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-Europeans probably ate their dead loved ones instead of burying them 15,000 years ago. -According to a new study, the consumption of dead people was not essential, but a ritual. -Researchers also said people used the remaining bones as cups and chewed on them. Cannibalistic Europeans likely feasted on their deceased loved ones at funerals instead of burying them, according to a new study. Scientists now believe that cannibalism was widespread among Magdalenian Upper Palaeolithic people, who lived across Europe between 11,000 and 17,000 years ago, according to the study published in Quaternary Science Reviews. The study's researchers analyzed funerary...

Researchers announced Thursday that the timeline of Greece’s history needs to be pushed back by at least a quarter million years after a shocking discovery deep inside an open coal mine. Archaeologists uncovered the nation’s oldest archaeological site, which dates back at least 700,000 years. It is thought to be associated with some of our earliest hominin ancestors, according to The Associated Press. Although older archaeological sites have been uncovered in other parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, this is the first major discovery of this age in Greece, and may completely rewrite aspects of the nation’s human history. The...

Radiocarbon dating is the most widely applied dating method in archaeology, especially in human evolution studies, where it is used to determine the chronology of key events, such as the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans in Europe. However, the method does not always provide precise and accurate enough ages to understand the important processes of human evolution. Here we review the newest method developments in radiocarbon dating ('Radiocarbon 3.0'), which can lead us to much better chronologies and understanding of the major events in recent human evolution. As an example, we apply these new methods to discuss the dating...

Earlier this year, a series of stone engravings of strange animals with melded bodies reignited speculation about the earliest forms of animation. Using 3D models and virtual reality software to bring ancient etchings to life, the team of archeologists argued that the stone artworks might have been dynamic representations of animals in motion if viewed in firelight...Another example lay for centuries covered in ash and dust in Shahr-e Sukhteh, an archaeological site in southeast Iran known as the 'Burnt City'. Here, researchers found an unassuming goblet bearing burnt red sketches of a jumping goat that springs to life when the...

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric man may have dined on an early form of flat bread, contrary to his popular image as primarily a meat-eater. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal on Monday, indicate that Palaeolithic Europeans ground down plant roots similar to potatoes to make flour, which was later whisked into dough. "It's like a flat bread, like a pancake with just water and flour," said Laura Longo, a researcher on the team from the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History.

Mystery of the fat Venus The Dominion Post | Monday, 9 April 2007 WORLD OF SCIENCE - BOB BROCKIE We all know about those hand-sized Ice Age women carved in stone – those plump ladies with huge breasts and behinds, tiny heads, artful hairdos and no faces. They're known as Palaeolithic Venuses and they raise a lot of puzzling questions: How come these almost identical figurines were found all the way from France to Siberia? How come this stylised carving tradition was practised and passed down over 20,000 years? What purpose did they serve? There are as many answers to...

Traces of Alpine ibex hunters from several thousand years ago have been discovered in the Belianske Tatras in Slovakia.Based on isotope analyses, the joint Slovak-Polish research expedition in Hučivá Cave (Hučivá diera), say the traces were found in what was a Palaeolithic settlement left by the Magdalenian people, best known from France and Spain in the 13th millennium BC.Professor Paweł Valde-Nowak from the Institute of Archeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków said: “It was a group of hunters specialising in hunting ibex, a species no longer found in the Tatras today.“We found several hundred blades of thrown weapons, bone...

A team of archaeologists, palaeozoologists, geologists, sedimentologists, archaeobotanists and palaeogeneticists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, found hundreds of blades made from either radiolarite, flint or limnosilicite, in addition to bone needles and the bones of various animals in the remains of a large hearth or fire within the cave.The researchers also found faunal and archaeobotanical remains, as well as bones from species of chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra), deer (Cervus elaphus) and wild horse (Equus ferus). More than a dozen bones have traces of cut marks, cracking for marrow extraction and smoothing with stone tools...Most of...

The identification of the earliest dogs is challenging because of the absence and/or mosaic pattern of morphological diagnostic features in the initial phases of the domestication process. Furthermore, the natural occurrence of some of these characters in Late Pleistocene wolf populations and the time it took from the onset of traits related to domestication to their prevalence remain indefinite. For these reasons, the spatiotemporal context of the early domestication of dogs is hotly debated. Our combined molecular and morphological analyses of fossil canid remains from the sites of Grotta Paglicci and Grotta Romanelli, in southern Italy, attest of the presence...

