Call for Stonehenge access ban to prevent damage

Conservationists have called for the closing of Stonehenge, the popular tourist attraction and monument that is several thousand years old, on the Summer and Winter solstice due to the damage caused by visitors on these days. 

The heritage group claim the damage is "only the tip of a large pile of vandalism"  over the last few years [Credit: SWNS Group] 

A report reveals how during Winter Solstice celebrations at the site in December last year, chewing gum was stuck onto the ancient monument, graffiti was sprayed on the ancient stones, attempts were made to light fires on them, and lines of oil were dripped on several stones. 

Things were much worse during the Summer Solstice in June, when volunteers and staff were "left in tears" and had to clean up vomit and feces. The "appalling stench" and the "urine, vomit and feces" were left around the stones after 37,000 revelers descended on the site to watch the sunrise.

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Archaeologists uncover royal Celtic burial site in small French town

France’s National Archaeological Research Institute (Inrap) on Wednesday revealed the discovery of an ancient grave site, probably that of a Celtic prince, which is helping shed light on trade between some of Europe’s earliest civilizations.

Archaeologists uncovered the tomb dating from the fifth century BC in an industrial zone in the small town of Lavau, in France’s Champagne region. Inrap, which routinely scours construction sites in order to find and preserve the country’s archaeological heritage, began excavating at Lavau site in October 2014.

A 40-metre-wide burial mound of the Celtic ruler crowns a larger funeral complex, which archaeologists said preceded the royal’s final resting place, and could have first been built during the Bronze Age.
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Isis attacks on ancient sites erasing history of humanity, says Iraq

The Iraqi antiquities ministry has acknowledged reports of a new attack by Islamic State militants on an ancient Assyrian city north-east of Mosul, reiterated calls for the international community to intervene and condemned the jihadi group for “erasing the history of humanity”.

There have been reports that Isis bulldozed landmarks in the ancient city of Dur Sharrukin, now called Khorsabad. The ministry said it was in keeping with the militant group’s “criminal ideology and persistence in destroying and stealing Iraq’s antiquities”.

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Magnificent Iron Age cauldron discovered in France

Very interesting news from France where archaeologists working for INRAP have found the remains of a magnificent bronze cauldron. It was discovered inside a large burial mound, which dates from the 5th century BC. Most likely the final resting place of a local Iron Age aristocrat, the mound measures approximately 40m in diameter and is located near the small village of Lavau, in northwestern France. 

Although the excavation is still ongoing, the central burial chamber is starting reveal some of its treasures. The most impressive of these to date is a very large bronze cauldron, which is most likely of Greek or Etruscan manufacture. An item of great prestige, the cauldron reflects the very high status of the person interred inside the burial mound. 

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'First human' discovered in Ethiopia

Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what they claim is one of the very first humans.

The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.

The discovery in Ethiopia suggests climate change spurred the transition from tree dweller to upright walker.

The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into "the most important transitions in human evolution".

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“Start Quote

This is the most important transition in human evolution”

Prof Brian VillmoareUniversity of Nevada

Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between an iconic 3.2 million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974, called "Lucy".

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Genomes document ancient mass migration to Europe

DNA analysis has revealed evidence for a massive migration into the heartland of Europe 4,500 years ago.

Data from the genomes of 69 ancient individuals suggest that herders moved en masse from the continent's eastern periphery into Central Europe.

These migrants may be responsible for the expansion of Indo-European languages, which make up the majority of spoken tongues in Europe today.

An international team has published the research in the journal Nature.

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Gallagh Man, a bog body from Co. Galway

In 1821 members of the O’Kelly family made a gruesome discovery as they dug turf near their home at Gallagh, Co. Galway. As they sliced through the dark peat, they suddenly came across the remains of dead body, which had lain there undisturbed for over 2,000 years. Remarkably, this ancient body was in a near perfect state of preservation.  The cold, acidic, oxygen-free conditions of the bog had prevented the remains from decaying and had mummified the human flesh. They had found a bog body.

