News from the ancient world
The Stone Age is the long period when people made their tools mainly from stone. Its final stage, the Neolithic, began in south-west Asia around 10,000 BC. It is defined by farming, herding, pottery and permanent villages. Farming spread from there into Europe, Africa and Asia over the following millennia. In Britain and much of Europe the Neolithic ended with the arrival of metal working, around 2500–2000 BC.
Recent finds in our stories fill in how these changes happened. At Karahan Tepe, near Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, archaeologists found an 11,000-year-old 70 cm sculpture of a human seated on a leopard. It sat on a bench inside a stone-paved circular building. In Iran's Zagros Mountains, milk fats in pottery and milk proteins in dental plaque show herders used goat and sheep milk in the seventh millennium BC. Ancient DNA from a megalithic tomb near Bury, north of Paris, shows that a farming population collapsed around 3000 BC. Newcomers with genetic roots in southern France and Iberia replaced it.
Prehistory · Neolithic (not yet dated) · Serengeti National Park, Northern Tanzania, Tanzania
The same Polish-Tanzanian expedition found the fossil skull of an extinct giraffe that may be a new species, and worked at four Middle Stone Age sites.
Prehistory · Neolithic, c. 7000 BC · Diyarbakır province, South-eastern Anatolia, Turkey
The roughly 9,000-year-old work area had a stone-paved floor and six postholes, and Turkey's culture minister says local mining continued for about 2,000 years.
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 · 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 · 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. 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 · 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. 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.
AI & Archaeology · Middle Palaeolithic (Neanderthals) · Orono (University of Maine), Maine, United States
Images showed hairy, stooped figures with few women or children, and about half of ChatGPT's narratives on Neanderthal life clashed with current archaeological research.
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.