"Some marks were left by Palaeolithic hunters when removing skins, but there are also those that can be associated only with dividing the carcass into smaller portions." He added: "Bones of herbivores usually dominate within human settlements from this period, because they were probably more eagerly consumed. "But it seems understandable that in the case of hunting a wolf, discarding meat was a considerable loss, especially during periods of lower availability of food. Therefore, it seems that all parts of the predators' body were used." In Pavlov, in addition to the remains of small and medium-sized predatory animals, researchers also...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Stone tools and other artifacts unearthed from an archaeological dig at the Cooper’s Ferry site in western Idaho suggest that people lived in the area 16,000 years ago, more than a thousand years earlier than scientists previously thought. The artifacts would be considered among the earliest evidence of people in North America. The findings, published today in Science, add weight to the hypothesis that initial human migration to the Americas followed a Pacific coastal route rather than through the opening of an inland ice-free corridor, said Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University and...

An Ice Age site in San Diego, Calif., preserves 130,000-year-old bones and teeth of a mastodon that show evidence of modification by early humans. Analysis of these finds dramatically revises the timeline for when humans first reached North America, according to new research. The fossil remains were discovered by Museum paleontologists during routine paleontological mitigation work at a freeway expansion project site managed by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). The bones, tusks, and molars, many of which are sharply broken, were found deeply buried alongside large stones that appeared to have been used as hammers and anvils, making this...

NEW YORK — A startling new report asserts that the first known Americans arrived much, much earlier than scientists thought — more than 100,000 years ago __ and maybe they were Neanderthals. If true, the finding would far surpass the widely accepted date of about 15,000 years ago. Researchers say a site in Southern California shows evidence of humanlike behavior from about 130,000 years ago, when bones and teeth of an elephantlike mastodon were evidently smashed with rocks. The earlier date means the bone-smashers were not necessarily members of our own species, Homo sapiens. The researchers speculate that these early...

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on Crete Island in Greece. It is an incredibly important discovery that is given little attention, despite the fact that it reached the top ten discoveries of 2010. Their research is forcing scholars to rethink the maritime capabilities of early human and pre-human cultures. The team of archaeologists were carrying out excavations in a gorge on the island of Crete when they discovered a Palaeolithic site in...

...and it was worn by a man! The suspicion is that the tiara - or diadem - was made by Denisovans who are already known to have had the technology 50,000 or so years ago to make elegant needles out of ivory and a sophisticated and beautiful stone bracelet. The tiara maybe the oldest of its type in the world. It appears to have had a practical use: to keep hair out of the eyes; it's size indicates it was for male, not female, use. Another theory, although related to tiaras made 20,000 years later by people living around river...

Birch bark tar, the oldest glue in the world, was in use for at least 50,000 years, from the Palaeolithic Period up until the time of the Gauls. Made by heating birch bark, it served as an adhesive for hafting tools and decorating objects. Scientists mistakenly thought it had been abandoned in western Europe at the end of the Iron Age (800-25 BC) and replaced by conifer resins, around which a full-fledged industry developed during the Roman period. But by studying artefacts that date back to the first six centuries AD through the lens of chemistry, archaeology, and textual analysis,...

Eagle talons are regarded as the first elements used to make jewellery by Neanderthals, a practice which spread around Southern Europe about 120,000 and 40,000 years ago. Now, for the first time, researchers found evidence of the ornamental uses of eagle talons in the Iberian Peninsula... "Neanderthals used eagle talons as symbolic elements, probably as necklace pendants, from the beginnings of the mid Palaeolithic", notes Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo. In particular, what researchers found in Cova Foradada are bone remains from Spanish Imperial Eagle (Aquila Adalberti), from more than 39,000 years ago, with some marks that show these were used to take...

Prehistoric cave occupants paid attention to cave wall morphology and touch when creating hand stencils. Human occupants of two caves in Northern Spain put some thought into where they placed their hand stencils on cave walls as much as 37,000 years ago, during Palaeolithic times. The topography and physical characteristics of the walls in the low light conditions of the caves seem to have mattered to them, suggest a team of researchers... What they found was a pattern that indicated selection or attention to certain types of natural cave wall features for placement of the stencils. "In total 80% of...

A bear bone found in a cave may push back dates for the earliest human settlement of Ireland by 2,500 years. The bone shows clear signs of cut marks with stone tools, and has been radiocarbon dated to 12,500 years ago. This places humans in Ireland in the Palaeolithic era; previously, the earliest evidence of people came from the Mesolithic, after 10,000 years ago. The brown bear bone had been stored in a cardboard box at the National Museum of Ireland for almost a century.

The study also uncovers a more accurate timescale for when humans and Neanderthals interbred, and finds evidence for an early contact between the European hunter-gatherers and those in the Middle East – who would later develop agriculture and disperse into Europe about 8,000 years ago, transforming the European gene pool. Scientists now believe Eurasians separated into at least three populations earlier than 36,000 years ago: Western Eurasians, East Asians and a mystery third lineage, all of whose descendants would develop the unique features of most non-African peoples - but not before some interbreeding with Neanderthals took place. Led by the...