Cave art hid in plain sight for 26,000 years

Archæologists have described hundreds of rock-art engravings dating back more than 25,000 years in a cave frequently visited by tourists in Catalonia — a region of northeastern Spain that was thought to be almost devoid of palæolithic art. The cave system has been open to the public for decades and became a museum in the 1990s, but these motifs were missed because they “are really difficult to see”, says archæologist and study co-author Míriam Salas-Altès. “You have to play with light from different directions to see the depressions.”

Inca empire lasted longer than previously thought

Radiocarbon dating is transforming our understanding of the lifespan of the Inca empire — which was thought to be just 94 years, on the basis of a Spanish colonial chronicle. Radiocarbon dating has uncertainties, but it’s getting more accurate thanks to advanced statistical models, comparisons with tree-ring records and a better understanding of how carbon-14 isotopes levels vary by location. The new data suggest the Inca empire started earlier and lasted longer, and change archæologists’ vision of how the Inca made their conquests.

Shipwreck might be world’s oldest

Archæologists say that amphorae and other artefacts discovered off the Mediterranean coast of Turkey are from the oldest shipwreck ever found. The team says that, on the basis of the pottery, the ship sailed during the Early Bronze Age, between 4,700 and 4,400 years ago. And the pots still had some goo inside.

Skull fractures suggest servants of Egypt’s ancient kings were sacrificed

A re-analysis of evidence from ancient tombs bolsters a theory that the servants of early Egyptian kings were killed when their monarch died. Egyptologist Flinders Petrie proposed the idea in the 1920s, after excavating the burial sites of several rulers and finding other bodies in surrounding graves. But at the time, he could find no evidence of injury on the remains. Using modern techniques, forensic archæologist Roselyn Campbell has identified signs of potentially lethal trauma on 18 skulls taken from the site, which appear to have been caused by a flat, wide object.

Lead detection reveals text in burned scrolls

Researchers have made their own burned, rolled-up papyri and showed that they can decipher the text by detecting the element lead in the ink. Using X-ray computed tomography (CT) and X-ray fluorescence to spot lead, the team was able to virtually unroll the scrolls and clearly read the text within. “The letters lit up like a Christmas tree,” says retired inventor and study co-author Douglas Seiler. This technique could help researchers read thousands of ancient scrolls recovered from the Roman town of Herculaneum, which were charred by the eruption of Vesuvius — if they contain ink.

New evidence for hidden chambers beyond Tutankhamun’s tomb

Researchers say they have new found evidence for the tantalizing, but controversial, idea that there are as-yet-unexplored chambers in Tutankhamun’s tomb that might hold the remains of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. The team conducted a range of geophysical surveys, including the first use of gravitational techniques to probe the density of ground around the site, and say they strongly support the existence of a “hidden complex” of corridors and rooms predating the entombment of Tutankhamun.

Fossil trove sheds new light on Denisovans

A collection of fossils and artefacts recovered from an abandoned quarry in southwestern China has given researchers an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of ancient humans called Denisovans. The items suggest that Denisovans — who lived at the site for at least 30,000 years — crafted bone tools similar to those of the Neanderthals, and were skilled hunters of animals such as deer. “This site’s the full package,” says archaeologist Ben Marwick. “It’s the first site that we have with a long, rich sequence that’s uniquely associated with Denisovans.”

Did Neanderthals roam as far as Arabia?

An analysis of stone tools thought to have been crafted by Neanderthals suggests that the ancient humans might have roamed as far south as the Arabian Peninsula around 55,000 years ago. The artefacts come from a site beside an ancient lake in what is now Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert. The characteristics of the tools, and efforts to date the sand of the site, suggest that Neanderthals might have lived there just as the area was shifting from desert to a wetter environment — which could have drawn animals, and the humans who hunted them, further south.

Humanity spoke thousands of languages at the dawn of farming — now many of them are lost

Humanity might have spoken tens of thousands of languages between 3,000 and 1,000 years ago, which have dwindled down to the around 7,500 unique languages used today. Researchers estimate that the number of spoken languages ballooned starting at the end of the last glacial period, as humans moved from hunter-gatherer groups into agricultural communities. After peaking around 2,000 years ago, the number began to fall again, possibly because of the spread of powerful, monolingual cultural groups through conquest and trade.

Maya glyph names maths powerhouse

A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala has revealed the name of an important Maya mathematician-astronomer. Sak Tahn Waax, or ‘White-Chested Fox’, was a scholar comparable with mathematical giants of the past, researchers suggest. The calculations inscribed in this set of hieroglyphs expresses the relationships between several calendar systems in a playful manner that hasn’t been seen before in Mayan texts, says archaeologist and study co-author Heather Hurst. “I think it was a mathematical flex,” she says.

