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Evidence continues to mount that Neanderthals were a much more intelligent species than scientists originally suspected. Popular Science reports that archaeologists uncovered a remarkable, multifunctional tool from Belgium's Scladina Cave. The utensil was fashioned from the tibia of an extinct cave lion 130,000 years ago and had four different functional components. Researchers believe that it may have originally been created for use in tasks such as chiseling, but as some of the points wore down, they were reshaped and repurposed for other jobs, such as sharpening and retouching flints. According to the report, the team stated that "the intentional transformation...

Ancient humans were building large wooden structures -- possibly houses -- almost half a million years ago. The discovery, the earliest evidence of wooden construction, suggests that some ancient communities were far less nomadic than we have assumed...One of the first artefacts they found was a wooden tool, probably a digging stick. "The number of sites where wood is preserved is small," says researcher Geoff Duller at Aberystwyth University, UK......a 1.4-metre-long log overlying an even larger log that was too big to fully excavate during their month-long project. They saw that the overlying log had been worked with tools to...

New evidence from a Pleistocene site in southwestern China reveals the oldest known use of intricately crafted wooden tools in East Asia, dating back over 350,000 years. Credit: Liu et al., 10.1126/science.adr8540. ====================================================================== Newly uncovered wooden tools from Pleistocene China reveal complex, plant-focused technology far earlier than expected in East Asia. Researchers working at the Pleistocene-era Gantangqing site in southwestern China have uncovered a diverse set of wooden tools dating from approximately 361,000 to 250,000 years ago. This discovery represents the oldest known example of advanced wooden tool technology in East Asia. Analysis of the tools suggests they were not...

The world's oldest boomerang is older than previously thought, casting new light on the ingenuity of humans living at the time.The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth's tusk with an astonishing level of skill.Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower.It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual....new, more reliable radiocarbon...

Human footprints at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, reported in 2021, show that human activity occurred in the Americas as long as 23,000 years ago – about 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. A new U of A study supports the 2021 findings. Credit: David Bustos/White Sands National Park ====================================================================== Evidence buried in gypsum dunes suggests humans arrived far earlier than expected. Radiocarbon dates from three materials agree. Vance Holliday quickly accepted an invitation to do geological research at White Sands in New Mexico. The area, located just west of Alamogordo, is known for its surreal landscape—endless rolling...

Were cavemen painting for their gods? (Filed: 23/02/2005) The meaning of Ice Age art has been endlessly debated, but evidence is increasing that some was religiously motivated, says Paul Bahn At least 70,000 years ago, our ancestors began to adorn their bodies with beads, pendants and perhaps tattoos; by 35,000 years ago, they had begun to paint and engrave animals, people and abstract motifs on cave walls, like those in Lascaux, France, and Altamira in Spain. They sculpted voluptuous figurines in ivory or stone, such as the Venus of Willendorf. Underestimating art: 35,000 years ago, our ancestors began painting representations...

Archaeologists have discovered fragments of one of the world's oldest sculptures, a lion-faced figurine estimated at 32,000 years old, from the dirt floor of a cave in southern Germany. The ivory figure, along with a tiny figurine known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, marks the foundation of human artistry. Both were created by a Stone Age European culture that historians call Aurignacian. The Aurignacians appear to have been the first modern humans, with handicrafts, social customs and beliefs. They hunted reindeer, woolly rhinoceros, mammoths and other animals. The Lion-Man sculpture, gradually re-assembled in workshops over decades after the fragments...

The Bayuda Desert in central Sudan is one of the least explored regions of the country. Over the past six years, however, a team of Polish archaeologists has conducted a comprehensive investigation of the area and identified over 1,200 archaeological sites dating from the Paleolithic period through the Middle Ages. According to Science in Poland, the researchers then excavated 33 cemeteries and 55 settlements. The oldest sites examined were associated with the Oldowan culture, the earliest known producers of stone tools, but perhaps the most significant discovery was the presence of a dried-up salt lake bed near Jebel El-Muwelha. The...

New research reveals that our extinct Neanderthal relatives were surprisingly savvy navigators who used river valleys to zip across continents in record time. Computer simulations show they could cross from western Russia to Siberia in as little as 1,600 years, a prehistoric speed record that shows the efficiency of their migration skills.A new study published in PLOS One reveals that Neanderthals could have traveled from the Caucasus Mountains to the Altai Mountains of Siberia in the blink of an eye in prehistoric terms. Using sophisticated computer simulations that model ancient migration patterns, researchers from New York University discovered that these...

Whales, as the largest mammals on Earth, have long been an important resource for human societies, whether it be for food, oil, or other materials. According to a report by Popular Science, hunter-gatherers in present-day Spain and France have been crafting essential tools from whale bones for much longer than previously thought. A new study analyzed 83 bone tools found at sites along the Bay of Biscay and 90 additional bones from the Santa Catalina cave in Spain. The investigation relied on mass spectrometry and radiocarbon dating to determine that humans living in the region have been making whale-bone tools,...

