The Sahara is the largest desert in the world, a vast arid wilderness stretching across north Africa. For millennia it has been a near insurmountable barrier separating the Mediterranean from the rest of the African continent. The ancient Egyptians, clustering along the shores of the Nile, depended on the desert for their defense. For them
A new study of ancient DNA has completely changed our understanding of the peoples who lived in Stone Age and Bronze Age Europe. It was only about 1000 BC, well into the Iron Age, that we first saw light skinned individuals emerge on the continent. The study, published in BiorXiv, concludes that lighter skin and
Another day, another fascinating LiDAR discovery, this time in the Romanian county of Neamț. Archaeologists have used the pulsed laser technology to uncover ancient human settlements hidden in the dense forests of the area. The study, a joint collaboration between Geocad Services, Geo Edu Lab, and the National Institute for Research and Development for Earth
Something happened in Britain five and a half thousand years ago, which marked a transition in social and ritual activity we are still piecing together. In a relatively short space of time, the prehistoric peoples of the island decided to go in a different direction with their monolithic building projects. Out were the long barrows,
For much of human history rainforests have been the poster child for untouched, virgin wilderness. We only had to look at the vast trees and hidden world beneath the canopy to instantly tell that what we were looking at was wild, untouched by man. In more recent years we have come to realize that this
A new study into a 7,000 year old bovid femur found in Kruger Cave, South Africa, has shed lights on the secrets of Neolithic hunting in the region. The femur had three arrowheads embedded in it, suggesting that it was used as a quiver. The arrowheads were found to have been coated with three separate