Archaeology

Humans

How wielding lamps and torches shed new light on Stone Age cave art

Experiments with stone lamps and juniper branch torches are helping scientists see 12,500-year-old cave art with fresh eyes.

Humans

Ancient human bones reveal the oldest known strain of the plague

The earliest known plague strain emerged about 7,100 years ago and was less contagious as the one behind Black Death — but was still deadly.

Anthropology

Israeli fossil finds reveal a new hominid group, Nesher Ramla Homo

Discoveries reveal a new Stone Age population that had close ties to Homo sapiens at least 120,000 years ago, complicating the human family tree.

Archaeology

New clues suggest people reached the Americas around 30,000 years ago

Ancient rabbit bones from a Mexican rock-shelter point to humans arriving on the continent as much as 10,000 years earlier than often assumed.

Anthropology

Hunter-gatherers first launched violent raids at least 13,400 years ago

Skeletons from an ancient African cemetery bear the oldest known signs of small-scale warfare.

Archaeology

To find answers about the 1921 race massacre, Tulsa digs up its painful past

A century ago, hundreds of people died in a horrific eruption of racial violence in Tulsa. A team of researchers may have found a mass grave from the event.

Archaeology

The oldest known tattoo tools were found at an ancient Tennessee site

Sharpened turkey leg bones may have served as tattoo needles between 5,520 and 3,620 years ago, at least a millennium earlier than previously thought.

Anthropology

A child’s 78,000-year-old grave marks Africa’s oldest known human burial

Cave excavation of a youngster’s grave pushes back the date of the first human burial identified in the continent by at least a few thousand years.

Archaeology

Stone Age culture bloomed inland, not just along Africa’s coasts

Homo sapiens living more than 600 kilometers from the coast around 105,000 years ago collected crystals that may have had ritual meaning.

Archaeology

A tour of ‘Four Lost Cities’ reveals modern ties to ancient people

In the book 'Four Lost Cities,' author Annalee Newitz uses cities of the past to show what might happen to cities in the future.

Anthropology

Riches in a Bronze Age grave suggest it holds a queen

Researchers have long assumed mostly men ran ancient Bronze Age societies, but the find points to a female ruler in Spain 3,700 years ago.

Archaeology

An ancient dog fossil helps trace humans’ path into the Americas

Found in Alaska, the roughly 10,000-year-old bone bolsters the idea that early human settlers took a coastal rather than inland route.