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The authors combine pollen, spores, sedimentary DNA, and animal remains to characterize the pre-Neolithic habitat of the site, inferring partially open woodland conditions, which would have been beneficial to large grazing herbivores like aurochs, as well as hunter-gatherer communities. This study supports previous evidence that the Stonehenge region was not covered in closed canopy forest at this time, as has previously been proposed.This study also provides date estimates for human activity at Blick Mead. Results indicate that hunter-gatherers used this site for 4,000 years up until the time of the earliest known farmers and monument-builders in the region, who would...

The 21st-century back-to-the-farm movement stems from our yearning to escape the artificiality of modern urban life. Yet the domesticated plants and animals now found in most gardens and farms are themselves artificial, the results of extensive human meddling, cross-breeding and genetic manipulation. Mankind began engineering what we now call “farm animals,” including cattle, all the way back in the Neolithic period, between 10,000 and 5,000 B.C. Try as you might, you won’t find an untamed Jersey cow that originated naturally in the wild, because no such thing exists — just like there’s no such thing as a wild labradoodle. Cattle...

Giant bull, wild boar and red deer bones left at a settlement a mile from Stonehenge prove that Amesbury is the oldest settlement in Britain and has been continually occupied since 8820 BC, according to archaeologists who say the giant monuments were built by indigenous hunters and homemakers rather than Neolithic new builders. Carbon dating of aurochs – a breed twice the size of bulls – predates the settlers responsible for the massive pine posts at Stonehenge, suggesting that people had first lived in Wiltshire around 3,000 years before the site was created in 3000 BC. Experts had previously thought...

Carbon dating from an archaeological dig by the university shows that the parish of Amesbury has been continually occupied for every millennia since 8,820BC. The origins of Amesbury have been discovered as a result of carbon dating bones of aurochs - twice the size of bulls, wild boar and red deer - following a dig at Vespasian's Camp, Blick Mead, a mile-and-a-half from Stonehenge. It dates the activities of the people who were responsible for building the first monuments at Stonehenge, made of massive pine posts, and show their communities continuing to work and live in the area for a...

In the 1970s, archaeologist Peter Bogucki was excavating a Stone Age site in the fertile plains of central Poland when he came across an assortment of odd artefacts. The people who had lived there around 7,000 years ago were among central Europe's first farmers, and they had left behind fragments of pottery dotted with tiny holes. It looked as though the coarse red clay had been baked while pierced with pieces of straw. Looking back through the archaeological literature, Bogucki found other examples of ancient perforated pottery. “They were so unusual — people would almost always include them in publications,”...

Archaeological researchers at the University of Groningen have discovered that the aurochs, the predecessor of our present-day cow, lived in the Netherlands for longer than originally assumed. Remains of bones recently retrieved from a horn core found in Holwerd (Friesland, Netherlands), show that the aurochs became extinct in around AD 600 and not in the fourth century. The last aurochs died in Poland in 1627... The aurochs was much larger than the common cows we know today, with aurochs bulls measuring between 160 and 180 cm at the withers, and aurochs cows between 140 and 150 cm. The cattle bred...

Scientists have analysed the DNA of ancient giant European wild cattle that died out almost 400 years ago. They have determined the first mitochondrial genome sequence from aurochs (Bos primigenius) from bone found in a cave in England. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring....... One of the researchers involved, Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, has previously investigated the remains of a polar bear found in the Scottish Highlands.... The species became extinct when a female animal died in a forest in Poland in 1627. Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar was said to have been impressed...

Scientists have analysed the DNA of ancient giant European wild cattle that died out almost 400 years ago.They have determined the first mitochondrial genome sequence from aurochs (Bos primigenius) from bone found in a cave in England. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring. One of the researchers involved, Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, has previously investigated the remains of a polar bear found in the Scottish Highlands. The work was carried out at the University College Dublin's Animal Genomics Laboratory and Conway Institute using new technology that allows billions of base pairs of DNA to be...

Aurochs were immortalised in prehistoric cave paintings and admired for their brute strength and "elephantine" size by Julius Caesar. But despite their having gone the way of the dodo and the woolly mammoth, there are plans to bring the giant animals back to life. The huge cattle with sweeping horns which once roamed the forests of Europe have not been seen for nearly 400 years. Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective breeding of modern-day wild cattle to recreate the fearsome beasts which weighed around 2,200lb and stood 6.5 feet at the shoulder. Breeds of large...