Paleolithic Human Burial Culture

"This is an amazing revolutionary innovation for our species."

"It's actually the first time we are starting to use this behaviour [as a human species]."

"[The stone mound is] one of the three or four most important sites for [the] study of human evolution and behaviour during the Paleolithic time."

"Here we see a really complex set of behaviours, not related to just food and surviving." 

Yossi Zaidner, co-director, Tinshemet excavation, professor of archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 

 

"[The concept of cemeteries in prehistoric life is important because it symbolizes] a kind of a territory."

"[That same kind of claim over land where ancestors are buried still echoes in the region.] It’s a kind of claim you make to the neighbors, saying ’This is my territory, this part of the land belongs to my father and my forefather’ and so on and so on."

Israel Hershkovitz, physical anthropologist,Tel Aviv University, co-director, Tinshemet site

Volunteers work in Tinshemet Cave, where archaeologists are excavating one of the world’s oldest known burial sites, dating back 100,000 years, near Shoam, Israel, July 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

  

The Paleolithic era, or 'Stone Age", so called in reflection of the initial era in the use of stone tools representing the evolutionary time of emerging primeval humanity from 3.3 million years in ancient time up until some 10,000 years ago. Recent discoveries in Israel have unearthed two intact primeval skeletons in an ancient cave. Tinshemet Cave dates from the Middle Paleolithic era which equates to 250,000 to approximately 30,000 years ago -- an enormous sweep of evolutionary time on a vastly unimaginable scale.

 

Tinshemet Cave is located in central Israel, an area of rolling hills. The archeologists working there to unearth mysteries of the far distant past feel they have discovered one of the oldest burial sites in the world at the unassuming stone mound. And where they have discovered the well-preserved skeletal remains of early humans dating back some 100,000 years. They have been gripped with the unmistakable signs of ceremonial burials, where remains were carefully arranged in pits.

 

These findings appear to build on previous discoveries in northern Israel, adding to a growing appreciation of the realization of an emerging primitive social culture specific to the origins of human burial. The intriguing discovery of objects found alongside these remains leading to speculation they may have been used during ceremonies meant to honour the dead, and could possibly lead to more of an understanding of how humanity's ancestors thought about spirituality and an afterlife advances our understanding of ancestral human evolution. 

 

Fruit bats in Tinshemet Cave, where archaeologists are excavating one of the world’s oldest known burial sites, dating back 100,000 years, near Shoam, Israel (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

 

Work has been ongoing by archaeologists at Tinshemet since 2016, with the discovery of the  remains of five early hominids, dating back to around 110,000 to 100,000 years. Discovered in pits, the skeletons had been carefully arranged in a fetal position, known as a burial position, according to Professor Zaidner. Objects such as basalt pebbles, animal remains or fragments of ochre were found buried with the remains. Some of the objects were recognized as having been found hundreds of kilometres' distant and their practical utility questioned other than serving as objects linked to the ritual of burial.

 

The Tinshemet core findings by researchers were published in Nature Human Behavior. The remains of five early humans were represented by two full skeletons and three isolated skulls, along with other bones and teeth. Although archaeologists have studied the remains for years, it has not yet been established whether they were Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, a hybrid group or an altogether other alternatives. More than 500 various-sized fragments of red and orange ochre, a pigment created by heating iron-rich stones to a certain temperature, provided evidence that early humans discovered the means by which decorative objects could be created.

 

A unique combination of ash that resulted from frequently-made fires, and atmospheric rainfall, along with the geology of acidic limestone in Israel, served to preserve the skeletons and objects; conditions that were optimal for unintended, natural preservation purposes. The local climate conditions and geology in other words, preserved these remains, much as has been seen in other parts of the Middle East; Egypt, for example. 

 

The findings at Tinshemet support analyses and hypotheses from earlier discoveries dating to the same period in northern Israel, where two similar burial sites were discovered -- Skhul Cave and Qafzeh Cave. Skhul Cave was excavated close to a century ago, while Qafzeh Cave was excavated some fifty years ago, when archaeological professionalism in its current systematic and and scientific approach was somewhat less rigorous. 

 

What has been established is that in antiquity, Israel was an evolutionary bridge between Neanderthals from Europe, and Homo Sapiens from Africa. That there was interbreeding producing cross-species is well accepted in general.  Other subgroups of early humans have been identified in the area, leading archaeologists to believe that the groups interacted and may have interbred. In people of European and Asian descent in particular, a small percentage of genetic material from Neanderthals is part of their evolutionary inheritance.

 

Professor of Archaeology Yossi Zaidner works in Tinshemet Cave, excavating one of the world’s oldest known burial sites, dating back 100,000 years. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

 

 

Discovering new Mayan 'Lost City' Localities in Mexico

"Previous research has shown that a large part of the present-day state of Campeche is a landscape that was transformed by its ancient inhabitants."

"Now, this study shows that a little-known region was an urbanized landscape."

"This density is comparable to that of Mayan sites such as Calakmul, Oxpemul and Becán."

Adriana Velazquex Morlet, National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico

 

"We have always been able to talk about the ancient Maya especially in the lowland regions because of their hieroglyphic texts, because they left us such interesting record[s]."

"What we are now able to do is match that information with their settlement and the population and what they were fighting over, what they were ruling over, what they were trading."

"[The  extensive data being collected will] allow us to tell better stories of the ancient Mayan people [linking what is already known with newly revealed hints on how ancient civilizations developed]."