Mysterious mortuary processing in Iron Age

The remains of an adult buried some 2,000 years ago in what is now Scotland show signs that her brain might have been removed and her bones modified as tools, before her skeleton was carefully reassembled and interred. The finding adds to the mystery of how Iron Age Britons treated their dead: few human remains have survived from that period.

Stonehenge ‘altar’ carried on glacier

A massive slab at the center of Stonehenge somehow travelled 700 kilometres from its origin in northeast Scotland to its current home in the south of England. A model of Neolithic ice flows suggests a glacier might have carried the six-tonne monolith as far as Doggerland — an area that is now beneath the North Sea. Then, roughly 3,000 years before it came to Stonehenge, people may have saved the rock from rising sea levels. “What is exciting about these findings is that they could imply that the people of Doggerland attached cultural significance to the Altar Stone long before it was incorporated into Stonehenge,” says glaciologist and study co-author Remy Veness.

Human evolution sped up after farming

An analysis of DNA evidence from more than 15,000 ancient humans has revealed that human evolution has accelerated over the past 10,000 years. Researchers identified almost 500 gene variants that evolved through natural selection in ancient European and Middle-Eastern people after the dawn of agriculture. Many of those variants are linked to the resistance to diseases, such as tuberculosis. Accelerated evolution could reflect the intensification of lifestyle changes that started in the Neolithic period, such as new foods and pathogens, says population geneticist David Reich.

Genetic record for domestic dogs pushed back by 5,000 years

Researchers have identified the earliest known dog genomes, which push the genetic record for dogs back by more than 5,000 years. They recovered these genomes from remains of between 14,000 and 16,000 years old found at archaeological sites that span Europe and the Middle East. The team also identified an early domestic dog population (Canis lupus familiaris) that spanned Western Eurasia and was kept by diverse human hunter-gatherer groups. The findings show that dogs were exported and exchanged by various human groups, underlying dogs’ importance to early communities with different ways of living.

Debate explodes over age of key South American archæological site

An archæological site that overturned the history of humans in South America might just do it again. Radiocarbon dating pegged artefacts from Monte Verde, in southern Chile, at 14,500 years old — suggesting that people arrived along the continent’s coast, before the ‘Clovis people’ travelled through an ice-free corridor in North America. Not so, says a new study: those artefacts were mis-dated and originated no more than 8,200 years ago.

40,000-year-old German artefacts may display written language precursor

A series of notches carved on a piece of mammoth ivory roughly 40,000 years ago could be an early ancestor of cuneiform, one of the oldest-known forms of written language. “These sign sequences go beyond decoration that was aesthetically pleasing to particular individuals,” says linguist Christian Bentz. He co-authored a new study of the object and more than 200 other Stone Age artefacts that bear these signs. The study found statistical patterns in the Stone-Age marks that are similar to early proto-cuneform — but quite different to the information-dense writing systems of today.

Hunter-gatherers took refuge in European 'water world' for millennia

Ancient genomic data has revealed that inhabitants of the Rhine-Meuse river delta — wetland and coastal areas of modern-day Netherlands, Belgium and western Germany — maintained high levels of hunter-gatherer genetic ancestry for thousands of years after successive migrations from the east transformed most of Europe into farming and animal-herding communities. This group’s eventual mix with communities of people with ancestry from the central Eurasian steppe catalysed the expansion of Bell Beaker culture, which was accompanied by major shifts in the genetic make-up of both Britain and the Rhine–Meuse delta.

Rules of mysterious ancient Roman board game decoded by AI

Researchers say they have figured out the rules of an ancient Roman board game. The team simulated thousands of turns based on more than 100 games that could be played on the linked lines inscribed on a stone found in the Roman settlement of Coriovallum, now Heerlen in the Netherlands. One set of rules best matched the wear-and-tear on the stone: a blocking game they’ve nicknamed Ludus Coriovalli (‘the game from Coriovallum’).

430,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Are the Oldest Ever Found

Wooden objects carrying the marks of carving and use could be the oldest wooden tools ever found. Researchers dated the artefacts, found in what is now Greece, to 430,000 years ago — and suggest they might have been made by early Neanderthals or their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. A separate study describes 480,000-old flint-knapping tools made from antler and elephant bone, from what is now the United Kingdom. Organic artefacts are a rare find because they’re less likely to endure than stone, and show how “bone and wood were probably more valuable for our ancient ancestors,” says archaeologist Thomas Terberger. “Imagine how many tools you can make from a single large bone of an elephant.”

Oldest cave painting of red claw hand could rewrite human creativity timeline

The outline of a hand discovered in an Indonesian cave has been dated to at least 67,800 years ago — the oldest known example of cave art in the world. The researchers who discovered the painting suggest that it was made using a stencil that was altered to give the shape a claw-like appearance. The finding provides circumstantial backing for a controversial theory that early humans had arrived in Sahul — the landmass that once encompassed modern-day Australia and New Guinea — by 65,000 years ago, around 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.