Stone Pages Archaeo News: December 2015 Archives

December 2015 index:

2 December 2015: Early farmers exploited the honeybee 8,500 years ago; Bees have been a resource for humans as far back as the Stone Age, according to research from the University of Bristol. Prehistoric rock art has previously been inferred to...
: Chile claims oldest stone tools in the Americas; Stone tools, cooked animal and plant remains, and fire pits found at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile provide evidence that the earliest known Americans were established more than...
9 December 2015: Revering ancient gods on the roof of the world; Before Buddhism reigned supreme on the Tibetan Plateau, there prevailed a pantheon of gods closely aligned to the stars, moon, sun, planets, and celestial dragons. They were the deities of...
: Earliest modern humans in Southern China; Dr Liu Wu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his international team have announced the discovery of human teeth between 80,000 and 120,000 years old from the newly excavated...
: The cave art of Cosquer; The Cosquer Cave (near Marseille, France) was discovered in 1985 by scuba diver Henri Cosquer, but its paintings were not mentioned until 1991. Formerly several kilometres from the shore in...
10 December 2015: Stonehenge may have been first erected in Wales; It has long been known that the bluestones that form Stonehenge's inner horseshoe came from the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire (Wales), around 140 miles from Salisbury Plain. Now archaeologists have...
: Bronze Age settlement discovered in Orkney; In very poor weather on Monday 7th December, four archaeologists ventured out to examine an eroding cairn on one of the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of Scotland. What...
: 6,000-year-old amputated arms in France suggest trophy-taking; About 6,000 years ago in France some hostiles in an apparent act of warfare and trophy-taking killed a group of adults and children, amputated their arms and buried the limbs...
24 December 2015: Stonehenge's bluestones: moved from Wales by glaciers?; Last week a team of archaeologists and geologists professed to have resolved if and how the 'bluestones' at Stonehenge were excavated and transported from Pembrokeshire by our prehistoric ancestors. The...
: Ancient bone may represent mysterious pre-modern human species; After years of studying a mysterious thigh bone from a cave in China, scientists said they believe it represents an ancient species of human that persisted much longer than previously...
: Dog has been man's best friend for 33,000 years; Dogs became self-domesticated as they slowly evolved from wolves who joined humans in the hunt, according to the first study of dog genomes. And it shows that the first domesticated...
: 'Rattles' found in prehistoric infant's grave; An infant who lived around 4,500 years ago was buried in a birchbark cradle with eight intricately carved figurines that may have been used as rattling toys or charms to...
: Mesolithic flint tools uncovered in England; Archaeolgists have discovered stone and flint tools from the people who hunted deer and foraged for berries up to 11,000 years ago at what we now know as the University...
: The environmental impact of the Neolithic revolution; A new analysis of the fossil record shows that a deep pattern in nature remained the same for 300 million years. Then, 6,000 years ago, the pattern was disrupted -...
: Standing stones are being stolen in southern Italy; Recently a number of thefts have been reported in Apulia, the region forming the 'heel' of Italy. But this time thieves focused their attention to ancient monuments: namely, standing stones....
: Analysis suggests farming not responsible for population boom; Prehistoric human populations of hunter-gatherers in the region that is now Wyoming and Colorado grew at the same rate as farming societies in Europe, according to a new radiocarbon analysis...
31 December 2015: Bronze Age rapier unearthed in South Lanarkshire; A Middle Bronze Age rapier has been discovered by archaeologists from Rathmell Archaeology Ltd at Cloburn Quarry, Lanark (Lanarkshire, Scotland). The discovery was made as the archaeologists were excavating a...
: Prehistoric shepherd's hut found in Wales through Google Earth; Remains of an ancient shepherd's hut dating from the Bronze Age have been discovered in a Blaenau Gwent valley (Wales). The prehistoric hut was discovered on a private farm at...