Tulane Professor Marcello Canuto 

"Scientists in ecology, forestry and civil engineering have been using lidar surveys to study some of these areas for totally separate purposes. So what if a lidar survey of this area already existed?" 

"I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring."

"It does not reveal a different perspective on Maya urbanism and landscapes, it actually shows us that the perspective we already had is pretty accurate. [The] number of buildings present in the entire data set is high enough to speak of genuinely high regional scale population entities."

"[Archaeologists who know the region well were able to improve the team's analysis and provide] a really deep perspective on this region."

"The nature of the ruins, the archeological buildings that were there — they were big and they were instantly recognizable as the kind of things that mark political capitals of the Maya Classic period."

"That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there's a lot more to be discovered."

"What I hope is that this encourages not only open data generally, but also collaboration between archeologists and environmental scientists going forward."

Luke Auld-Thomas, instructor, Northern Arizona University

There are no pictures of the city but it had pyramid temples similar to this one in nearby Calakmul  Getty Images

With the use of laser-sensing technology, archaeologists have been able to locate what they feel is an ancient Mayan city totally encroached upon and engulfed by jungle growth, in southern Mexico. The city has been named Valeriana by the researchers, as a geographic nod to a nearby lagoon named similarly. Thought of as another 'lost city', it is felt that the area may have been densely populated, as was the pre-Hispanic metropolis of Calakmul, in southern Yucatan peninsula.

The study, published in the journal Antiquity, leads to the belief that the seemingly vacant, jungle-dense area between known Mayan sites may in their day have been very heavily populated. Roughly 6,479 structures were detected in LiDAR imagining in an area of about 122 square kilometres. The laser technique maps out landscapes with the use of thousands of laser pulses emanating from a plane, able to detect variations in topography not evident to the human eye.

Structures, including what appear to be temple platforms, ceremonial ball courts, housing platforms, agricultural terraces and what appears to be a dam are revealed by the images. Mexico's National Institute felt the structures could date to between 250 and 900 A.D. The settlement might have been in existence, however, a century earlier.

 

Rendering of the ancient Maya city "Valeriana" which was built before 150 AD, researchers said. Tulane University

Luke Auld-Thomas a graduate student at Tulane University in 2014, made note of strange formations in the jungle survey. He had been studying a 2013 LiDAR survey carried out for the purpose of measuring deforestation. Software was used to re-examine the 2013 survey as an alternative to using the very expensive LiDAR technique, when it occurred to Auld-Thomas that making second use of the survey could work just as well.

The research suggests that when Maya civilizations collapsed around 800AD, part of the reason might have been because the region was too densely populated to survive problems encountered with the climate, and that often translates to too little potable water, impacting not only the irrigation of crops but water for everyday purposes in an urban setting. Inter-tribal war and the eventual arrival of Spanish conquistadors might well have contributed to the population's regional decline as well.

"It's suggesting that the landscape was just completely full of people at the onset of drought conditions and it didn't have a lot of flexibility left."

"And so maybe the entire system basically unravelled as people moved farther away."

Luke Auld-Thomas

Evidence of the ruins were found by a plane using laser remote sensing to map beneath the jungle canopy   Getty Images

Environmentally Manipulative Skills Predating Homo Sapiens

"Waterlogged deposits ... preserved two interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch."

"This construction has no known parallels in the African or European Palaeolithic."

"We also recovered four wood tools ... including a wedge, digging stick, cut log and notched branch. The finds show an unexpected early diversity of forms and the capacity to shape tree trunks into large combined structures."

"These new data not only extend the age range of woodworking in Africa but expand our understanding of the technical cognition of early hominins, forcing re-examination of the use of trees in the history of technology."

Professor Larry Barham, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool

 

"That the wood has remained in place and intact for half a million years is extraordinary. And it gives us this real insight, this window into this time period."

"It’s completely changed my view of what people were capable of at that time."

Geoff Duller, professor of geography and Earth sciences, University of Aberystwyth, United Kingdom

The excavation team uncovers the wooden structure along the bank of Zambia's Kalambo River.  Professor Larry Barham/University of Liverpool

Archaeologists at work in Zambia discovered the remains of a wood structure, believed to represent the oldest wooden structure in the world dated to about 476,000 years ago. Which places these newly-discovered, human-worked and shaped logs to a position close to a hundred times more ancient than the construction of Egypt's pyramids. The remains were discovered, surprisingly intact, despite their venerable lineage, at Kalambo Falls in the central African nation of Zambia.

It is a region considered to be an archaeological treasure geology by scientists, where evidence of human habitation can be detected back in the early Stone Age period, forward to the modern era. Professor Barham describesd how his team discovered preserved wooden remains they were able to date to almost half a million years ago, published in a paper in the journal Nature.

The area's  high water table aided in the preservation of organic matter that would otherwise rot in a short period of time through exposure to the elements, and decompose, buried deep underground. The team meticulously worked to recover a 1.4-metre piece of wood notched in a manner that would do justice to present-day log cabin construction methodology. 

Modern humans are thought by archaeological science to have appeared some 350,000 years ago in the evolutionary timeline. Yet these newly-discovered structures serve to predate even the appearance of Homo sapiens, by thousands of years. At least one piece of wood indicated evidence of having been shaped with a broad, cleaver-like edge. "We interpret this object as a portion of tree trunk cut to size, indicating capacity to work wood at a large scale", the scientific team noted in their published paper.

