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Phys.org reports that a new analysis of a skull fragment and jaw fragment found in northern China's Xujiayao archaeological site in the 1970s suggests that the fossils belonged to Denisovans. Qiaomei Fu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and her colleagues identified 18 proteins in the fossils. One of the collagen variants is found only in Denisovans, and not in Neanderthals nor modern humans. Then the researchers evaluated the shapes of the fossils and used 3D computer models to reconstruct the bones. These images were compared with fossils from Neanderthals, modern humans, and other hominins. The study suggests that Denisovans...

Well-preserved Neanderthal hand bones containing collagen have been recovered from northern Spain's Abauntz Cave, according to an IFL Science report. The bones have been radiocarbon dated to 46,000 years ago. "The cave's location is important," said Andión Arteaga of the University of Warsaw and the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, and Mikel Arlegi of the Musée de l'Homme. "Abauntz lies along a natural corridor connecting both sides of the Pyrenees. [This makes] it a particularly interesting site for investigating how these late Neanderthal populations moved across the region and how different groups may have interacted," the researchers...

La Brújula Verde reports that 13 impressions left in travertine in northeastern Spain's Abric Romaní rock shelter have been identified as wooden tools made by Neanderthals who lived in the region between 40,000 and 62,000 years ago. According to Palmira Saladié, Gema Chacón, and Josep Vallverdú of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, the impressions were made when the wooden objects were coated with water rich in calcium carbonate. The wood eventually decayed but left a hollow in the sediments. In all, the rock shelter contains about 66 feet of sediments laid down over thousands of years....

Haaretz reports that Emma Pomeroy of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues examined the remains of Shanidar A, a Neanderthal of about 45 years of age who was buried in Iraqi Kurdistan's Shanidar Cave some 75,000 years ago. The researchers suggest that the individual had been killed when a weapon, likely a sharpened stick, was forced into his chest from the front, passed through a lung, and punched a hole in his left shoulder blade. Similar holes have been identified in fossilized animal bones. About a year before his death, this individual had also suffered facial injuries, including a...

According to a statement released by Flinders University, underwater archaeologists working with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation rangers and divers have identified sites off the northwestern coast of Australia where First Peoples lived more than 9,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and reshaped the coastline. The submerged area covers some 772,000 square miles. One of the identified sites includes a freshwater spring and stone tools, which were made using material obtained from an island about 14 miles away. Another site featured a rocky hill overlooking a river channel. "The Ngarda-Ngarli people have cared for Murujuga for at least 50,000 years,"...

According to a report in the , more than 3,000 artifacts were recovered during environmental work in the Nieuwe Drostendiep stream valley in the northeastern section of the Netherlands. The objects include tools from the Paleolithic period and the Bronze Age; medieval jewelry and jewelry dated to the second century B.C.; and materials from the Eighty Years' War, fought in the sixteenth century, and World War II. In particular, archaeologists found a gold ring dated to the third or fourth century A.D. and a fibula dated to the tenth or eleventh century A.D. "We are proud of the rich history...

A new study suggests that about 59,000 years ago, someone used a small stone tool to drill into a badly decayed tooth, remove diseased tissue and expose the pulp chamber. The patient may have done it himself, or allowed another Neanderthal to do it. Either way, the procedure points to a striking level of skill, pain tolerance and practical medical understanding...By the time archaeologists found it in Chagyrskaya Cave, in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, the molar had lost nearly all of its crown. Its enamel was gone and the chewing surface had been worn flat by a hard...

According to a statement released by the University of Tübingen, evidence of quarrying some 220,000 years ago has been discovered at the Jojosi site in eastern South Africa by a team of researchers led by Manuel Will of the University of Tübingen. It had been previously thought that early modern humans found stones for making tools incidentally as they looked for food. Team member Gunther Möller reassembled more than 350 rock fragments recovered from the site into "refits," or stones that had been broken apart by knapping. "With these 3D puzzles, we were able to see precisely where and how...

A new analysis of turtle shell fragments unearthed at the Paleolithic site of Neumark-Nord in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt suggests Neanderthals regularly hunted the diminutive European pond turtle. A team led by archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser from the Institute for Ancient Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz analyzed 92 turtle shell fragments from the site dating back 125,000 years, and found evidence that the turtles had been butchered and their shells cleaned. The team suspects Neanderthals did not eat the turtles, which grow to be no longer than eight inches and weigh around two pounds. "Pond turtles have a comparatively...

According to a statement released by Saarland University, repeated lines, notches, dots, and crosses etched on Paleolithic artifacts some 40,000 years ago exhibit the same level of complexity and information density as proto-cuneiform script, which emerged around 3000 B.C. Linguist Christian Bentz of Saarland University and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin used computers to analyze the statistical properties of more than 3,000 signs on 260 Paleolithic artifacts. “We hypothesized that the early proto-cuneiform script would be more similar to the writing systems of today, especially due to their relative proximity in time,”...

