Latest Paleolithic Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Two recent articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that the Later Stone Age (LSA) and Modern Culture both emerged much earlier than was previously thought. A team of international scientists from South Africa, France, Italy, Norway, the USA and Britain dated and directly analyzed organic objects found in the archaeological layers at Border Cave, South Africa in the Lebombo Mountains near the border of...

By using a new cutting-edge dating technique, researchers have discovered that the practice of painting cave art started as early as 40,000 years ago, or 10,000 years earlier than previously believed. A team of British, Spanish and Portuguese researchers, led by Dr. Alistair Pike of the University of Bristol, investigated some 50 paintings in 11 different caves in northern Spain. Since the paintings had no organic pigment, they could not use radiocarbon dating to determine their age, so...

According to a new paper published in the latest edition of the Journal of Human Evolution, researchers from Germany and the UK claim that they have identified the oldest known musical instruments on Earth. The research, conducted by experts from Oxford University and Tuebingen University, used carbon dating to discover that flutes crafted from the bones of birds and ivory from mammoth tusks were from between 42,000 and 43,000 years old, BBC News reported on Friday. The flutes, which...

Humans that populated the banks of the river Manzanares (Madrid, Spain) during the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and 40,000 years ago) fed themselves on pachyderm meat and bone marrow. This is what a Spanish study shows and has found percussion and cut marks on elephant remains in the site of Preresa (Madrid). In prehistoric times, hunting animals implied a risk and required a considerable amount of energy. Therefore, when the people of the Middle Palaeolithic (between 127,000 and...

Lawrence LeBlond for RedOrbit.com Scientists searching caves in China have unearthed the fossils of a possibly previously unknown species of human, including one that possesses a highly unusual mix of archaic and modern anatomical features found in humans. The find is significant, as the fossils -- dating back to 14,500 to 11,500 years ago -- represent the youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia, and the most recent human remains found anywhere in the world that do not...

Dietary change led to the appearance of modern humans in the Middle East 400,000 years ago, say TAU researchers Elephants have long been known to be part of the Homo erectus diet. But the significance of this specific food source, in relation to both the survival of Homo erectus and the evolution of modern humans, has never been understood — until now. When Tel Aviv University researchers Dr. Ran Barkai, Miki Ben-Dor, and Prof. Avi Gopher of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient...

Blade manufacturing "production lines" existed as much as 400,000 years ago, say TAU researchers Archaeology has long associated advanced blade production with the Upper Palaeolithic period, about 30,000-40,000 years ago, linked with the emergence of Homo Sapiens and cultural features such as cave art. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have uncovered evidence which shows that "modern" blade production was also an element of Amudian industry during the late Lower Paleolithic period,...

[ Watch the Video ] Archaeologists have uncovered two shells near the southern coast of South Africa that contain a primitive paint mixture, revealing what experts believe may be the remnants of the world’s earliest art studio. The 100,000-year-old workshop was likely used to mix and store the reddish pigment ochre, and was unearthed in Blombos Cave near Cape Town.  The scientists had previously found some of the earliest sharp stone tools at this same site, along with evidence of...

  Ancient humans made cleavers, hand axes and other advanced stone tools 300,000 years earlier than previously believed, but did not take these tools with them when they left Africa, according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature. Researchers from the United States and France traveled in 2007 to an archaeological site along the northwest shoreline of Lake Turkana in Kenya, where primitive stone flakes, two-faced blades and other large carving tools had been...

Researchers have new evidence that suggest Neanderthals died out much earlier than previously thought, and possibly before modern humans arrived. Carbon-dated Neanderthal remains from a cave in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains in Russia were found to be 10,000 years older than previous research had suggested. The new evidence contradicts the popular theory that Neanderthals and modern humans interacted for thousands of years before the archaic species became extinct. Instead, the...