The Venus figurines were manufactured across Europe for tens of thousands of years during the stone age. How could ideas like this spread before mass movement, mass media and mass hysteria?
It turns out that some cave art in Indonesia is some of the oldest in the world. This also makes it the only known example of non-European palaeolithic cave art. But what does it all mean?
Archaeologists have found an engraved rock that appears to be a map of the surrounding landscape
Language is important to us modern humans so asking why it evolved seems like a silly question. After all, surely we can think of numerous benefits of language that drove its evolution in our ancestors. However, idle speculation is not good enough for science. We need data! Which of the many benefits to language we…
In 1879 Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was conducting an archaeological excavation of the entrance to Altamira Cave, Spain. He’d just returned from a French conference on prehistory and was determined to make some discoveries of his own. Whilst he uncovered some Magdalenian tools (which we now know date to ~15,000 years ago) it was his daughter who made…
I’ve previously discussed how one of the lesser known reasons forHomo sapienssuccess, particularly at higher latitudes, is our ability to divide a large group into several smaller groups to more efficiently gather resources from an area. However, an even lesser known fact is that these groups are themselves part of a large social structure which…
The facts of this post are currently disputed An appreciation of aesthetics seems to be an old trait in hominins. Ironically perhaps it seems to be older than the production of these aesthetics themselves. As early as Australopithecus it seems our ancestors had an appreciation for the look of certain objects since a face-shaped rock…
EvoAnth 