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A hunter-gatherer who trekked through a desert oasis a hundred centuries ago left the continent’s most lasting impression: the oldest known human footprints in North America. There are only two of them — one left and one right — but the ancient traveler’s path through mineral-rich sediment in the Chihuahuan Desert allowed them to become enshrined in stone, and now dated, some 10,500 years later... The tracks were first discovered during highway construction in northeastern Mexico, about 300 kilometers from the Texas border, in 1961. They were excavated and taken to a local museum for study, but their precise location...

Guest Post by David MiddletonFrom The Seattle TimesSEATTLE (AP) – It’s not unusual for an archaeologist to get stuck in the past, but Carl Gustafson may be the only one consumed by events on the Olympic Peninsula in 1977.That summer, while sifting through earth in Sequim, the young Gustafson uncovered something extraordinary _ a mastodon bone with a shaft jammed in it. This appeared to be a weapon that had been thrust into the beast’s ribs, a sign that humans had been around and hunting far earlier than anyone suspected.Unfortunately for Gustafson, few scientists agreed. He was challenging orthodoxy with...

Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago -- some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists. The discovery was made in the course of excavations at the prehistoric Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site, located along the Dead Sea rift in the southern Hula Valley of northern Israel, by a team from the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Analysis of the spatial distribution of the findings there reveals a pattern of specific areas in which various activities were carried out. This kind of designation...

LONDON: In a new research, a scientist has found that prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version of a satellite navigation system, which was based on stone circle markers. According to a report in the Telegraph, the research, by historian and writer Tom Brooks, shows that Britain’s Stone Age ancestors were “sophisticated engineers” and far from a barbaric race. Brooks studied all known prehistoric sites as part of his research. He found that the prehistoric man was able to travel between settlements in England with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments. These...

Chinese and Israeli archaeologists have discovered the oldest known pottery, remains of an 18,000-year-old cone-shaped vase excavated from a cave in southern China. The shards are about 1,000 years older than the previous record-holder, found in Japan. After flint tools, pottery is one of the oldest human-made materials, and tracing its development provides insight into the evolution of culture. The shards were discovered four years ago in Yuchanyan Cave in the Yangzi River basin by a team led by Elisabetto Boaretto of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The cave shows signs of human occupation from about 21,000...

Rewriting Human HistoryDiscoveries In Georgia Are Transforming Our View Of Human Evolution Looking out across a verdant lake valley alive with game, in a land to be known as Georgia at some remote future time, the diminutive, small-brained, ape-faced creature seems hardly destined for planetary conquest. Yet, from 1.75 million years ago, the slender little hominid – pre-human – is rewriting the story of who we are, where we came from and how we got here. Translating this epic tale is an energetic and enthusiastic Georgian scientist, David Lordkipanidze, who has waged a decade-long struggle to uncover, substantiate and protect...

Early Humans Were Prey, Not Predators, Experts Say Anne Minard in St. Louis, Missouri for National Geographic News March 7, 2006 Prehistoric people were cooperators, not fighters. That's the new theory proposed in two recent books and at a talk last month during an annual scientific meeting. The theory is part of a movement to debunk a long-running scientific bias that early humans were warlike. "It developed from a basic Judeo-Christian ideology of man being inherently evil, aggressive, and a natural killer," said Robert W. Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "In fact, when you really examine...

    Oldest human footprints found on volcano   19:00 12 March 03   NewScientist.com news service   The trails of footprints (A and B) have as many as 27 steps (Image: Paolo Mietto and Marco Avanzini)   Three primitive humans who scrambled down a volcano's slopes more than 325,000 years ago left their footprints fossilised in volcanic ash. If the ages of the trails are confirmed, they could be the earliest known footprints of our Homo ancestors. Paolo Mietto of Padua University and his colleagues examined three tracks of footprints on the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy, known to locals as...

PARIS (Reuters) - A prehistoric skull touted as the oldest human remains ever found is probably not the head of the earliest member of the human family but of an ancient female gorilla, a French scientist said on Friday. Brigitte Senut of the Natural History Museum in Paris said certain aspects of the skull, whose discovery in Chad was announced on Wednesday, were actually sexual characteristics of female gorillas rather than indications of a human character.Two other French experts cast doubt on the skull as Michel Brunet, head of the archeological team that discovered it, was due to present his...

DISCOVER Vol. 23 No. 5 (May 2002)Table of Contents The Amazon Trail Anna Roosevelt's ventures into the jungles of South America have turned up traces of human settlements far older than archaeologists ever suspected By John Dorfman Photography by Jennifer Tzar Archaeologists visiting remote sites in Brazil must rely on the skills of local pilots to locate—and land on—small airstrips in the rain forest. "The pilots here are very good," says Roosevelt, a veteran Amazon explorer, because the mining industry depends on them. "When I have a goal," says Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, her voice emphasizing the word, "everything else is...