The paper observed that Kalambo's dense forest cover teamed with a high water table would have resulted in frequent flooding, both of which provided the necessity and the means -- given the raw resources right at hand -- for the construction of "a raised platform, walkway or foundation for dwellings". Human ingenuity is never to be under-rated, even during its most primal appearance; an intelligence designed by nature to think ahead and seek out solutions to problems associated with ensuring survival in a raw world.

The wooden structure was found at an archaeological site upstream of Kalambo Falls in Zambia. Professor Geoff Duller/Aberystwyth University

Photo: Larry Barham/University of Liverpool

"You could see the individual chop marks really clearly. It's extraordinary. Everything just looks so fresh you think 'it can not be this old'."

"And when Geoff's dates came through, 477,000 [years old], I thought wow! It's just amazing. We were lucky."

"They are locking something in. So it restricts the movement and that's intentional. And nothing has been seen like that the archaeological record at this time and really they won't be seen again until maybe 9,000 years later, so a huge gap in time between what these people could do 477,000 years ago and then when we see that again in the archaeological record, in this case in the European record."

"So that's how I understand it, so this a framework on which things could then be added, like a platform."

 "It's what I call a disruptive discovery. I never expected it. And it took me a while before I appreciated what we were looking at. It didn't look very nice, to be honest. But it is much more complex than I thought and it suggests to me that early humans, early hominins before us, were actually capable of doing things which we would marvel at if we were doing it ourselves. So it's not just the stone tools, it's the wood as well. They've got this repertoire of materials now. They can transform their environment. They can build things that are lasting. That's new."

Professor Larry Barham

 

"What I've been involved in is a method called luminescence dating and this enables us to fill in this gap that other dating techniques really can't touch."

"And in particular what's useful about it is that we can apply it to the sands that the river deposits themselves, so we don't have to find special materials, we don't have to find tephra [volcanic ash] or anything particularly, it's just common minerals that occur in these sediments."

"And we can date those to give an age range."

Geoff Duller, Professor of Quaternary Science, Aberystwyth University

Rediscovering the Ancient World of Civilization

"Important texts [and] ancient fragments [which may] change the way we think [about the world's first civilization could be found beneath the desert sands in Iraq]."

"There was one moment when we knew we  had something promising. We found a stone and the stone had an inscription."

"When we read the inscription it was King Gudea building a temple for the god Ningirsu and then the name of the temple, so we knew without a doubt this was the temple."

Sebastien Rey, British Museum

 

"The discovery of the lost palace and temple hold enormous potential for our understanding of this important civilization, shedding light on the past and informing the future."

Hartwig Fischer, director, British Museum

 

Ancient Sumerians lived in the first ever city that humanity created. This was a civilization that invented a system for numbering, and developed the first codes of law. Its ancient innovations impressed civilizations to follow, but the Sumerian culture and all artefacts associated with it sunk into oblivion. In 1877 a French archaeological team unearthed Girsu, a fabled ancient city which was thought to be a myth, for thousands of years.

 

Latterly, the British Museum fielded an archaeological team in an area described as the "cradle of civilization" the remnants of a lost city. Pursuing their work in southern Iraq, archaeologists discovered a palace dating back 4,500 years, of King Gudea in Tello, the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu.  Archaeologists are anticipating that further excavation could unearth cuneiform tablets with texts detailing daily life in t he city.

Image: Statue of King Gudea; dolerite; Tello, Iraq; 2130BC The Trustees of the British Museum

Hope is high that among the finds may be the lost tablets of a 4,000-year-old story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem believed to have inspired some Biblical stories. And thus a scramble for artefacts from the culture that reigned from 4,500 BC to 1,900 BC. Girusu had been explored, then left abandoned for over a century. Thought is that some 100,000 tablets were taken from the site during the early excavations.

 

In 2015 an archaeological team from the British Museum began work sifting through the debris that the French had previously excavated. They discovered the remnants of the temple of the deity Ningirsu, the conclusion of a 150-year-old search for a lost holy of holies". 

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the story of the Mesopotamian warrior king, a slayer of demons until his companion died, prompting him to look for a source of immortality. His journeys brought him to Utnapishtim a man chosen by the gods to build a boat for survival of a flood meant to wipe out humanity.

The British Museum, Getty and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq formed a joint initiative to unearth and preserve antiquities from ancient Iraq. Initially launched by the U.K. government as a pilot in 2015 in response to the Islamic State destruction of heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.

Palmyra's Temple of Baalshamin, which was targeted by ISIS. Bernard Gagnon/Wikimedia Commons

 

 

Domesticated Animals Accompanied Vikings to Britain

Cremated horse fragment, Durham University

"This is the first solid scientific evidence that Scandinavians almost certainly crossed the North Sea with horses, dogs and possibly other animals as early as the ninth century AD and could deepen our knowledge of the Viking Great Army."

 :They were treated more like companion animals rather than just for economic purposes."

"I find it really touching, and it suggests we underestimate just how important animals were to Vikings."

"I'm not saying that they never took animals from the English when they arrived. But in possibly rare instances, they brought animals with them. And I think it kind of reflects the importance that we think animals had in Norse mythology, and that they were kind of sometimes seen as not just status symbols, but also as kind of, companions."

