrow with a pressure-flaked arrowhead made from gray quartzite dates to the Late Stone Age or Bronze Age and was found on Norway’s ice. The pitch and the animal sinew used to fasten the arrowhead are still preserved, which is exceptionally rare. Espen Finstad, Innlandet County Municipality ============================================================================================ A brown leather loafer came into view on a patch of ice...

According to a statement released by the University of Southampton, a crannog in shallow waters in Loch Bhorgastail on Scotland's Isle of Lewis has been evaluated by researchers from the University of Southampton and the University of Reading with a technique called stereophotogrammetry, which involves stitching together photographs taken at different angles to create a high-resolution 3D model. The study determined that the structure began as a circular wooden platform, measuring about 75 feet in diameter, that was topped with brushwood. Neolithic pottery was also discovered in the area surrounding the crannog, enabling archaeologists to date this first construction of...

Excavations from 2015 to 2021 on the ancient site of Motza, just west of Jerusalem, revealed a sprawling settlement with some surprisingly advanced technology. The site dates back to 7100–6700 BCE during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period...There is evidence of the use of calcitic lime plaster, or calcium carbonate-based plaster, in construction as far back as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. It later became a dominant, durable building material used by civilizations like the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. The earliest evidence of its use appeared in the Fertile Crescent, or modern day Jordan and Turkey. The material is produced...

For 4,200 years, the Y chromosome of a Yakutian warrior has quietly echoed in Siberia's Arctic peoples. His extraordinary Stone Age grave was discovered in Russia's far northeast near Yakutsk in 2004 by scientists. The middle-aged hunter's skeleton was found on its back with arms at its side. Dozens of elk-bone plates were laid as a shield over the chest. Analysis of the radiocarbon data hints that the person died nearly 4,000 years ago. The person is presumed to be from the Ymyyakhtakh cultural horizon. This cultural horizon contains the nomadic hunter-gatherers who used more sophisticated bone and antler weapons......

According to a statement released by the University of Copenhagen, analysis of the remains of 132 individuals unearthed near a megalithic tomb in northern France suggests that the site was initially used by one group of people, but that population declined around 3000 B.C. and was eventually replaced by another group. "We see a clear genetic break between the two periods," said Frederik Valeur Seersholm of the University of Copenhagen. Genetic testing revealed that the earlier group was composed of early farmers from northern France and Germany, while the later group was linked to people in southern France and the...

Phys.org reports that wheat for baking bread (Triticum aestivum) may have first been grown some 8,000 years ago in Georgia. Genetic studies of modern wheat plants and wild grasses indicate that domesticated wheat and wild goat grass were mixed in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region. This hybrid plant eventually became bread wheat, explained Nana Rusishvili of the Georgia National Museum and her colleagues. They examined charred grains recovered from Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, two Neolithic village sites in Georgia. Because charred grains of bread wheat look similar to durum wheat and other wheat seeds, the team...

Paleoanthropologists from the University of Vienna and Harvard University have analyzed ancient DNA from 435 individuals from Eurasian archaeological sites... They've discovered a previously unknown group, called Caucasus-Lower Volga (CLV) people, and found out that this population can be connected to all Indo-European-speaking populations.Indo-European languages, which number over 400 and include major groups such as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and Celtic, are spoken by nearly half the world's population today...These migrations out of the steppes had the largest effect on European human genomes of any demographic event in the last 5,000 years and are widely regarded as the probable vector...

Initially, archaeologists believed that humans began to live with cats about 9,500 years ago in... parts of the present-day eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. This timeline coincides with the beginning of the Neolithic era, when agriculture started to spread. The grains used in farming attracted rodents, which then enticed the wildcats to come and eat the rodents. Neolithic humans then likely kept the wildcats around to keep the rodents away, paving the way for domestication. Cat remains dating [circa 9500 years ago] have been discovered in present-day Cyprus, indicating that the animals were a part of daily life by then.Cats...

A New International Project Studying The Origin And History Of Cats Is Investigating Evidence Of An Ancient Feline Migration Into Europe.Previous research had recovered DNA from the Near Eastern wildcat, the ancestor of modern domestic cats, from ancient sites in Central Europe dated to 3000 BC. Such finds preceded the establishment of domestic cats in the region by millennia, which is believed to happened during the Roman period...As such, Dr Danijela and a team of researchers began a new research project combining palaeogenetics, zooarchaeology and radiocarbon dating to study the origins and history of the cat in Central Europe. Their...

Archaeologists working in southeastern Turkey have uncovered new evidence that expands the known reach of one of the world’s earliest monumental cultures. The find is reshaping how researchers understand the Neolithic transition in Upper Mesopotamia. Stone structures featuring Göbeklitepe-style T-pillars have been identified in the Samsat district of Adıyaman. The remains surfaced after falling water levels in the Atatürk Dam reservoir exposed land that had remained underwater for decades. Discovery triggered by retreating waters The site lies near Kızılöz village, where receding waters revealed stone features along the shoreline. After a report from residents, teams from the Adıyaman Museum Directorate...