News from the ancient world
Prehistory · c. 11,000 BC to the coming of Rome · 33 stories
New discoveries from prehistory: Göbekli Tepe and the first villages, megaliths and Stonehenge, Bronze Age Europe, the Celts, Scythians and bog bodies.
The Iron Age woman in Senden, southern Germany, wore heavy bronze anklets and a bracelet carved from sapropelite, a dark rock formed from fossilised mud.
Remains of a young woman in a Hallstatt-era burial chamber found in 2009 at Ilmendorf, Bavaria. Photo: Burkhard Mücke, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Prehistory · c. 500 BC · Korskro, Jutland, Denmark
A belt of post pits from around 500 BC blocked the old Drivvej in western Denmark.
Prehistory · c. 3000 BC · Fanshan, Liangzhu, Zhejiang, China
Post holes at Fanshan outline three wooden buildings next to China's highest-ranking Neolithic graves, built about 5,000 years ago.
Prehistory · c. 9000 BC · Karahan Tepe, Şanlıurfa province, Turkey
Turkey's culture minister says the 70 cm figure sat on a bench inside a stone-paved circular building at Karahan Tepe, near Göbekli Tepe.
Prehistory · c. 900–200 BC · Issyk, Almaty Region, Kazakhstan
Genomes from 85 Iron Age steppe nomads show that high-status people were related across cemeteries more than 100 km apart, and nearly half of them were women.
Prehistory · 5th century BC · Casas del Turuñuelo, Guareña, Extremadura, Spain
The 5th-century BC votive cart from Casas del Turuñuelo is the only one known in Iberia, with its closest parallels in Etruscan Italy.
Prehistory · 4th–3rd millennium BC · Atbai Desert, Sudan
Built across the Atbai Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, the excavated examples held people buried with cattle and sheep, in a tradition older than Egypt's pyramids.
Prehistory · 4th millennium BC · Eurasian steppe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia
A Science Advances study argues that people rode, milked and managed horses in the 4th millennium BC, long before the spread of the DOM2 lineage around 2200 BC.
Prehistory · late 5th–3rd millennium BC · Valdelasilla, Illescas, Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Wood and clay burial chambers around a ditched central tomb at Valdelasilla suggest inland Iberia began building monumental tombs as early as its coasts.
Prehistory · Neolithic, built more than 5,000 years ago · Loch Bhorgastail, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, United Kingdom
Archaeologists found a 23-metre wooden platform under a stone island on Lewis and recorded it with a new 3D survey method for very shallow water.
Prehistory · c. 3000 BC · Bury, Oise, Hauts-de-France, France
The farming population buried near Bury, north of Paris, collapsed around 3000 BC and was replaced by newcomers with genetic roots in southern France and Iberia.
Prehistory · 3842–3838 BC · Biel, Canton of Bern, Switzerland
Tree rings from the timbers date the 23-house settlement at Biel to 3842–3838 BC, when a west windstorm and floods wrecked it.
Prehistory · 40th–39th century BC · Stăuceni-'Holm', Botoșani, Botoșani County, Romania
A 350-square-metre building at Stăuceni-'Holm' near Botoșani gave radiocarbon dates of the 40th or 39th century BC, later than its pottery phase is thought to have ended.
Prehistory · c. 3800–3200 BC · Caithness and Orkney, Highland and Orkney, Scotland, United Kingdom
Genetic study of chambered tombs in Caithness and Orkney, used between about 3800 and 3200 BC, finds many men buried together were paternal relatives.
Prehistory · c. 13,000–10,000 BC · Hayonim, el-Wad, Nahal Oren and Eynan-Mallaha, Israel
The 142 unfired beads and pendants predate pottery and farming, and 50 fingerprints show that children, adolescents and adults all made them.
Prehistory · c. 40 BC to AD 40 · Melsonby, North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Two deposits near the Brigantes' stronghold at Stanwick held parts of at least seven dismantled, bent and partly burned vehicles, buried between about 40 BC and AD 40.
Prehistory · c. 9000–8500 BC · Lüchow, Duvenseer Moor, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
CT scans show the wild ox skull was impaled on a pine post, and archaeologists consider it possible that more skull-topped posts once surrounded the grave.
Prehistory · c. 12,000–10,000 BC · Şika Rika 5, near Akıncı, Mardin province, Turkey
Round stone houses at Şika Rika 5 in Mardin province date to about 12,000–10,000 BC, and the team says settled life there may have had deeper local roots than thought.
Prehistory · c. 1300–800 BC · Esperstedt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Most people studied in Central Germany grew up locally, and communities seem to have tried millet for a time before going back to wheat and barley.
Prehistory · 7th millennium BC · Zagros Mountains, Iran
Milk fats in pottery and milk proteins in dental plaque place dairying in western Iran in the seventh millennium BC, according to a Nature Human Behaviour study.
Prehistory · c. 5635–5230 BC · La Marmotta, Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy
Wood analysis of 19 bows from La Marmotta, under Lake Bracciano, shows central Italy's first farmers made them from hornbeam and other local trees.
Prehistory · c. 10,000–5500 BC · Umm Araka Plateau, near Serabit el-Khadim, South Sinai, Egypt
Red animal paintings on the ceiling of a sandstone shelter near Serabit el-Khadim open a sequence of images that runs into the Islamic period.
Prehistory · c. 9290–8925 BC · Heaning Wood Bone Cave, Great Urswick, Cumbria, England, United Kingdom
The child from a Cumbrian cave was aged 2.5 to 3.5, and radiocarbon dates place her burial between 9290 and 8925 BC.
Prehistory · c. 4500–2500 BC · Rhine-Meuse region, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
A Nature study of 112 genomes finds farmer ancestry entered Rhine-Meuse forager groups mainly through incoming women, until steppe newcomers arrived around 2500 BC.
Prehistory · c. 9000 BC · Kızılöz, Samsat, Adıyaman province, Turkey
Researchers think the stone structures near Adıyaman are about 11,000 years old, which would extend the Taş Tepeler building tradition north-west into the Euphrates basin.
Prehistory · c. 1000 BC · Turlojiškė, Kalvarija, Marijampolė County, Lithuania
Radiocarbon dates show at least 11 young men died at about the same time around 3,000 years ago at Turlojiškė, several with injuries consistent with weapons.
Prehistory · 50 BC to AD 50 · Near Thetford, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom
The carnyx, buried between 50 BC and AD 50 with five shield bosses, is described by its conservator as the most complete ever found.
Prehistory · c. 7500 BC · Hora 1, Mount Hora, Northern Region, Malawi
An adult woman was burned on a large, tended pyre some 6,000 years before Africa's next known cremations, and people lit fires on the spot for centuries afterwards.
Prehistory · c. 1200–400 BC · Brusselstown Ring, near Baltinglass, County Wicklow, Ireland
Surveys and test trenches at Brusselstown Ring in County Wicklow point to the largest clustered settlement yet known in prehistoric Britain or Ireland.