Tessi Loffelmann, doctoral researcher, Durham University / Vrije Universiteit Brussels

"It shows how much Viking leaders valued their personal horses and hounds that they brought them from Scandinavia, and that the animals were sacrificed to be buried with their owners."

Professor Julian Richards, Department of Archaeology, University of York

This photo shows one of the Heath Wood barrows being excavated by archaeologists. Julian Richards, University of York.

Recently published research reflecting a surprise archaeological find is evidence that when Vikings crossed the North Sea to arrive in Britain they brought along with them their personal horses and dogs. The research, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, reveals a new understanding of the culture of ancient Scandinavia. In actual fact, the place that animals have in the cultural psychology of most human societies through the ages is fairly widespread.

Looking somewhat further back to Egyptian mythology and religious culture it is clear that animals of the region, many common to other parts of earth's geography such as Indigenous First Peoples of North America, where were worshipped, given anthropological as well as godly attributes. Nor was their usefulness as herders and hunters -- from birds of prey to hunting dogs undervalued.

Evidence was discovered for the first time in Britain indicating that when individual Vikings died arrangements were made to have their valued dogs and horses cremated along with them and buried together. Infamously, historically to the near present, high-caste Hindu rituals in Indian funeral custom saw women cremated along with their deceased husbands; like the Vikings' animals to be buried together as beloved possessions to accompany them in the after-life.

The discovery of the Vikings' customs was made by researchers at Durham University, carrying out excavation work at Britain's only recognized Viking cremation cemetery, at Heath Wood in Derbyshire.The cemetery has links to the Viking Great Army, a combined military force of Scandinavian warriers that in 865AD invaded Britain.

 

Icelandic horse: Shutterstock

Remains of both humans and animals were discovered on a funeral pyre, analysis of the bones showing they originated in the Baltic Shield area of Scandinavia; encompassing Finland, Sweden, part of Norway and northwest Russia. In determining the bones' origin, the team studied traces of the element strontium in the remnants of two adults, a child and three animals found at the Heath Wood site.

Strontium naturally occurs in the environment, found in rocks, soil and water prior to appearing in plants. When those plants are consumed by humans and animals, strontium replaces calcium in bones and teeth. Various versions of strontium appear in different geological areas, acting as a 'fingerprint', identifying the geographic region that people or animals came from.

 

A new study suggests that the 9th century Vikings sailed with horses, dogs, and maybe even pigs. Photo: Shutterstock

The Ancient Past Calls Out

"You cannot see it now, but originally it was inlaid with pieces of precious marble, pieces of glass, pieces of small, finely made marble."

"It was shining and this was a really amazing artifact. It stood at the apex, at the sanctuary of the Church [of the Holy Sepulchre]."

"All the eyes of the believers, of the pilgrims [went] to this object. And right above it and around it, all the high priests, the priests and the monks of the church did all the liturgy, the main liturgy of the church, on the table, right here on the table of this altar." 

"It was forgotten in the mist of time for decades until we rediscovered it a few years ago."

Amit Re'em, Jerusalem regional archaeologist, Israel Antiquities Authority 

"Works from people of art, people of archeology, contribute to us, contribute to the belief of the church, to the conviction of the church, that this is the place ... on which Jesus Christ was crucified ... buried and from which he came to resurrection."

Archbishop Aristarchos of Constina, chief secretary, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem

A stone slab said to be the decorated frontal of the Crusader-era high altar of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre according to researchers at the Israel Antiquities Authority and Austrian Academy of Sciences, is seen in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after it was recently turned over during renovations and its significance rediscovered, in Jerusalem's Old City, April 11, 2022. Picture taken April 11, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

 

It was just an obscure stone slab of an early period in history standing in an ancient church in one of the most historical sites of world  history. Left over the ages pressed close against a wall in a far corridor of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On its readily visible, outward-facing side was graffiti, testament to the multitudes of pilgrims through the ages that had come to Jerusalem to pray and to revel in the church's antiquity, leaving a memento of themselves and their awe at its sacred presence, inscribed on the stone slab.

And then, because the church, celebrated as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and burial and traditionally venerated for that tradition, began undergoing renovation, and the 2.5 X 1.5-metre stone slab was moved, revealing its opposite side where elaborate looping ornaments were discovered on the long-hidden portion. Which enabled archaeologists to identify it as the decorated frontispiece of a medieval high altar in one of Christendom's holiest cities.

Research on the origins, purpose and condition of the ancient slab was carried out by two archaeologists; Amit Re'em, Jerusalem regional archaeological representative of the Israel Antiquities Authority and his colleague Ilya Berkovich of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. They were able to identify as "Cosmatesque" the unique, looping design etched deeply into the stone piece that once served as part of the church's original altar. A technique that embodied Classical Byzantine and early Islamic art where tiles of colourful marble were set into the circular engravings. 

The two researchers were familiar with the style of decoration since similar ones were found within churches in Rome that date to the 12th and 13th centuries. The Jerusalem relic corresponds with past archaeological findings, alongside accounts of pilgrims describing the consecration of the church by the Crusaders when the main altar was formed, in the year 1149.

Catholic clergy made use of the altar in celebrating mass up to the time the Crusaders left Jerusalem, after which it saw use by the Greek Orthodox church until a fire in 1808 damaged it, when it was cast aside and forgotten until recent renovations were undertaken, explained Amit Re'em. The findings of the researchers are to be published by the Exploration Society of Israel.

People visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City, April 11, 2022. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo

The Neanderthal In Us

"It all started in Israel. We suggest that a local group was the source population."

"During interglacial periods, waves of humans, the Nesher Ramla people, migrated from the Middle East to Europe."

"The European Neanderthal actually began here in the Levant and migrated to Europe, while interbreeding with other groups of humans."

Dr Hila May, Tel Aviv University, Israel

 

"This is the first time we could connect the dots between different specimens found in the Levant."

"There are several human fossils from the caves of Qesem, Zuttiyeh and Tabun that date back to that time that we could not attribute to any specific known group of humans. But comparing their shapes to those of the newly uncovered specimen from Nesher Ramla justify their inclusion within the [new human] group."

Dr Rachel Sarig, Tel Aviv University  

"It was a surprise that archaic humans were using tools normally associated with Homo sapiens. This suggests that there were interactions between the two groups."   

"We think that it is only possible to learn how to make the tools through visual or oral learning. Our findings suggest that human evolution is far from simple and involved many dispersals, contacts and interactions between different species of human."

Dr Yossi Zaidner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The human finds were uncovered during the excavation of a sinkhole. Thousands of stone tools and animal remains were also found  Photo: Yossi Zaidner

"The discovery of a new type of Homo is of great scientific importance."

"It enables us to make new sense of previously found human fossils, add another piece to the puzzle of human evolution, and understand the migrations of humans in the old world."

"Some fossils found in East Asia manifest Neanderthal-like features as the Nesher Ramla do."

Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University

Scientists in Israel feel they have succeeded in unearthing a discovery of a hitherto-unknown early human. Pieces of fossilized bone discovered at a site in central Israel used by a cement plant were studied carefully and led to this conclusion. Fragments were those of a skull and a lower jaw with teeth, estimated to be roughly 130,000 years old. Should their conclusions prove to be correct, the potential of reimagining parts of the human family tree is on the horizon. 

The archaeological project was a joint venture between researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The new proto-human was named Nesher Ramla Homo, after the area  southeast of TelAviv where the remains were discovered. The species, it is speculated, may have lived alongside our own species, Homo sapiens for over 100,000 years and it is posible that interbreeding took place, according to the team's studies.

 

Hila May, a physical anthropologist at the Dan David Center and the Shmunis Institute of Tel Aviv University holds what scientists say is a piece of fossilized bone of a previously unknown kind of early human   Reuters

 

Distinguished with large teeth and chinless, these early humans may have been ancestors to Neanderthals. In making that suggestion the archaeological team is challenging the scientific given that distant evolutionary humans originated in Europe. While exploring the mining area of the Nesher cement plant not far from the city of Ramla, Dr.Yossi Zaidner of Hebrew University had discovered the fossils.

Follow-up excavation revealed the bones located roughly eight metres underground and with them were discovered stone tools, along with the skeletal remains of horses and deer. The Nesher Ramla type resembled pre-Neanderthal groups in Europe, according to the study authors whose work was published in the journal Science.

"This is what makes us suggest that this Nesher Ramla group is actually a large group that started very early in time and are the sources of the European Neanderthal", explained Hila May, physical anthropologist at the Dan David Center and the Shmunis Institute of Tel Aviv University.

Dr.May is convinced the Nesher Ramla might represent the mystery group responsible for Homo sapiens genes being present in earlier Neanderthal populations in Europe, long a puzzle to experts in the field. The skull of the species discovered is flat, the jaw bone is chinless and 3D shape analysis has ruled out any other known group related to it.

There was a match, however, with a small number of human fossils discovered elsewhere in Israel, dating back even earlier (400,000 years back in dim antiquity), and which anthropologists had been unable to place.

Tel Aviv University Professor Israel Hershkovitz, holds what scientists say are two pieces of fossilised bone of a previously unknown kind of early human discovered at the Nesher Ramla site in central Israel  Reuters

Prehistoric Grief of Loss

"This is at the root of the symbolic mind that characterizes Homo sapiens."

"The child was buried in a residential site, close to where this community lived, evincing how intimately life and death are related."

"Only humans treat the dead with the same respect, consideration and even tenderness they treat the living [with]. Even when we die, we continue to be someone for our group."

"[Ancient Homo sapiens and Neanderthals practised funerary behaviour], a type of behaviour that allows us to maintain links with those who died and offer a farewell."

Maria Martinon-Torres, director, National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH), Spain

 

"This would likely have been a group act, perhaps by members of the child's family."

"All of these behaviours are, of course, very similar to those observed in our own species today, so we can relate to this act even though the burial dates to 78,000 years ago."

Nicole Boivin, archaeologist, director, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany

Excavations at this African cave site called Panga ya Saidi revealed the continent’s oldest known example of an intentional human burial.   Mohammad Javad Shoaee

Scientists revealed this week their finding of the oldest-known human burial in Africa. Not surprising in the sense that Africa is the continent where the human species arose. The burial site of a young child -- [estimated to be between 2-1/2 years of age and three when it died, its gender remains indeterminate] -- in a cave called Panga ya Saidi, near the coast of Kenya. The child's remains were given the name "Mtoto", translated from Swahili to English: "child". 

