Category:Archaeology

Scientists say the build-up of tartar on 400,000-year-old teeth found in a cave in Israel provides direct evidence of what early Palaeolithic people ate and the quality of the air they breathed. The remains were found in Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv, the site of many major discoveries from the late Lower Paleolithic period. “Because the cave …Continue readingOld dental records show the health consequences

Stone tools unearthed from a cave in Jordan, reveal clues about how humans may have started organising into more complex social groups and dividing tasks according to technical skills. The artifacts from Mughr el-Hamamah, or Cave of the Doves, show a mix of techniques for making points, blades, scrapers and cutting flakes. “These toolmakers appear to have …Continue readingPalaeolithic division of labour

A new road project between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem has become an archaeological dig after the remains of a 1,500-year-old church were unearthed. The new highway roughly follows the course of an accent road that would’ve been paved during the Roman period. The church, which dates from the Byzantine period, lies at what was probably a …Continue readingAncient church unearthed in Israel

科学家们发现gnawi的迹象ng and butcher marks on human leg, rib, other bones in a cave in the Cheddar Gorge in western England, dating from 14,700 years ago, which they believe is evidence of ritual cannibalism. Biological anthropologist Silvia Bello of the Natural History Museum in London and her colleagues found microscopic evidence that the …Continue readingThe English were eating each other

A fossil of a lower jaw bone found in Ethiopia is about 400,000 years older than other fossils from the earliest known Homo line that ultimately led to modern human. Scientists who made the discovery, reported in Science, about 400 kilometres outside Addis Ababa believe the individual lived about 2.8 million years ago. If correct, that …Continue readingJaw bone discovery may rewrite human history

Among the items burned and buried in volcanic ash was a library in a villa in Herculaneum, a Roman city near Pompeii that was destroyed by the explosion. The collection of charred papyrus scrolls are the only survivors from any library in the ancient world. Researchers in Italy have used sophisticated X-ray techniques to read …Continue readingVesuvius-charred scrolls give up their secrets

It has long been assumed that climate change was responsible for a huge population collapse in Europe at the end of the Bronze Age, but a new study says we will have to rethink that, ruling out plummeting temperatures as the culprit. Human activity began to decline after 900 BC, and to fall rapidly after …Continue readingThe Bronze Age population collapse