Barley has been domesticated twice During the so-called Neolithic Revolution around 8500 years ago, barley (Hordeum vulgare) was apparently successfully domesticated twice, independently of each other: in the Middle East - the Fertile Crescent - and in Central Asia.
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Back to the Chimpanzee Stone Age Archaeologists usually study the cultural development of man. But maybe they should expand their perspective a little. Because chimpanzees also leave behind cultural assets that need to be excavated. "
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Following the Guiding Stone They are considered bloodthirsty warriors, but also excellent seafarers. But how did the Vikings find their way on the high seas? Maybe like the bees - with the help of polarized sunlight. A furore Normannorum, libera nos domine – "
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120,000 year old summer camp found During excavations in a lignite opencast mine near Inden-Altdorf, archaeologists recently came across a Palaeolithic tent camp, reported Jürgen Thissen from the Rheinisches Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege. With an age of around 120,000 years, it is "
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Evolution and Revolution Large monumental buildings, complex social systems and the finest craftsmanship - the Karlsruhe exhibition "12,000 years ago in Anatolia - the oldest monuments of mankind ". But what drove the hunter-gatherers to step into a completely new way of life?
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Oldest Semitic inscription discovered? An enigmatic epitaph on the Pyramid of Unas from the 24th century BC may contain the oldest written evidence of a Semitic language. Richard Steiner, an expert in Semitic languages from New York's Yeshiva University, has now identified a previously undecipherable passage of text as a magic formula written in Proto-Canaanite.
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Found a trophy skull of a warlike Andean people During excavations in Cotocotuyoc near the Peruvian city of Cuzco, archaeologists led by Mary Glowacki from the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research discovered a human skull that had apparently been used as a trophy.
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Test shot with flint Stone Age humans were not the club-wielding skull-smashers they were once thought to be - much to the chagrin of archaeologists. Because they now have to struggle to analyze the refined murder methods of yesteryear: What traces does a flint arrowhead leave behind?
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Birthday celebrations in the Rhineland Archaeologists were able to celebrate a milestone birthday this year: 150 years ago, the Neanderthal saw the light of day in the scientific world and founded modern paleoanthropology. But other revelations - about hominid infants, antique stool samples or medieval quality products from Hessian countries - were able to enrich the study of archeology.
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Excavated inscription plate contains Roman curse Excavations in the English city of Leicester have now unearthed an inscribed plate with a curse carved in Latin. The lead tablet from the second or third century AD gives researchers a unique insight into everyday culture, language and religion in what was then Roman England.
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Wonderful Wimmerwood How much chemistry is in the wood of a Stradivarius? Researchers have found telltale marks on the Lombard masters' instruments - marks absent on others. But is that really the secret of the coveted miracle of sound? "
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Made in Germany, Anno 1600 A good idea will prevail when its time has come. Even without being understood, as ceramics from the Middle Ages prove: They owe their excellent properties to the same material mix that is used today in aircraft wings, catalytic converters and modern refractory materials.
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What is age? Are we heading for a "social climate catastrophe"? Many discussions about the aging society are highly emotional. For this reason, experts discussed the topic at a symposium in Heidelberg with a cool head and from different perspectives.
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Another Stone Age child's grave discovered in Austria After the discovery of a newborn double grave in 2005, researchers in Krems-Wachtberg, Lower Austria, came across another baby grave. The child buried in the single grave just one meter away was "
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Genetic foray into Neanderthal The human genome is fully known; the genome of its closest relative, the chimpanzee, is also on the geneticists' table. So it's high time to pounce on extinct family members. The Neanderthals have now allowed a first glimpse into their genetic secrets.
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Neanderthal gene in modern human genome? US American researchers speculate that the Neanderthals could have left traces in the genome of anatomically modern humans: A gene that controls brain growth is said to have spread among modern mankind.
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pumpkin From the revered early testimony of farming culture to animal feed that was underestimated and denigrated as tasteless to he althy gourmet enjoyment: That is the history of the pumpkin in a nutshell. A small dedication. Take a Hokkaido, giant or garden pumpkin, remove the seeds with a spoon and scoop out the rest.