 

This virtual reconstruction shows the original position of a child’s bones in a Kenyan grave dug around 78,300 years ago, making it Africa’s oldest known human interment. Jorge González, Elena Santos

The fragile skeleton was found buried in a shallow grave beneath the overhang of the cave. Its head rested on a 'pillow' with the upper torso carefully wrapped in a shroud, both pillow and shroud hypothesized to having been composed of dried, decayed vegetation. It is a discovery which the researchers claim sheds light on the development of early complex social behaviours in Homo sapiens.

Africa gave birth to the first Homo sapiens species over 300,000 years ago. A species which gradually, through migration, spread throughout the world. The archaeologist/researchers encased the decomposed bones in plaster after lifting them from the circular pit where they had lain over the vast space of millenna on end, to be taken to CENIEH for eventual study. 

The skeletal remains were found in the grave placed in a flexed position, body on its right side, knees drawn toward the chest. A void left by the decay of a pillow composed of perishable vegetation that had collapsed caused the cranium and three neck bones to fall into the depression. 

 

The researchers hypothesized from the position of a shoulder bone and two ribs that the upper body had been wrapped in similar perishable material -- after which the body was covered with earth dug up from the floor of the cave.

"The next oldest grave in Africa is about 74,000 years old. Interestingly, that was also a young child, but it was poorly excavated about 50 years ago, so we don't know much about it."  

"Here, there is definitely a sense of personal loss. It's evidence of people who had a more symbolic representation of the world around them."  

Dr Louise Humphrey, Natural History Museum, London    

The scientists have named the child Mtoto, which means 'the kid' in Swahili   Fernando Fueyo

The Miracle Cave, South Africa

"What we have here in the cave are milestones of these very dramatic events in human evolution."

"I can't think of any other site I know of, certainly not in sub-Saharan Africa, that has a complete sequence of two million years of human occupation."

"We can't say whether these people were actually making the fire, or whether they were just using fire. But it's still a very momentous moment in human evolution and development."

"Because once you have fire, it opens a whole set of new things that you can do -- like protect and warm yourself, create light and cook food."

Liora Kolska Horwitz, researcher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Natural History Collection

"It's really interesting to understand how our species evolved with time."

"Every evidence and clue that can shed light on very early histories is very fascinating ... it's a great feeling to be part of this."

Ron Shaar, Professor of Geology, Hebrew University Institute of Earth Sciences

"So there are traces of fire, but how is the fire being used? There are stone tools, but what were they being used for?"

"Can we draw out more of the lives of these people at different points in time?"

Michael Chazan, co-director, Wonderwerk Cave project, University of Toronto

Sampling for dating     Wonderwerk Cave Research Project

In Afrikaans, the language of South Africa-dominated Dutch the cave named Wondewerk is translated to English as Miracle Cave. A place of ancient geology where protohumans found refuge in humanity's primordial history. Ancient as in two million years ago when occupation of the cave by humans has been verified by a team of archaeologists in a collaboration between researchers from University of Toronto and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The immense cave in North Cape Province, South Africa, has attracted countless excavations and exploratory visits from the international community of archaeologists for the past 80 years. The cave is extensive, estimated at 140 metres in length, and as a result of its presence as a geological environmental area of protection where humans could control the menaces that lurked outside the cave from entrance by predators it was a site of some importance over countless eras of human existence.

Sedimentary layers examined by researchers render a picture of how human evolution devolved, explained Liora Kolska Horwitz, one of the co-directors of the Wonderwerk Cave expedition. A project that has continued for over fifteen years of discovery. Evidence of Oldowan tools have been found in the oldest layers of the sedimentary layers in the cave. These are, for the most part, sharp stone flakes and simple tools devised for chopping.

2013 Excavation    Wonderwerk Cave Excavation Project

Early hand axes have been uncovered within newer layers merely a million years old. Burnt bone, burnt stone tools, sediment and ash attest to the use of fire -- all exciting, revelatory discoveries -- yet discoveries that while answering some puzzles of human existence in the long distant past, open up new questions that answers are sought for. 

And while it's clear that the earliest hominids to appear on Earth occupied the Wonderwerk Cave, there is ample evidence of far more recent occupation, where European farmers who travelled to Africa as colonial occupiers of a vast, richly endowed land, made the cave their temporary shelter while in the process of building farm steads in the early 1900s.

How long each succeeding group over the aeons remained, to account for the past two million years of human existence is unclear, but the exploratory revelations thus far revealed stun Earth Sciences professor Ron Shaar, lead author of the study. Dr. Horwitz theorizes that the cave may also have acquired an additional status beyond providing safety and shelter; a reputation as a place of spirituality.

That value, held by local communities might have imbued the cave with spiritual dimensions "from the beginning of time". Its vast size alone identified it as a landmark people invested with great meaning, and kept returning to. In the geography it occupies it is a geological anomaly. There are few rock shelters or caves in its location, making it unique in a myriad of ways.

Hunters would also recognize the site as a place to search the landscape, looking out as it does onto a plateau. Continued collaboration between archaeologists, geologists and allied scientists in an effort to determine precisely how hominids interacted with the Wonderwerk Cave will provide ample opportunities for ongoing investigations by the research community at large.

 

Entrance to Wonderwerk Cave   Wonderwerk Cave Excavation Project

Neolithic Age Ingenuity and Engineering

Neolithic Age Ingenuity and Engineering

"The sarsen stones make up the iconic outer circle and central trilithon [two vertical stones supporting a horizontal stone] horseshoe at Stonehenge. They are enormous."

