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Homo naledi may have made etchings on cave walls and buried its dead

Homo naledi may have made etchings on cave walls and buried its dead

5 June 2023

New discoveries suggest that Homo naledi, an ancient and primitive hominin, may have displayed complex behaviour despite its small brain


Canyars_LeatherPunchBoard

Bone fragment reveals humans wore leather clothes 39,000 years ago

12 April 2023

A study of an ancient bone from Spain with a strange pattern of notches hints that it was used by early Homo sapiens in Europe as a punch board for making holes in leather


Cave painting of cattle

Mysterious symbols in cave paintings may be earliest form of writing

4 January 2023

Stone Age people in Europe appear to have recorded the reproductive habits of animals with markings on cave paintings, hinting at the early origins of writing


Homo naledi skull

Homo naledi may have used fire to cook and navigate 230,000 years ago

6 December 2022

Archaeologists say they have found evidence that Homo naledi, an extinct human species with a tiny brain, used fire to cook and light up dark tunnels – though this claim remains controversial


Two rooks in an aviary

Cambridge lab for clever birds saved from closure by public donations

22 July 2022

The "corvid palace", a renowned UK centre for research on intelligence in crows and their kin that was due to be shut down this month, has been saved by a campaign kick-started by a New Scientist article


Clever birds forced to find new homes as Cambridge lab faces closure

Clever birds forced to find new homes as Cambridge lab faces closure

13 May 2022

A seminal research lab that has revolutionised our understanding of the minds of rooks and jays is set to be closed down as funding dries up


Stonehenge

Stonehenge may have been a giant calendar and now we know how it works

2 March 2022

The sarsen stones of the Stonehenge monument could have been designed as a calendar to track a solar year, with each of the stones in the large sarsen circle representing a day within a month


Dorsal and ventral views of the pendant. Scale bar is 1 cm. ? Antonino Vazzana - BONES Lab

Mammoth ivory pendant is oldest decorated jewellery found in Eurasia

25 November 2021

A pendant carved with mysterious dots and unearthed in a Polish cave is thought to be over 40,000 years old


ancient human

'Dragon man' claimed as new species of ancient human but doubts remain

25 June 2021

A large skull belonging to an ancient human that was found in China has been classified as a new species called Homo longi – but critics say the skull might actually have belonged to a Denisovan


Remains of a 3-year-old child are the oldest known burial in Africa

Remains of a 3-year-old child are the oldest known burial in Africa

5 May 2021

The oldest known burial in Africa is of a 3-year-old child who died around 78,000 years ago, shedding light on how people in the region cared for their dead at that time


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