An enterprising,  if somewhat morbid family, the O’Kellys saw an opportunity to make some money.  They re-buried the bog body and then charged visitors a small fee to excavate and view it. The remains soon became a macabre  tourist attraction and the O’Kellys continued to exhume and re-inter the bog body for the next eight years. Unfortunately, this caused the corpse to deteriorate and explains why it is a relatively poor state of preservation today. In 1829 the Royal Irish Academy finally intervened and purchased the human remains, which were subsequently preserved.

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Ancient Orkney child remains excavated

Archaeologists have been excavating the site of a child's grave on an Orkney island.

The grave - which it is believed could be up to 4,000 years old - was uncovered on Sanday's shoreline by winter storms and high tides.

It is thought the skeleton could be that of a child aged between 10 and 12.

The find was made by Carrie Brown, of See Orkney tours, who called in local archaeologists.

Historic Scotland was alerted, and experts were sent to Sanday on Saturday.

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Ancient shrines used for divination found in Armenia

Three shrines, dating back about 3,300 years, have been discovered within a hilltop fortress at Gegharot, in Armenia, according to an article published by Live Science. 

A shrine excavated at the entrance of a fortress' west terrace in Gegharot in Armenia.  The stone stele like would've been a focal point for rituals practiced there some  3,300 years ago 

[Credit: Professor Adam Smith] 

Local rulers at the time likely used the shrines for divination, a practice aimed at predicting the future, the archaeologists involved in the discovery say. 

Each of the three shrines consists of a single room holding a clay basin filled with ash and ceramic vessels. A wide variety of artifacts were discovered including clay idols with horns, stamp seals, censers used to burn substances and a vast amount of animal bones with markings on them. During divination practices, the rulers and diviners may have burnt some form of substances and drank wine, allowing them to experience “altered” states of mind, the archaeologists say.

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Remains of Bronze Age bowman found in Scotland

Archaeologists have discovered new artefacts suggesting a Highland village resident of 4,500 years ago fought with bow and arrow. 

Holes in the wrist guard could be for leather bindings  [Credit: AOC Archaeology] 

A Bronze Age burial cist in Drumnadrochit, near Inverness, was found last month, and researchers have now found shards of pottery and a wrist guard, for use when shooting using bow and arrow, at the same site. 

Now work is being done to glean as much information about the finds, and it’s hoped they’ll be able to determine the gender of the skeletal remains. 

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Scientists recreate ancient Siberian brain surgery techniques for first time

Experts undertake pioneering tests on skulls to finally understand how doctors carried out remarkable operations more than 2,300 years ago.

General view of the tracks of the trepanation on the male scull from Bike-III. 

Picture: Aleksei Krivoshapkin

More details about the remarkable brain surgery techniques carried out by the earliest Siberians 2,300 years ago have been revealed by scientists.

Neurosurgeons have been working with anthropologists and archaeologists over the past year following the discovery of holes in the skulls of three ancient sets of remains in the Altai Mountains.

Evidence at the time suggested they were examples of trepanation – the oldest form of neurosurgery – with speculation it showed the early nomads had learned the skilful technique from the medical centres of the ancient world, or had uncovered it at the same time as prominent doctors in Greece and the Middle East.

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Face of Siberian tattooed princess finally revealed

Taxidermy expert uses painstaking techniques to create first ever replica of the ice maiden found preserved in the Siberian high altitude plateau.

'The face is very accurate to how Princess Ukok actually looked'
[Credit: The Siberian Times/Marcel Nyffenegger] 

The first replica face has been created of the famous tattooed Siberian princess found mummified and preserved after almost 2,500 years in permafrost. A Swiss expert has used special taxidermy techniques to build an accurate reconstruction of the ice maiden who was uncovered by archaeologists in 1993.

