Stone Age ‘megastructure’ under Baltic Sea sheds light on strategy used by Palaeolithic hunters over 10,000 years ago

The find represents Europe’s largest human-made megastructure.

Stephanie Piper, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of York • conversation
Feb. 15, 2024 • ~8 min

Valley of lost cities found in the Amazon – technological advances in archaeology are only the beginning of discovery

More discoveries are being made with the use of technology, but that’s just the start of the investigation.

Jay Silverstein, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology , Nottingham Trent University • conversation
Jan. 16, 2024 • ~7 min

Forget ‘Man the Hunter’ – physiological and archaeological evidence rewrites assumptions about a gendered division of labor in prehistoric times

Female bodies have an advantage in endurance ability that means Paleolithic women likely hunted game, not just gathered plants. The story is written in living and ancient human bodies.

Cara Ocobock, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame • conversation
Nov. 17, 2023 • ~12 min

The wildfires that led to mass extinction: a warning from California's Ice Age history – podcast

A changing climate, humans and fire were a deadly combination for the big animals that used to roam southern California. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.

Gemma Ware, Editor and Co-Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation • conversation
Nov. 2, 2023 • ~5 min

A tooth that rewrites history? The discovery challenging what we knew about Neanderthals – podcast

What could the extinction of Neanderthals tell us about our own species? An archaeologist explains in The Conversation Weekly podcast.

Mend Mariwany, Producer, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation • conversation
Oct. 12, 2023 • ~5 min

Discovery of half-a-million-year-old wooden structure shows we're wrong to underestimate our ancient relatives

Experts speculated that very early humans worked wood, but previously didn’t have the evidence.

Shadreck Chirikure, Prof of Archaeological Science & British Academy Global Professor, University of Oxford • conversation
Oct. 6, 2023 • ~7 min

Identifying fire victims through DNA analysis can be challenging − a geneticist explains what forensics is learning from archaeology

Maui officials have asked relatives to provide DNA samples to help identify victims of the Lahaina wildfires. Time and exposure to the elements, however, can make DNA retrieval from remains difficult.

Anne Stone, Professor of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University • conversation
Aug. 18, 2023 • ~9 min

Forensic evidence suggests Paleo-Americans hunted mastodons, mammoths and other megafauna in eastern North America 13,000 years ago

A forensic technique more often used at modern crime scenes identified blood residue from large extinct animals on spearpoints and stone tools used by people who lived in the Carolinas millennia ago.

Christopher R. Moore, Research Professor at the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina • conversation
June 14, 2023 • ~9 min

Earliest evidence of kissing pushed back 1,000 years

Researchers examined whether kissing is an innate human activity or whether its origins are relatively recent.

Troels Pank Arbøll, Assistant Professor in Assyriology, University of Copenhagen • conversation
May 19, 2023 • ~6 min

Humans were using fire in Europe 50,000 years earlier than we thought – new research

Signs of controlled fire use from Spain are at least 50,000 years older than previous evidence.

Clayton Magill, Assistant Professor, School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society, The Lyell Centre, Heriot-Watt University • conversation
May 19, 2023 • ~8 min

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