Homo erectus, modern humans' archaic hominin relative, was the first human species to migrate out of Africa. One of the places they eventually settled was in Southeast Asia, as H. erectus fossils found on the island of Java date back 1.6 million years. Archaeologists working there recently gained new insight into the way these early humans lived, according to a statement released by Leiden University.Dredging operations in the Madura Strait recovered two fragments of 140,000-year-old H. erectus skull among the fossilized remains of 36 vertebrate species. This now-submerged region was once part of a landmass called Sundaland, which connected the...

Evidence of human violence towards other humans during the Paleolithic period is rarely seen in the archaeological record. According to a Live Science report, however, one such case occurred around 17,000 years ago in what is today northern Italy. In 1973, archaeologists uncovered in the Riparo Tagliente rock shelter the partial skeletal remains of a man, known as Tagliente 1, who they determined had died in his 20s.Although the reasons were not readily apparent at the time, recent reanalysis of his bones suggests he may have been the victim of a bloody ambush. Electron microscope scanning and 3D imaging revealed...

Neanderthals seem to have produced a remarkably consistent set of stone tools for hundreds of thousands of years. Two new studies suggest that this presumed lack of diversity and innovation might not be the whole story.Karen Ruebens, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, analyzed more than 1,300 stone tools from European Neanderthal sites dated to between 115,000 and 35,000 years ago. She found that they belong to at least two distinct tool-making traditions. West of the Rhine River, Neanderthal hand axes are oval or roughly triangular, while to the east, they are rounded on one edge and flat on...

According to the Greek Reporter, archaeologists have discovered the earliest known evidence of human occupation on the island of Sicily in San Teodoro cave near the town of Acquedolci -- finally proving a theory that was first posited over 75 years ago but unable to be confirmed then. Modern dating methods of sediment layers where stone tools, animal bones, and charred wood were found estimated that they were 16,500 years old, revealing that humans inhabited Sicily much earlier than previously thought. Groups of hunter-gatherers likely crossed the sea in small boats from mainland Europe as the last Ice Age was...

In the windswept reaches of northern Scotland, where jagged cliffs meet the crashing waves of the Atlantic, a discovery has emerged that challenges long-held assumptions about human history at the icy edge of Europe.Archaeologists have unearthed stone tools on the far northern coast of the Isle of Skye, suggesting that humans thrived at what was once considered the bleak and uninhabitable margin of the world during the final throes of the last Ice Age.The study, published in The Journal of Quaternary Science, details the finding of Late Upper Paleolithic (LUP) tools at South Cuidrach on the Isle of Skye. These...

Cutting-edge technology has been used to redate the world-famous Schöningen spears that were discovered in the mid-1990s, according to a statement released by the University of York. At the time, experts estimated that 10 wooden weapons were around 400,000 or 300,000 years old, making them among the oldest hunting weapons ever found. However, scientists recently used a dating method known as amino acid geochronology, which analyzes amino acids locked in snail shells buried in sediment layers, to determine that the spears were around 100,000 years younger. This likely means that the weapons were created and wielded by Neanderthals and not...

One of the most interesting things about humanity is how it manages to take something dangerous to it, and make it useful to itself. We took wolves and domesticated them, turning them into dogs, which have done everything from help us hunt, find dangerous items, warn us of impending danger, or even just sit on our laps and lower our blood pressure. Mankind does a lot of things with its miraculous intelligence, but one of the things it's actually best at is taming that which threatens us. And it looks like mankind has now gotten around to taming one of...

Some 100,000 years ago, a group of hominins shared hunting strategies, tool manufacturing tips and how to honor the dead, performing complex and highly symbolic rituals, according to a recent analysis of rare findings from Israel’s Tinshemet Cave. Located in central Israel, near Shoham, the Tinshemet Cave was active for millennia during the period known as Middle Paleolithic, 130,000 to 80,000 years ago. The findings include the first complete prehistoric human skeletons uncovered in Israel since the 1960s, which researchers say are among the best preserved in the world. “This is one of the most interesting sites for Paleolithic research...

A prehistoric “factory” discovered in Tanzania could push bone tool-making back by more than a million years, indicating unexpected abstract reasoning capabilities human ancestors displayed in the remote past. According to researchers at University College London (UCL) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), about 1.5 million years ago, hominin hands fashioned the 27 ancient bone tools now preserved as fossils. The find represents the earliest significant bone tool collection ever found, particularly notable for the systematic, factory-style production methods they display. Previous evidence indicates that hominins produced stone tools for over a million years, although archaeologists had previously never...

"We don't need bones," Straus said. "The results show that several animals not represented by bones from the dig were present—either once living in the cave or as carcass pieces—in the past and, importantly, the humans who made the Solutrean artifacts during the height of the Last Glacial Maximum (about 25,000 to 21,000 years ago) had 'Fournol' genetic ancestry, as has been found in bones or teeth from sites in France and Spain (including La Riera in Asturias, a site dug by Straus in the 1970s). These were the people whose range had contracted southward during the climatic crisis and...