Known as Princess Ukok, after the high altitude plateau on which she was discovered, her body was decorated in the best-preserved, and most elaborate, ancient art ever found. While her discovery was exciting, particularly given how intact her remains were, her face and neck skin had deteriorated, with no real clue as to what she once looked like.

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Big-toothed fossil may be primitive new human

Penghu 1 mandible. Its morphology suggests the presence of a robust, primitive type of hominin so far unrecognised in the Pleistocene Asian fossil record (Y Kaifu)

The first known prehistoric human from Taiwan has been identified and may represent an entirely new species that lived as recently as 10,000 years ago, according to a new study.

The newly discovered big-toothed human, 'Penghu 1', strengthens the growing body of evidence that Homo sapiens was not the only species from our genus living in Europe and Asia between 200,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Anthropologists have learned that Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo floresiensis (aka. the 'Hobbit') lived in Europe and Asia within that time frame.

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Anthropology: Ancient skull from Galilee cave offers clues to the first modern Europeans

Interior of the Manot Cave in Israel's Galilee, where a 55,000-year-old skull sheds new light on human migration patterns.

The discovery of a 55,000-year-old partial skull in Northern Israel provides new insights into the migration of modern humans out of Africa. The rare find is reported in the journal Nature this week by an international team of Israeli, North American and European researchers.

A key event in human evolution was the expansion of modern humans of African origin across Eurasia, replacing all other forms of hominin (humans and their predecessors), around 40,000-60,000 years ago. However, due to the scarcity of human fossils from this period, these ancestors of all present-day non-African modern populations have largely remained a mystery.

Now, researchers describe a partial skull that dates to around 55,000, which was found at Manot Cave in Israel's Western Galilee. 

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Skull discovery suggests location where humans first had sex with Neanderthals

Views of the human skull, with missing jaw, found in western Galilee, northern Isreal and estimated at 55,000 years old. Photograph: Tel Aviv University and University of Vienna

An ancient skull found in a cave in northern Israel has cast light on the migration of modern humans out of Africa and the dawn of humanity’s colonisation of the world.

For most palaeontologists that might be enough for a single fossil, but the braincase has offered much more: a likely location where the first prehistoric trysts resulted in modern humans having sex with their heavy-browed Neanderthal cousins.

Discovered in a cave in western Galilee, the partial skull belonged to an individual, probably a woman, who lived and died in the region about 55,000 years ago, placing modern humans there and then for the first time ever.

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Scan finds new tattoos on 5300-year-old Iceman

A new study has used advanced imaging techniques to identify previously unknown tattoos on the ribcage of the 5300-year old man known as Ötzi, bringing his total number of tattoos to 61.

But first, some context

In September of 1991 hikers in the Ötzal Alps along the border of Austria and Italy happened upon the mummified corpse who became an archaeological celebrity. After Ötzi died at the hands of unknown attackers one late spring or early summer around 3500 BC, his body and belongings were left in a small gully where they were entombed beneath an alpine glacier. A combination of glacial meltwater and extreme cold resulted in natural mummification of his body.

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Maybe Early Humans Weren't The First To Get A Good Grip

An example of a human precision grip — grasping a first metacarpal from the thumb of a specimen of Australopithecus africanus that's thought to be 2 to 3 million years old.

The special tool-wielding power of human hands may go back further in evolutionary history than scientists have thought.

That's according to a new study of hand bones from an early relative of humans calledAustralopithecus africanus. Researchers used a powerful X-ray technique to scan the interior of the bones, and they detected a telltale structure that's associated with a forceful precision grip.

"It's clear evidence that these australopiths were using their hands and using grips that are very consistent with what modern humans did and what our recent relatives like Neanderthals did," says Matthew Skinner, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Kent, in the United Kingdom. He was part of the team that published the new work online Thursday in Science.

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Stone Age artefacts found in Norway's melting glaciers

Around 7,000 years ago the Earth was enjoying a warm climate. Now glaciers and patches of perennial ice in the high mountains of Southern Norway have started to melt again, revealing ancient layers. 