"How they were moved to the site is still really the subject of speculation."

"It has been really exciting to harness 21st-century science to understand the Neolithic past, and finally answer a question that archeologists have been debating for centuries."

David Nash, geomorphologist, University of Brighton

"The bluestones, we've known, come from mid-west Wales and they were easy to source because there are inclusions and quartz which you can match to the outcrop. The large stones are pretty uniform and just look like a big block, so it's difficult to interrogate them and find where they are from."

"There are no sarsens of this size left in the downs, that's why it's been such a mystery and some people have suggested they come from elsewhere as you get outcrops in other places where you have chalk land, like Devon and Kent."

"The west wood was overlooked because it's under ancient woodland and a lot of sarsens were removed in the 19th century for road stones, particularly in Swindon, but there are still sarsens buried in among the tees. To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge's builders used to source their materials around 2500 BC is a real thrill."

"We can now say, when sourcing the sarsens, the overriding objective was size -- they wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as nearby as possible."

"This is in stark contrast to the source of the bluestones, where something quite different -- a sacred connection to these mountains perhaps -- was at play."

Susan Greaney, historian, archaeologist with a specialization in British prehistory, Cardiff University

Stonehenge

Before there were the monumentally imposing great cathedrals of Europe, there was Stonehenge. An ancient  circle of massive stone formations dominating a landscape, where sun worship as a Druid temple of sorts spoke to an ancient belief in the divine. Humankind seems always to have had a need of faith, faith in an unknown powerful force imagined as a divine intelligence which created all that exists. The sun was the manifestation of that life-giving, life-sustaining source. One of the Egyptian dynasties was also that of sun-worship when Akhenaten reigned and named the sun Aten.

The building of the ancient Pyramids presented a conundrum just as Stonehenge has done; how massive stone blocks could have been moved to particular sites to construct gargantuan edifices of worship and burial in preparation for the afterlife. Stonehenge's megalithic bluestones were known to have been hauled 225 kilometres from Wales' Preseli Mountains to their destination on Salisbury Plain. A laborious effort of both brute strength and engineering; presumably with the use of log rollers to convey the massive stones over a demanding geology.

Sunset at Stonehenge. Photograph: A Pattenden

A mystery appears to have been cleared with the newfound knowledge that the 52 pale-grey sandstone megaliths known as sarsens originated in the West Woods of the Marlborough Downs, a mere 25 kilometres in comparison distance, north of Stonehenge. Not far from the Neolithic monument site at Avebury. It took the combined work of archaeologists from English Heritage and the University of Sheffield to solve this centuries-old conundrum of human effort in a divine mission of devotion overcoming massive physical effort and distance difficulty to achieve the goal.

A core sample that had been drilled during repair work undertaken in the 1950s involving the "Stone 58" had been taken as a memento to the United States, with permission, by a man who had worked for the company involved in the conservation work when the sarsen core sample was extracted and metal rods inserted to stabilize a cracked megalith. The souvenir moved with this man when he emigrated to the U.S. and was eventually returned to Britain to enable research.

When fragments of the sample were analyzed, researchers were able to establish the geochemical fingerprint of the sarsen which it was taken from, which matched sandstone at West Woods. Most of the sarsens weigh about 20 tonnes, with some as heavy as 30 tonnes; the largest is 30 feet in length. It is hazarded that the Preseli stones were selected for ritualistic purposes while the sarsens were chosen for size, according to archeological logic. Moving such 30 tonne stones would have represented an impossibly difficult prospect.

A large sarsen stone at West Woods, the probable source of most of the sarsens used to construct Stonehenge. Photograph: Katy A Whitaker

Speleology With a Defined Purpose

"[The research presents] uniquely preserved evidence indicating that people were exploring underground cave systems to prospect and mine red ochre, an iron oxide earth mineral pigment widely used by North America's earliest inhabitants."
"[This ochre mine was a] regional-scale activity that was sustained over multiple generations."
"Whether ochre procurement or use by Paleoindian groups and their Old World predecessors constitutes evidence for ritual behaviour or utilitarian purposes remains an ongoing anthropological discussion, yet consensus suggests that the two are not mutually exclusive."
Research paper

"It's almost as if we passed through a portal. There's all sorts of stuff in these caves."
"We knew people were in there. We started seeing wide-spread destruction in what would have been a pristine cave."
"It must be ingrained in human nature to pile rocks on top of each other. There was no other way it could have got there other than a human stacking it on top."
Sam Meacham, diver

A diver examines an ochre mine pit and mining debris. (CINDAQ.ORG)

A first for archaeology, with the discovery in Mexico of the earliest underground ochre mine in the New World. Described as a vast prehistoric industrial complex perhaps 112 millennia old, where valuable red iron-rich mineral was prospected by Paleoindians, representing a major factor in enabling human evolution.

The initial discovery of the mine took place in 2017 with a Canadian scuba diving instructor squirming through a tight passage, becoming the first person to ever enter an unknown chamber in Quintana Roo's cave complex on the eastern Yucatan peninsula on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. A student of Fred Devos who taught an underwater cave survey class noticed a tunnel lacking an exploration line.

Which led to Devos and Sam Meacham swimming into the dense black interior which took them into an air dome, then back down into the water, and finally through a tight restriction. The two, involved in conservation of the local underground water systems, found themselves submerged in a once-dry cave that had flooded roughly 8,000 years ago.