A Paleolithic teenaged boy whose remains were discovered in northwest Italy's Ardene Candide cave in 1942 immediately earned the nickname Il Principe, or "the Prince," because of the richness of the grave goods found in his 27,500-year-old burial. Researchers noticed that he had also suffered traumatic injuries to his upper body, but at the time they were unable to establish exactly what had happened to him. According to a statement issued by the University of Montreal, an international team of researchers has finally determined that the young man was likely attacked by a bear. The team reexamined the boy's skeletal...

When the Prince was found more than 80 years ago, excavators immediately suspected he had suffered a significant traumatic event around the time of his death because of widespread damage to the bones of his left shoulder area, neck and lower jaw. But no official analysis of the skeleton was ever published, and the Prince's body was reassembled, glued together and put on display in the Ligurian Archaeological Museum shortly after World War II. Recently, the researchers obtained permission from the museum to remove bones from the display one at a time so that they could look at them under...

According to a statement released by University College London, a team of researchers led by Simon Parfitt of University College London and London's Natural History Museum reviewed materials unearthed at the Boxgrove Paleolithic site in southern England in 1990. Among the artifacts, the scientists identified a 500,000-year-old tool made of elephant or mammoth bone. The outer layer of elephant bone would have been softer than stone, and yet harder than the bones of other animals. "Elephant bone would have been a rare but highly useful resource, and it's likely this tool was of considerable value," Parfitt said. The age of...

According to a Live Science report, hafted stone tools dated to as early as 160,000 years ago have been discovered in central China. More than 2,600 stone tools were uncovered at the site of Xigou, and some of them appear to have been attached to a handle or shaft, making them the oldest known composite tools in eastern Asia. Michael Petraglia of Griffith University explained that the use of a handle improved tool performance by allowing the user to increase leverage, and by providing more force for actions such as boring holes. These tools are thought to have been used...

Science News reports that 430,000-year-old wooden tools likely crafted by Neanderthals or Homo heidelbergensis individuals have been discovered in Greece by a team of researchers led by Annemieke Milks of the University of Reading. The site, which is now a coal mine, is located in the central Peloponnese Peninsula. The rare wooden tools were recovered from waterlogged ground 100 feet beneath the surface, in an area that had been an ancient lakeshore, among thousands of pieces of wood, bone, and stone. One of the artifacts, identified through use-wear analysis as a 2.5-foot-long digging stick, was recovered in four pieces. Milks...

Science Magazine reports that five stone blades made from chert outcrops in central France have been found more than 400 miles away in central Spain by Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño of the University of Alcalá and his colleagues. The team members unearthed the yellowish tools at the Peña Capón rock shelter near the Sorbe River, where people fished for salmon and hunted deer, horses, and rabbits between 26,000 and 22,000 years ago. Dating of charcoal and animal bone in the several layers where the chert tools were recovered indicates that the materials were imported for a period of about 1,400 years. "Their...

The reevaluation of 16 flint and radiolarite tools found among bear remains in a cave in the Alps suggests that traveling Neanderthals carried the stone tools with them, according to a Phys.org report. Microscopic examination of the tools by Davide Delpiano of the University of Ferrara and his colleagues detected evidence of retouching, indicating that tools had been sharpened repeatedly, yet no stone flakes or chips were uncovered in Caverna Generosa. Analysis of the chemical makeup of the stone used to make the tools revealed that it had come from a few miles away, much further down the mountain. The...

Hunting with poison arrows has been pushed back to 60,000 years ago, according to a Live Science report. Sven Isaksson of Stockholm University and his colleagues detected traces of poison in residues on five quartz arrowheads recovered from South Africa’s Umhlatuzana rock shelter, which was excavated in 1985. The toxin, called buphandrine, would have weakened prey, thus reducing the length of time and amount of energy expended on the hunt. The toxin epibuphanisine was detected on just one of the arrowheads, but both toxins had probably been applied to all of the weapons, Isaksson said. They may have even been...

Archaeologists have found the earliest evidence yet of fire technology — and it was created by Neanderthals in England more than 400,000 years ago. Neanderthals were the world's first innovators of fire technology, tiny specks of evidence in England suggest. Flecks of pyrite found at a more than 400,000-year-old archaeological site in Suffolk, in eastern England, push back archaeologists' evidence for controlled fire-making and suggest that key human brain developments began far earlier than previously thought. "We're a species who've used fire to really shape the world around us," study co-author Rob Davis, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the British Museum,...

An excavation in eastern Norway has uncovered traces of a dwelling and thousands of artifacts marking a shift some 9,000 years ago from nomadic hunting and gathering to a more sedentary lifestyle featuring fishing and the development of new technologies. At the time, the dwelling sat on high ground near a cove. Archaeologist Silje Hårstad of the Museum of Cultural History told Science Norway that a variety of tools were recovered from the site, including half of a shaft-hole club. "It was round, slightly oval, with a distinct drilled hole in the middle where a shaft was once attached," she...