Latest Neolithic Stories

TAU describes how Jericho's 11,000-year-old "cosmic" tower came into beingDiscovered by archaeologists in 1952, a 28-foot-high stone tower discovered on the edge of the town of Jericho has puzzled scientists ever since. Now, eleven millennia after it was built, Tel Aviv University archaeologists at the ancient site Tel Jericho are revealing new facts about the world's first skyscraper."Recent computer-based research by doctoral student Roy Liran and Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv...

One of the most significant socioeconomic changes in the history of humanity took place around 10,000 years ago, when the Near East went from an economy based on hunting and gathering (Mesolithic) to another kind on agriculture (Neolithic). Farmers rapidly entered the Balkan Peninsula and then advanced gradually throughout the rest of Europe.Various theories have been proposed over recent years to explain this process, and now physicists from the University of Girona (UdG) have for the first...

Agricultural "“ or Neolithic "“ economics replaced the Mesolithic social model of hunter-gathering in the Near East about 10,000 years ago. One of the most important socioeconomic changes in human history, this socioeconomic shift, known as the Neolithic transition, spread gradually across Europe until it slowed down when more northern latitudes were reached.Research published today, Friday, 3 December 2010, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and the German...

U.S. anthropologists say recent excavations in Jordan have provided evidence of the world's oldest known granaries. University of Notre Dame Associate Professor Ian Kuijt said the appearance of the granaries represents a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods. Kuijt and Bill Finlayson, director of the Council for British Research in the Levant, describe recent excavations at Dhra' near the Dead Sea in Jordan that provide evidence of granaries that...

Cyprus' top antiquities official reported Wednesday that archaeologists had discovered a 16-foot water well more than 10,500 years old, which contained a skeleton of a young woman at the bottom.Pavlos Flourentzos said scientists had unearthed the well last month at a construction site in the village of Kissonerga near Cyprus' southwestern coast.Once the well had dried up, it was seemingly used for trash, Flourentzos told the Associated Press.  In addition to the poorly preserved female...

Israeli archeologists announced Sunday that the largest underground quarry in the Holy Land has been discovered and it dates back to the time of Jesus and contains Christian symbols that are etched into the walls.Adam Zertal, one of the archaeologists, said that the 4,000 square-meter cavern was buried 10 meters below a desert near the ancient West bank city of Jericho.  He said it is their assumption that it was dug about 2,000 years ago and was in use for about half a...

Chinese archaeologists say they've found ancient cave houses that may be the earliest made by man. A row of 17 cave houses was found on a cliff along along a river northwest China's Shaanxi province, Xinhua news service reported Wednesday. Scientists say the houses were built between 3,500 and 3,000 B.C. Wang Weilin, deputy director of the Shaanxi Archaeology Institute, said the cave houses appear to belong to a late Neolithic culture called Yangshao. Wang said archaeologists also found...

By John Noble Wilford New York Times News Service When Paul C. Sereno went hunting dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green. The first traces of pottery, stone tools and human skeletons were discovered eight years ago at a site in the southern Sahara in Niger. After preliminary research, Sereno, a University...

Researchers have uncovered the remains of a woman and two children in an ancient cemetery located in what is now the Sahara Desert. When they came across their skeletons, researchers found that the arms of the children were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace in a cemetery that is providing an unprecedented view of how two civilizations lived there.Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and his colleagues came across the skeletons while searching for the remains of dinosaurs in...

Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings, the National Geographic Society announced today. The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible trade links with the Red Sea, including a...