Archaeology
Researchers have uncovered a new clue about human origins after discovering the oldest known human DNA in a legendary Spanish archeological site called Sima de los Huesos, or the “Pit of Bones.” Researchers were able to extract DNA from a leg bone that was estimated to be 400,000 years old. That’s about 100,000 years older than the previous oldest human DNA, and 200,000 years older than modern humans. In addition, scientists were surprised to find that the specimen was related to a little-known group of ancient human relatives known as Denisovans that were previously only found in Siberia.
The oldest known stone-tipped projectiles have been discovered in Ethiopia. The javelins are roughly 280,000 years old and predate the earliest known fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, by about 80,000 years.
Archaeologists working in Nepal have uncovered evidence of a structure at the birthplace of the Buddha dating to the sixth century B.C. This is the first archaeological material linking the life of the Buddha — and thus the first flowering of Buddhism — to a specific century.
Deep in a remote, hot, dry patch of northwestern Australia lies one of the earliest detectable signs of life on the planet, tracing back nearly 3.5 billion years, scientists say.
Houston anthropologist, Dr. Semir Osmanagich, founder of the Bosnian Archaeology Park, the most active archaeology site in the world, declares that irrefutable scientific evidence exists of ancient civilizations with advanced technology that leaves us no choice but to change our recorded history. An examination of the age of structures across the earth reveals conclusively that they were built by advanced civilizations from over 29,000 years ago.
The age-old secret of why Stonehenge was built where it was can now be revealed, according to historians. The reason for the stone monument’s location has remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of British prehistory, with no one theory accepted as correct. But now a team of scientists working in Amesbury, a short distance from where the landmark sits on a hillside, believe the discovery of a warm water spring could be the key to solving the riddle.
Research by a British scientist has concluded that the legendary Himalayan yeti may in fact be a sub-species of brown bear. DNA tests on hair samples carried out by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes found that they matched those from an ancient polar bear. He subjected the hairs to the most advanced tests available. He says the most likely explanation for the myth is that the animal is a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears.
In 2005, researchers discovered a remarkably complete ancient hominin skull estimated to be about 1.8 million years old at Dmamisi, Georgia. As reported in Science, this ancient man had some strikingly primitive features, including a small brain and protruding jaw. But other details mark him as a member of the species Homo erectus, and as one of our ancestors. Combined with four other skulls previously found at Dmanisi, the skull suggests that ancient individuals from one time and place could be very different from each other, and that the ancient hominin fossils really all came from the same species.
Historians commonly believe that humans first crossed to the Americans from Asia 12,000 years ago. But a new exhibit in Brazil features artifacts dating back as far as 30,000 years ago, 18,000 years earlier than previously believed.
During excavations at the site of Herod the Great’s palace in Israel in the early 1960’s, archeologists unearthed a small stockpile of Judean date palm seeds stowed in a clay jar dating back 2,000 years. For the next four decades, the ancient seeds were kept in a drawer at Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University. But then, in 2005, botanical researcher Elaine Solowey decided to plant one and see what, if anything, would sprout.
An archaeologists analysis on how the construction of megalithic monuments in Atlantic Europe are not restricted to a single purpose, nor how they reflect one aspect of the community that built them.
An international team of researchers and archaeologists, led by Oxford University has new dating evidence indicating when the earliest fully modern humans arrived in the Near East, the region known as the Middle East today.
Scientists have uncovered a portion of an ancient path that may have led to Stonehenge and believed to be a processional path.
New findings from an archaeological excavation led this winter by Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University’s Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures prove that copper mines in Israel thought to have been built by the ancient Egyptians in the 13th century BCE actually originated three centuries later, during the reign of the legendary King Solomon.
Under the rich Venezuelan soil, paleontologists have found treasures rivaling the bountiful oil: a giant armadillo the size of a Volkswagen, a crocodile bigger than a bus and a saber-toothed tiger.
