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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...

A multi-institutional research team working at the prehistoric site of La-Roche-à-Pierrot in Saint-Césaire identified the oldest known shell jewelry workshop in western Europe, according to a statement released by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Excavations uncovered a number of pierced shells as well as yellow and red pigments. However, it was the absence of wear marks and the presence of unperforated shells that led archaeologists to believe the site was used to manufacture finished products from raw materials. The shells came from the Atlantic coast, which was around 60 miles away at the time, while the pigments...

Discovered within the darkness of Petralona Cave, this remarkable skull - which belongs to an archaic species of human - is notable for the fact that it has a stalagmite growing directly through it. Initially found in 1960 and often referred to as "Petralona Man", this intriguing specimen has long left paleoanthropologist's scratching their heads. A recent study has concluded that it is neither Neanderthal nor human, leaving a question mark over exactly which species of archaic human ancestor it actually belonged to. The 'Petralona Man' skull. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 NadinaThe skull is also now believed to date...

Erectus AhoyPrehistoric seafaring floats into view Bruce Bower As the sun edged above the horizon on Jan. 31, 2000, a dozen men boarded a bamboo raft off the east coast of the Indonesian island of Bali. Each gripped a wooden paddle and, in unison, deftly stroked the nearly 40-foot-long craft into the open sea. Their destination: the Stone Age, by way of a roughly 18-mile crossing to the neighboring island of Lombok. Project director Robert G. Bednarik, one of the assembled paddlers, knew that a challenging trip lay ahead, even discounting any time travel. Local fishing crews had told him...

Imagine a group of Homo erectus, the earliest members of our family genus, living near a coastline on an Indonesia island and well aware of a lush island that is visible only a few miles offshore. One day while on the coast, a herd of elephants emerges from the nearby forest and crosses the beach. They enter the ocean and swim successfully to the offshore island. Could this be the experience that triggers a creative process in our ancestors who are watching nearby? Does their imagination and thinking include not only a desire to reach that island, but ideas about...

While the author of this webpage does not believe that Homo Erectus is responsible for the surface lithics found in the Calico Mountains of California, he does believe the presence of these lithics is quite important in establishing the fact that man was on this continent eons before those of the Clovis school are willing to admit. Once the door is thrown open to an earlier arrival date for man on this continent, then serious study will hopefully begin on the many early man sites to be found in both North and South America, but currently ignored because of their...

It looks like the original explanation for where Homo floresiensis came from was right all along. The Hobbit humerus fragment (left) from Mata Menge next to one from Liang Bua to scale, and the full collection of bones from the most complete Liang Bua Hobbit. Image Credit: Yousuke Kaifu ================================================================================ Three new fossils, including part of a humerus, have been found at Mata Menge on the Indonesian island of Flores. They indicate that Homo floresiensis, popularly known as Hobbits, were descended from Homo erectus, and became small relatively soon after arriving on Flores. Indeed, it seems at least some Hobbits...

Java Man's First Tools Richard Stone INDO-PACIFIC PREHISTORY ASSOCIATION CONGRESS, 20-26 MARCH 2006, MANILA About 1.7 million years ago, a leggy human ancestor, Homo erectus, began prowling the steamy swamps and uplands of Java. That much is known from the bones of more than 100 individuals dug up on the Indonesian island since 1891. But the culture of early "Java Man" has been a mystery: No artifacts older than 1 million years had been found--until now. At the meeting, archaeologist Harry Widianto of the National Research Centre of Archaeology in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wowed colleagues with slides showing stone tools found...

Thousands of years ago, an Ice Age hunter set down a small pouch containing essential survival tools beside a campfire in what is now the Czech Republic, but never came back to retrieve it. ZME Science reports that archaeologists recently recovered the objects at a site known as Milovice IV in southern Moravia. Although the leather or hide pouch had long since decayed, the team found 29 small blades and points. Some had been used as projectiles on the tips of arrows or spears, while others seemed to have been used to cut or scrape animal skins. Most of them...

Left-handedness common in Ice Age By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor A right-hand print signifys left-handedness The fraction of left-handed people today is about the same as it was during the Ice Age, according to data from prehistoric handprints. They were found in caves painted during the Upper Palaeolithic period, between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. Left-handedness may have conferred prehistoric man advantages, such as in combat, say the researchers. The research is published in the February issue of the journal Biology Letters. Evolutionary advantages When Stone Age man produced their remarkable cave paintings they often left...

Ca' Foscari University of Venice announced that when an international team of researchers first began to analyze 34,000-year-old stone tools found in the Dzudzuana Cave in the foothills of Georgia's Caucasus, they were just hoping to learn something about how they were used. However, as they peered closer, they uncovered incredible evidence of human behavior and complexity dating back tens of thousands of years. The pebble grinding tools contained traces of plant matter and indigotin, the deep blue compound also known as indigo. The results were stunning -- not only was this the first time that indigo has been found...

The Herald Scotland reports that prior to the construction of a new housing development in Guardbridge, Fife, archaeological excavations uncovered traces of some 10,000 years of local history. The historic village takes its name from a sixteenth-century bridge that led pilgrims across the River Eden to St. Andrews, but a team from GUARD Archaeology recently unearthed evidence that the site was a hotspot of human occupation far earlier than that. During the Upper Paleolithic period, some of Scotland's first inhabitants made flint tools at the site. Later, early Neolithic farmers left many pits across the area, which contained burnt cereal...