It has been suggested that there is a correlation between demographic and social patterns and the flourishing...
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.
The earliest cave paintings here are about 30,000 years old. Introduction The Bhimbetka rock shelters are an archaeological site...
Humans have crafted garments for more than 40,000 years—and prehistoric tools suggest that warmth wasn’t their only...
By one interpretation of the historiography criterion, Southeastern Europe enters protohistory only with Homer. At any rate,...
Hand axes from the site of Saffaqah, Saudi Arabia. (Palaeodeserts/Ian R. Cartwright) Hominins made stone tools in central...
Archaeological excavation at Ain Boucherit, Algeria. Mathieu Duval, Author provided Ancient stone tools found in what is now Algeria show early humans likely spread across Africa more rapidly than...
The ‘Venus of Willendorf’ at around 28,000 years old is one of the earliest depictions of women...
A neolithic farm in Scotland that may be the oldest in northern Europe. / Photo by Drewcorser, Wikimedia...
April 1562, The Timucua, an indigenous tribe in Florida, shoot burning arrows into the village of a...
Hunter-gatherer societies sustained humanity for millennia and still endure, showing how mobility and flexible social organization respond...
India’s Mawmluh Cave, home of the reference stalagmite for the newly named age. Abhijeet Khedgikar/Shutterstock.com 2018 brought...
Early agrarian women—like these murdered in what is now western France some 6500 years ago—may have been...
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...