A small knife with a wooden handle, probably from the Iron Age, was one of the  treasures found by archaeologists at the glacier Lendbreen in Oppland County,  Norway during the 2014 summer season [Credit: Oppland County] 

“Actually we should be slowly approaching a new ice age. But in the past 20 years we have witnessed artefacts turning up in summer from increasingly deeper layers of the glaciers,” says Lars Pilø. 

He is an archaeologist working for Oppland County, and has for many years done fieldwork in glaciers and ice patches, finding things our ancestors discarded or lost.

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Stone Age man wasn't necessarily more advanced than the Neanderthals

A multi-purpose bone tool dating from the Neanderthal era has been discovered by University of Montreal researchers, throwing into question our current understanding of the evolution of human behaviour. It was found at an archaeological site in France. "This is the first time a multi-purpose bone tool from this period has been discovered. It proves that Neanderthals were able to understand the mechanical properties of bone and knew how to use it to make tools, abilities usually attributed to our species, Homo sapiens," said Luc Doyon of the university's Department of Anthropology, who participated in the digs. Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia in the Middle Paleolithic between around 250,000 to 28,000 years ago. Homo sapiens is the scientific term for modern man.

The production of bone tools by Neanderthals is open to debate. For much of the twentieth century, prehistoric experts were reluctant to recognize the ability of this species to incorporate materials like bone into their technological know-how and likewise their ability to master the techniques needed to work bone. However, over the past two decades, many clues indicate the use of hard materials from animals by Neanderthals. "Our discovery is an additional indicator of bone work by Neanderthals and helps put into question the linear view of the evolution of human behaviour," Doyon said.

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Recreating the ancient Greek drinking game Kottabos

Years before beer pong was invented, the ancient Greeks played kottabos to pass the time at symposia (drinking parties) where privileged men reclined on cushion couches and played the game that is found illustrated on ancient artworks. Women of fine society didn’t attend symposia but hetaires (courtesans) played the sloppy game where winners received all sorts of prizes, such as sweets and even sexual favours. 

Banqueter playing the kottabos game; kalos inscription in the name of Leagros.  Side A of the neck of an Attic red-figure neck-amphora, ca. 510 BC. From Vulci  [Credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen/WikiCommons] 

Assistant Art History Professor Heather Sharpe of West Chester University in Pennsylvania tried to recreate the game with her students. It wasn’t as easy as it appears “because we do have these illustrations of it, but they only show one part of the game – where individuals are about to flick some dregs at a target.”

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Parasiteneier aus der Keltenzeit in Basel gefunden

Ei eines Spulwurms (Ascaris sp.) mit der typischen gewellten Membran. Foto: IPNA

In Proben aus der früheren keltischen Siedlung «Basel-Gasfabrik» sind Archäologen der Universität Basel bei Laboranalysen auf Eier von Darmparasiten gestossen – und schliessen damit auf eine mangelhafte Hygiene der damaligen Bevölkerung. Mittels spezieller Methoden der Geoarchäologie fanden sie drei verschiedene Parasitenarten, wie sie in der Fachzeitschrift «Journal of Archaeological Science» berichten.

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THE BRONZE AGE SETTLEMENT OF AKROTIRI

THE BRONZE AGE SETTLEMENT OF AKROTIRI

ON THE ISLAND OF SANTORINI

a Lecture by

Michael Duigan

7.00 pm, Friday, 16th January

Activity Space 1, Clore Learning Centre
Museum of London, London Wall EC2Y 5HN

FREE TO EMAS MEMBERS . . . . . . £3:00 NON-MEMBERS

Would you be beautiful in the ancient world?

In ancient Greece the rules of beauty were all important. Things were good for men who were buff and glossy. And for women, fuller-figured redheads were in favour - but they had to contend with an ominous undercurrent, historian Bettany Hughes explains.

A full-lipped, cheek-chiselled man in Ancient Greece knew two things - that his beauty was a blessing (a gift of the gods no less) and that his perfect exterior hid an inner perfection. For the Greeks a beautiful body was considered direct evidence of a beautiful mind. They even had a word for it - kaloskagathos - which meant being gorgeous to look at, and hence being a good person.

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4,000 year old skeleton was likely a 'warrior chief'

A Bronze Age skeleton found buried in West Sussex with one of the earliest bronze daggers in the UK was probably a high-ranking warrior chief who died in combat, experts have said. 

James Kenny, site excavator and planning archaeologist at Chichester District Council,  views the skeleton known as Racton Man at the Novium Museum in Chichester, West Sussex  [Credit: Chichester District Council] 

The virtually-complete skeleton dating back more than 4,000 years was found on farmland in the hamlet of Racton, near Chichester, in 1989. 

Its background has long been a source of intrigue to historians as the skeleton - nicknamed Racton Man - was found with an extremely rare and valuable dagger. 

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Solid gold torc hidden in Celtic coin hoard

A Celtic coin hoard discovered on Jersey has been astounding archaeologists with a series of gold treasure finds. 

The Golden torc is bigger than any other ever found on Jersey  [Credit: © Jersey Heritage] 

For the past two weeks, Jersey Heritage's conservation team have been excavating an area known to contain gold jewellery. Late last week, one end of a solid gold torc was uncovered. 

The find comes after the discovery of two other solid gold torcs - one gold-plated and one of an unknown alloy - along with a silver brooch and a crushed sheet gold tube. But the latest artefact is considerably larger than anything previously unearthed on the island.

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Une nécropole antique dans le quartier périphérique occidental de la ville de Saintes : plusieurs individus entravés, dont un enfant

De septembre à novembre 2014, une équipe d’archéologues de l’Inrap a mené, sur prescription de l’État (Drac Poitou-Charentes), une fouille préventive sur un terrain de 613 m2, dans le cadre de la construction d’une maison individuelle dans le quartier ouest de Saintes. Une première campagne de fouille réalisée en 2013 sur une parcelle contigüe avait mis en évidence la vocation funéraire de cet espace au cours de l’Antiquité. L’opération de cette année a permis la découverte d’une centaine de sépultures. 

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EMAS Easter Study Tour to North Scotland and the Isle of Skye

EMAS Easter Study Tour to North Scotland 

and the Isle of Skye

2 - 8 April 2015

The 2015 EMAS Easter Study Tour is to the North of Scotland, including one day on the Isle of Skye.

We will travel from London Embankment by coach, staying overnight at Carlisle on the 2nd and 7th April.

We shall be based at a hotel in Inverness, which is a very good central point from which to explore the region.

The itinerary includes a wide range of prehistoric and medieval sites, including some of the famous Pictish symbol stones.

Click Here for full details of this study tour...

Limestone 'Venus' 23,000 years old dug up in France

A person points to a 23,000 year-old chalk statue of a woman called the "Venus of Renancourt" which was found at the paleolithic site of Renancourt, France, November 27, 2014

A limestone statuette of a shapely woman some 23,000 years old has been discovered in northern France in what archaeologists Thursday described as an "exceptional" find.

Archaeologists stumbled on the Paleolithic-era sculpture during a dig in the summer in Amiens, the first such find in half a century.

"The discovery of this masterpiece is exceptional and internationally significant," said Nicole Phoyu-Yedid, the head of cultural affairs in the area, on showing the find to the media.

"We were expecting to find classical vestiges such as tooled flint or bones," said archaeologist Clement Paris.

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Secrets of a Celtic princess

The burial chamber of the "Celtic Princess of the Danube" unearthed in 2010 remains one of the most important archeological finds of the past decades in Germany. A new exhibition in Stuttgart allows the public to contemplate the riches found in the 2,600-year old grave. Even in plain view, the princess holds on to many secrets which keep puzzling archeologists.

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Archaeologists working for a mining company have uncovered an Iron Age settlement near Newcastle. 

Workmen at the dig [Credit: Banks Group] 

The five-hectare site at the Brenkley Lane Surface Mine has been excavated by Headland Archaeology on behalf of Banks Mining. 

The settlement, much of which is more than 2,000 years old, features the footprint of four roundhouses within an enclosure. 

Artefacts and a cemetery have also been unearthed at the site.

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People ate mammoth; Dogs got reindeer

Artist's depiction of cave painting of primitive hunt (stock image).

Credit: © Nomad_Soul / Fotolia

Biogeologists have shown how Gravettian people shared their food 30,000 years ago.

Předmostí I is an exceptional prehistoric site located near Brno in the Czech Republic. Around 30,000 years ago it was inhabited by people of the pan-European Gravettian culture, who used the bones of more than 1000 mammoths to build their settlement and to ivory sculptures. Did prehistoric people collect this precious raw material from carcasses -- easy to spot on the big cold steppe -- or were they the direct result of hunting for food? This year-round settlement also yielded a large number of canids remains, some of them with characteristics of Palaeolithic dogs. Were these animals used to help hunt mammoths?

To answer these two questions, Tübingen researcher Hervé Bocherens and his international team carried out an analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in human and animal fossil bones from the site. Working with researchers from Brno and Brussels, the researchers were able to test whether the Gravettian people of Předmostí ate mammoth meat and how the "palaeolithic dogs" fit into this subsistence picture.

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Woolly mammoth skeleton fetches £189,000 at auction

Monty the woolly mammoth skeleton is displayed at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

A rare woolly mammoth skeleton has been sold for £189,000 at auction.

The skeleton, named Monty, is one of the most complete of the species and was bought by a private UK buyer at the sale by Summers Place Auctions in West Sussex.

It stands 3.5 metres tall and is 5.5 metres long (11ft tall by 18ft long), suggesting it may have been a male that weighed up to six tonnes. The skeleton, which is 30,000 to 50,000 years old, was estimated to command a price of between £150,000 and £250,000. It had been in a private eastern European collection for years and was only assembled, including tusks, for the first time when it came to the auction house.

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Stone age axe found with wood handle

Archaeologists in Denmark have uncovered an incredibly rare find: a stone age axe held within its wooden handle.

The 5,500-year-old Neolithic axe was found during archaeological surveys ahead of a multi-billion euro tunnel project.

The axe seems to have been jammed into what was once the seabed, perhaps as part of a ritual offering.

The lack of oxygen in the clay ground helped preserve the wooden handle.

The find was made in Rodbyhavn on the Danish island of Lolland, which is to be connected to the German island of Fehmarn via the tunnel link.

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Climate change was not to blame for the collapse of the Bronze Age

Scientists will have to find alternative explanations for a huge population collapse in Europe at the end of the Bronze Age as researchers prove definitively that climate change - commonly assumed to be responsible - could not have been the culprit.

Archaeologists and environmental scientists from the University of Bradford, University of Leeds, University College Cork, Ireland (UCC), and Queen’s University Belfast have shown that the changes in climate that scientists believed to coincide with the fall in population in fact occurred at least two generations later.

Their results, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that human activity starts to decline after 900BC, and falls rapidly after 800BC, indicating a population collapse. But the climate records show that colder, wetter conditions didn’t occur until around two generations later.

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Were Neanderthals a sub-species of modern humans? New research says no

In an extensive, multi-institution study led by SUNY Downstate Medical Center, researchers have identified new evidence supporting the growing belief that Neanderthals were a distinct species separate from modern humans (Homo sapiens), and not a subspecies of modern humans.

The study looked at the entire nasal complex of Neanderthals and involved researchers with diverse academic backgrounds. Supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the research also indicates that the Neanderthal nasal complex was not adaptively inferior to that of modern humans, and that the Neanderthals' extinction was likely due to competition from modern humans and not an inability of the Neanderthal nose to process a colder and drier climate.

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Solent's Stone Age village 'washing away'

In 1999, a team of divers off the Isle of Wight came across a lobster busily digging out its burrow. To their surprise they found it was kicking out flints from the Stone Age. However, archaeologists now fear artefacts dating back more than 8,000 years are simply being "washed away". 

Diver recovering flint [Credit: Michael Pitts] 

Bouldnor Cliff is a submerged Stone Age settlement off the coast of Yarmouth which was covered in silt as great sheets of ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age. 

It is an important site because the muddy conditions have helped preserve organic materials from the distant past that do not normally survive on dry land. 

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Woolly mammoth could be cloned by South Korean scientists

Scientists are considering an attempt to ressurect the extinct woolly mammoth. But concerns have been raised about the ethics of such a project

The fierce debate over whether to clone a woolly mammoth has been reignited by a fresh attempt to bring the species back from the dead.

South Korean scientists believe the extinct 'Mammuthus' can be brought back to life using the DNA of an extremely well preserved mammoth found in the Siberian snow.

Insung Hwang, a geneticist at Sooam, the South Korean biotech company working on the project, said this week his team think it is an achievable goal, using the fresh blood samples they have recovered.

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Rare pre-historic basket found in North Uist set for imminent excavation

A pre-historic woven reed basket found last week in North Uist is to be excavated by specialist archaeologists within the next few days.

The discovery, made by a local resident, has excited islanders and archaeologists for its rarity and excellent state of preservation.

It was found last week, exposed in sediment on a stretch of beach at Baile Siar after recent gales. Storms frequently expose the remains of ancient settlements in this area.

The basket, about half a metre in length, contains a handful of worked quartz stones, and a handful of diverse animal bones.

Local archaeologist Kate MacDonald of Uist Archaeology spoke of her excitement at the find.

She said: “It’s rare to find well-preserved organic material. It indicates that this basket must have been kept under water from the day that it was placed, or lost, there. Perhaps it was in a freshwater loch until it was covered over by encroaching beach sediment.

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5,000 year old footprints found in Denmark

Archaeologists working on the excavations for the Femern Bælt Tunnel have discovered several well-preserved footprints dating back to the Stone Age. 

The Stone Age impressions were during the excavation of the Femern Bælt tunnel  [Credit: Copenhagen Post] 

The prints were left by fishermen looking to safeguard their weirs (river barriers used for fishing) in a storm 5,000 years ago, announced Lolland-Falster Museum. 

"It is quite surreal to have found human footprints," said archaeologist Terje Stafseth in a press release. 

"We normally find historical clues in the form of human waste, but here we have found an entirely different clue and a first in Danish archaeology: a physical print left behind by a human."

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First Europeans 'weathered Ice Age'

The DNA comes from a man who lived in westernmost Russia some 36,000 years ago

The genetic ancestry of the earliest Europeans survived the ferocious Ice Age that took hold after the continent was initially settled by modern people.

That is the suggestion of a study of DNA from a male hunter who lived in western Russia 36,000 years ago.

His genome is not exactly like those of people who lived in Europe just after the ice sheets melted 10,000 years ago.

But the study suggests the earliest Europeans did contribute their genes to later populations.

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Sound Illusions: Eerie Echoes May Have Inspired Prehistoric Cave Art

Humankind has a long-standing affinity for art. As far back as 40,000 years ago, people were decorating cave walls in Indonesia and in Europe, often with panoramas of thundering herds of wildlife. Now, a growing line of research suggests that the "thundering" part of that description is no coincidence.

Echoes, reverberations and other then-inexplicable auditory illusions may have inspired mankind's earliest artists, according to Steven Waller, a researcher at Rock Art Acoustics in La Mesa, California. In a talk to be presented today (Oct. 28) in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Waller weaves together a theory of ancient art that focuses as much on sound as on sight.

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