Historical eras

It’s now consensus that Neanderthals were complex, social cousins of Homo sapiens that disappeared from the Earth around 40,000 years ago. But our lost relatives just became more complex, with the discovery of ancient cave engravings in France that appear to be their handiwork.Stay in Your Seats, It's Gonna Be a Bumpy Flight | Extreme EarthThe engravings sit in La Roche-Cotard, a cave about 12 miles (20 kilometers) west of Tours. The figures—which are comprised of parallel lines made by fingers dragged across the cave…

Researchers have identified a gene that is associated with taller noses in humans and found it likely comes from Neanderthals, an extinct hominin group intimately related to our own species.The Painted Skeletons of ÇatalhöyükNeanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) died off around 40,000 years ago, making them the most recent hominin species to go extinct. But, in a way, they are still around, since most humans today are walking around with Neanderthal DNA. Lots of interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals may have…

A reconstruction of a Gravettian hunter-gatherer, based on archaeological findings at the Arene Candide site in Italy.Illustration: Tom BjoerklundResearchers scrutinized the genomes of hundreds of Ice Age hunter-gatherers from across Eurasia and found that many people stayed in southern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest part of the last Ice Age.Groups that made up the Gravettian culture, which existed across Europe between 32,000 and 24,000 years ago and is known for its iconic Venus figurines, had…

Cut marks on the heel bone of a male straight-tusked elephant, which was about 50 years old when it died.Photo: Wil Roebroeks, Leiden UniversityHistorical finds of elephant remains alongside stone tools have long prompted speculation among researchers that early humans or other hominin species may have relied on the massive mammals for food.Now, a team of researchers has determined that Neanderthals in Europe were taking down elephants and methodically butchering them, yielding food stores that would have lasted…

Archaeologists on a famous site in Idaho have found stemmed point tools that date to about 15,785 years ago, making them thousands of years older than the site’s previously known tools.The research pushes back the known ages of some of the oldest tools on the continent, and could shed light on how technology (and perhaps genetic connections) were shared between the Ice Age inhabitants of Asia and North America. The work was published last week in Science Advances.“From a scientific point of view, these discoveries add…

In Sayburç, Turkey, not far from the famous settlement of Göbekli Tepe, an archaeologist discovered an 11,000-year-old scene carved into a wall. It’s one of the oldest narrative depictions in the archaeological record.The narrative scene depicts five figures: two humans, a bull, and two leopards. One of the humans is holding a snake, or rattle, in its right hand. The other human figure is holding its penis. A full description of the narrative scene, along with interpretations of its meaning for theNeolithic community…

Researchers looked at DNA extracted from the remains of 13 Neanderthals that lived in Asia about 54,000 years ago and found some surprising relationships among them.Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were a group of hominins that lived alongside and interbred with anatomically modern humans until their disappearance around 40,000 years ago. Recognizable for their barrel chests, stocky builds, and pronounced brows, Neanderthals are thought to have been bred out of existence; most everyone walking around today has…