Early agrarian women—like these murdered in what is now western France some 6500 years ago—may have been...
Prehistory
Before written records, humanity left its history in landscapes, artifacts, bones, and inherited memory. Explore our origins and movements across the earth, the rise of settled life, and the communities that built worlds without writing.
Skull of a Homo sapiens (a.k.a. modern human) individual, on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural...
This hand was discovered in articulation and all bones are represented except for the pisiform. / Photo...
Skeletal remains of a group of foragers massacred around 10,000 years ago on the shores of a...
Photography of Lascaux animal painting / Wikimedia Commons One of the most complex human mysteries involves how...
Photo by Arizona State University Hunting and gathering activities were the primary way for humans to feed...
Reconstruction of ancient life and environments is an extremely challenging problem. By Dr. William Irvin Sellers Professor,...
The Temple to Apollo at Delphi / Photo by Greudin, Wikimedia Commons The history of ancient Greece...
Silbury Hill Neolithic mound. It stands 30 metres high and 160 metres wide, and comprises half a...
Cereal in West Kennet (Wiltshire, United Kingdom). Copyright © Victor Jimenez Jaimez 2014 – Creative Commons Attribution...
Dr. Maxime Aubert, archeologist and geochemist, uses his headlamp to examine the cave art at Leang Lompoa...
Near Oymyakon in Yakutia, Russia / Photo Maarten Takens, Wikimedia Commons To work out how the climate...
Skulls of Homo sapiens (left) and Neanderthal (right) from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. This derivative work shows the skulls...
Image via learnerlog.org, Creative Commons Out of Africa and gradually stretching around the globe. By Emma Groeneveld...
Artist’s vision of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) in a late Pleistocene landscape in northern Spain. Mammoths were...
Sunrise at noon in the Arctic. Little exposure to sun was a piece of the genetic puzzle. Bering...
A family migrating to western US in 1886. Marion Doss/Flickr, Creative Commons Humans evolved in Africa, spread across the world, and then...
New research using ancient DNA finds that a population split after people first arrived in North America...
Lucy, born 3.2m years ago. Pat Sullivan/AP It should not be a surprise that East Africa was a...
Painting from El Castillo cave (Cantabria, Spain). Early Upper Palaeolithic or older. Photo Becky Harrison and courtesy Gobierno...
Ludovic Mann (right) and a colleague studying the site in 1930s. Historic Environment Scotland It’s arguably Europe’s premier...
One of the spear points found in the 2,500-year-old grave in Pocklington, East Yorkshire. Anna Gowthorpe/PA What’s in...
The owner of this skull had a nasty run in with an axe. Christian Meyer These massacres entail killing...
Rock art in central Northumberland, northern England. Author provided Trying to save Neolithic rock art made by our ancient ancestors is no easy task. But it tells us how...
Cat’s Brain long barrow is near the more famous Stonehenge (pictured) but predates it by hundreds of...
3D virtual reconstruction of two-million-year-old ear. Rolf Quam, CC BY-ND Beyond the cool factor of figuring out hominin hearing capacities two...
Behold the femur. Bence Viola, MPI EVA Radiocarbon-dated to around 45,000 years old. By Dr. Daniel Zadik / 10.24.2014 Postdoctoral Researcher...
A replica of a Homo naledi skull. GCIS/Flickr, CC BY-ND New evidence suggests that Homo naledi didn’t deliberately deposit their dead in a...
The earliest hominin cancer. Patrick Randolph-Quinney (University of Central Lancashire/University of the Witwatersrand) Cancer is not the modern disease...
Illustration of ritualised human sacrifice in traditional Hawaiian culture, as documented by the French explorer and artists...