Archaeologists are uncovering toolkits and watercraft that do not sit neatly inside the familiar story of slow, linear progress from scattered foragers to settled farmers. Instead, these finds hint at ...

In a cave overlooking the ocean on the southern coast of South Africa, archaeologists discovered thousands of stone tools, created by ancient humans roughly 20,000 years ago. By examining tiny details ...

Researchers have identified what may be the earliest known metal drill from ancient Egypt-and it was hidden in plain sight.

Stone tool analysis of sites in Southeast Asia provided evidence that the area was a technological leader in seafaring. Archaeology supports that 40,000 years ago, the people living in Southeast Asia ...

You may find stick-and-pokes an intense form of tattooing, but the use of needles, safety pins, or other common sharp objects doesn't look quite so rough when you consider that ancient Melanesians ...

Hunter-gatherers living along the shores of the Bay of Biscay crafted hunting tools from the bones of at least five different whale species 20,000 years ago, marking the oldest evidence of ...

The ancestors of the ancient 'hobbits' who once lived on the Indonesian island of Flores were not the only early hominins to cross deep ocean barriers more than a million years ago. A team of ...

Archaeologists in central China have uncovered evidence that early humans were far more inventive than long assumed. Excavations at the Xigou site reveal advanced stone tools, including the earliest ...

Long before there were maps or names for continents, a handful of people stood at the edge of the world. Picture them on a frozen shoreline in what’s now Japan or Russia, staring east across the gray ...