A diver examines a rock pile thought to be an ancient navigational marker inside a 12,000-year-old ochre mine in Quintana Roo, Mexico.  © CINDAQ.ORG

The floor of the cave had been cracked open at one time, revealing the layer of ochre that lay beneath, the opening extended by smashing rocks, breakage piled at the sides of the opening. Pits, stone tools, debris cairns as directionals, hearths for charcoal, soot-blackened spots on the ceiling were all revealed as the two explored their discovery; an ochre mine, used when this was a dry cave.

Their discovery, with additional findings by a University of Missouri team headed by Brandi MacDonald, with McMaster University's Eduard Reinhardt, along with Meacham and Devos rounding out the research team, saw their work published as new research in the journal Science Advances. The sheer scale of the three-cave system known as Camilo Mina, Monkey dust and Sagitario, stretch kilometres from the Caribbean coastline.

The authors of the report describe a "regional-scale activity that was sustained over multiple generations". thought to have been dry from the period of the Last Glacial Maximum, over 20,000 years ago, to the time it was flooded, theoretically 8,000 years ago, humans were already well established in North America, arriving an estimated 14,000 years ago, from the north.

The discovery in 2018 of two infants ceremonially buried in Alaska 11,500 years ago , held as evidence for the theory that anatomically modern humans emerged from Africa to spread across Asia, migrating from Siberia through Alaska into the Americas, some in Pacific coastal waters, others inland routes taken.

The various types of iron oxide mixed with clay and sand known as ochre, have a place in humanity's historical evolution. The use of ochre spans 200,000 years, at least to the earliest days of modern Homo sapiens, to the origin of art and sciences of creative expression and environment control, as humans discovered how to mine and make use of it, in an expression of symbolic thought and social behaviour.

The published paper examines the question whether ochre was valuable for its utilitarian purposes such as use as a sunscreen, antiseptic, pesticide, purgative, hide-tanning, or for ceremonial purposes such as mortuary practices, and paint mixed with animal fat. Concluding that all of these purposes both practical and religious found ochre had its invaluable uses as an evolutionary social tool.

A diver from Centro Investigador del Sistema Acuífero de Q Roo (CINDAQ A.C.) examines the oldest ochre mine ever found in the Americas, used 10,000-12,000 years ago by the earliest inhabitants of the Western hemisphere to procure the ancient commodity. (CINDAQ.ORG)

Atmospheric Disruption : Archaeological Revelation

"To find evidence that a volcano on [the] other side of the Earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating."
"It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago."
"People have been speculating about this for many years, so it's exciting to be able to provide some answers."
"Many are of the belief that through such climate Earth modelling, we can slow down climate change by replicating volcanic eruptions."
"The sulphur emitted from the volcano creates a layer around the Earth, allowing it to cool and protect it against rapid climate change."
Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada

"The tephra match doesn't get any better."
"It was very clear that the source of the 43 BCE fallout in the ice was the Okmok 11 eruption."
Gill Plunkett, tephra specialist, Queen's University Belfast

Cicero’s death in 42 B.C.E. marks the end of the Roman Republic. Did a volcano hasten its fall?

© The Holbarn Archive/Bridgeman Images

Verification by way of a new study revealing an ancient volcanic event reaching across the planet to impact on the atmosphere over 8,000 kilometres distant from the eruption, came through the auspices of a new study led by Joe McConnell and an international team of scientists and historians whose analytical conclusion was stamped as proof-positive of what historians had suspected. A volcano had been the cause of extreme cold in the Mediterranean region coinciding with the time of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Science, revealing that Mount Okmok's eruption in Alaska in 43 BCE had been the cause of the extreme temperature plunge leading to crop failure, famine, disease, and finally, the fall of the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, which in turn led to the rise of the Roman Empire.

The team of scientists discovered their evidence through analyzing volcanic ash (tephra). Last year the initial discovery was made by Dr. McConnell and Swiss researcher Michael Sigi when they happened to notice a well-preserved layer of tephra in an ice core sample at the Ice Core Laboratory of the Desert Research Institute. Ice core samples from Greenland and Russia drilled in the 1990s were analyzed and evidence found of two eruptions; one in 45 BCE the other in 43 BCE.

Ice core sample to support findings of the Roman Republic demise. Joe McConnell

It was the latter that had been responsible for widespread volcanic fallout over the course of the following two years, found in all the ice core records. Experts from Germany, the U.K., Alaska, Switzerland, the U.S. and Ireland gathered evidence along with Dr. McConnell from across the world which included climate data from tree rings in Scandinavia, the California White Mountains, Austria and a Chinese cave formation, in confirmation of the team's findings.

There were but five volcanic eruptions in the given time frame, according to researchers, and the tephra was compared to samples from all five of the volcanoes, found to best match one of the largest eruptions in the past 2,500 years: Okmok 11 in Alaska. The findings confirm reports from ancient resources, noted classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Oxford:

"In the Mediterranean region, these wet and extremely cold conditions during the agriculturally important spring through autumn seasons probably reduced crop yields and compounded supply problems during the ongoing political upheavals of the period."

Volcanologists had studied Okmok for 70 to 80 years, explained Dr.McConnell, no one knowing it was the volcano that linked to the succession of the Roman Republic by the Roman Empire.

Detailed records of past explosive volcanic eruptions are archived in the Greenland ice sheet and accessed through deep-drilling operations. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen