Stone Pages Archaeo News: December 2020 Archives

December 2020 index:

26 December 2020: Vandalism at Stoney Littleton long barrow; Vandals who daubed red handprints on a Neolithic monument in England may have damaged it permanently, heritage experts fear. The 5,000 year-old Stoney Littleton Long Barrow in Wellow near Bath...
: New evidence pushes back by 30,000 years first use of fire in India; About 80 km from Prayagraj, in the Belan river valley (India), scientists found evidence of the first known controlled use of fire in the Country. "Before this, the first reported...
: Stone Age humans chose to voyage to remote Japanese islands; Stone Age humans crossed the sea from Taiwan to the Ryukyu islands of south-west Japan tens of thousands of years ago - and it looks like they did so deliberately,...
: Stones fuel debate over when America's first settlers arrived; In 2017, scientists reported that around 130,000 years ago, an unidentified Homo species used stone tools to break apart a mastodon's bones near what is now San Diego (California, USA)....
: Stonehenge tunnel: protest staged at monument; Protesters have taken part in a 'mass trespass' at Stonehenge to oppose plans to dig a tunnel near the monument. The group, made up of local residents, ecologists, activists, archaeologists...
: China's earliest carved artwork discovered; Archaeologists working at the open-air Lingjing site, a site in central China's Henan Province, unearthed a tiny 13,500-year-old bird sculpture crafted from burned bone. The miniature bird sculpture it is...
: New evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead; The question of ritual burial by non-sapiens humans is a divisive topic: evidence is scanty, possibly partly because if bury they did, it was in shallow graves. Now an international...
: Prehistoric visitor attraction planned for York; A new prehistoric visitor attraction is planned for York (North Yorkshire, England) - including a replica of Stonehenge; the venue would have areas based on the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age...
: Ancient humans planted 'forest islands' in Amazonia's Grasslands; Every spring, rains and snowmelt swamp vast grasslands that stretch between the Andes Mountains and Amazon rainforest in northern Bolivia, but thousands of tree-covered mounds stand solid, several feet above...
: Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating; Evidence from bones found in a cave called Sima de los Huesos (the pit of bones) at Atapuerca, near Burgos in northern Spain, suggests that our hominid predecessors may have...
: Prehistoric european hunters carved human bones into weapons; Doggerland was the ground that once connected Britain and mainland Europe and for more than 8,000 years, distinctive weapons-slender, saw-toothed bone points - made by the land's last inhabitants rested...
: Traces of a massive tsunami at an archeological site in Israel; Underwater excavation, borehole drilling, and modelling suggests a massive paleo-tsunami struck near the ancient settlement of Tel Dor (Israel) between 9,910 to 9,290 years ago, according to a new study...
: Some tasks specialised according to gender almost 4,000 years ago; A study of the dental wear of 106 individuals buried in the Castellon Alto archaeological site around 140 kilometres northeast of Granada, Spain, found that only women used their front...
: Iron Age man first known case of tuberculosis in Britain; Archaeological excavations at Tarrant Hinton, Dorset, between 1967 and 1985 uncovered a variety of evidence for settlement between the Iron Age and the Roman period. Possibly the most significant discovery...
: Earliest known identical twins found in Upper Palaeolithic grave; DNA analysis of a grave from the Upper Palaeolithic containing the remains of two newborn babies has reveals they were identical twins - the earliest confirmed monozygotic twins. Uncovered at...
: King David era fortified complex discovered on Golan Heights; Excavations ahead of the construction of a new neighborhood in the southern Golan Heights exposed an Iron Age fortified complex from the time of King David (11th to 10th centuries...
: Scottish lost stone circle reconstructed in 3-D; The Na Dromannan stone circle on the Isle of Lewis off the northwest coast of Scotland can be seen for the first time in more than 4,000 years after stones...
: 8,400-year-old dog buried with his master; Months of excavation in Sweden has revealed the remains of a long-vanished breed of dog buried more than 8,400 years ago beside his master. Unearthed in September about 125 kilometres...
27 December 2020: Remains of female hunter challenge ancient gender roles; The remains of a female hunter were found in 2018 during archaeological excavations at a high-altitude site called Wilamaya Patjxa in Peru. The young woman who lived around 9,000 years...
: Cork standing stone reinstated by farmer and druids; The Irish National Monuments Service confirmed it had begun an investigation of a west Cork farmer who reinstated a fallen Bronze Age standing stone with the help of two druids....
: Prehistoric discoveries in County Sligo; A stone pendant found by 15-year-old Darragh McDaniel while helping his father dig a drain on their property in Drumcliffe, County Sligo (Ireland), may be a small stone tool made...
: Ancient cave art inspired by hallucinogens; New research has uncovered evidence linking prehistoric cave paintings in California and a poisonous flower known for its hallucinogenic properties. According to researchers from the University of Central Lancashire and...
28 December 2020: How to mend a giant menhir; Struck by lightning in 1947, the giant menhir of Kerzerho in Erdeven (Morbihan, France), which threatened to split into several blocks, has been consolidated in an unprecedented rescue operation. The...