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Early Bronze Age Graves in Syria American archaeologists have unearthed more early Bronze Age tombs in Syria. The scientists working with Glenn Schwartz from Johns Hopkins University had already discovered a tomb here in 2000, proving that there was a highly developed culture in the vicinity of Mesopotamia that was more than 4000 years old.
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Horse husbandry in Copper Age Kazakhstan The horse was probably kept as a farm animal as early as 5,600 years ago in the steppes north of what is now Kazakhstan, according to researchers at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
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Child of Ancients The fossil lay buried in the desert landscape of Dikika in modern-day Ethiopia for more than 3.3 million years, until an international team of researchers discovered the first bone parts. For years, the researchers painstakingly removed the earth from the bones - and thus not only revealed the sensational find of an almost completely preserved child's skeleton, but also new evidence of the physique and life of our earliest ancestors.
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In the elevator to the human The origin of mankind lies in East Africa - that much seems certain. Perhaps this cradle was more of a four-poster bed, and Homo sapiens owes its existence to the forces within the earth. Around 2.5 to 8 million years ago, great things began in East Africa:
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The Ice Age Cousin Exactly 150 years ago, a small valley near Düsseldorf caused a sensation: In August 1856, quarry workers in the Neandertal came across old bones - and thereby triggered a scientific revolution. Mettmann, Sept. 4.
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Old hams under pressure You can read the age on the face of many people. It works similarly with books that come from antique printing presses and are marked by life. Everything wears out - be it the joints of humans and animals or the corners and edges of furniture.
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Were figs the first crops? Fig trees may have been mankind's first real agricultural crop: they were apparently domesticated in the Middle East some 11,400 years ago, about a thousand years earlier than wheat, barley or legumes. With their finds, Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University and Mordechai Kislev and Anat Hartmann of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Ga, Israel, advanced the first known use of the fruit by 5000 years.
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Did Olmec rule large parts of Mexico? In the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, archaeologists have unearthed a worked monolith whose appearance and finish indicate the advanced Olmec culture. This people possibly ruled a far larger area than previously assumed.
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The Soul Dissector On May 6, 1856, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was born. "He opened a door that had been closed until then," Kurt Tucholsky wrote on the occasion of the publication of Sigmund Freud's Collected Works in 1931 - just in time for the 75th birthday of the founder of psychoanalysis.
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Neolithic dental treatments Archaeologists have unearthed Neolithic skulls from 7500 to 9000 years ago in Baluchistan, Pakistan, whose teeth clearly showed signs of drilling. They are therefore probably the oldest references to dental treatments in the population to date.
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4000 year old Egyptian shipwrecks Remains of the oldest ocean-going ships found in the Egyptian desert prove that the Egyptians were already at sea. The wrecks were found last year in man-made caves near Wadi Gawasis, about twenty kilometers south of today's city of Safaga on the Red Sea coast.
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Searched in the crumbs The Neolithic revolution in Central America began with the cultivation of corn. Numerous finds in Mexico bear witness to this. Now there are also 4,000-year-old tracks from the Peruvian Andes - thousands of kilometers to the south.
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Did the first Americans come from France or Japan? The first people to set foot on American soil may have been Europeans, suggests Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution. The American archaeologist contradicts the current theory, according to which the first immigrants from Siberia reached the New World 17,000 to 13,000 years ago via the Bering Strait, which had dried up at the time.
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Activated carbon for tropical soils Agriculture is not sustainable in the tropical regions of the world. Slash and burn and shifting cultivation are eating their way more and more into the rain forests and still do not provide people with an adequate basis for nutrition.
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Earliest evidence of African slaves in America Tombs found in Mexico may be the oldest evidence of African slaves in the Americas. They would confirm that Africans were taken to the New World as slaves as early as the 16th century. The remains come from a former cemetery in the Mexican city of Campeche on the Yucatan Peninsula, which was discovered during construction work in 2000 along with the foundations of a colonial-era church.
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Unusual Inca Precursor Manufactory Discovered During excavations at pre-Columbian sites in Peru, archaeologists discovered the remains of centrally located manufacturing buildings of a hitherto completely unknown type. The buildings were in the first millennium BC in the center of a settlement inhabited by Indians of the early Nazca or Paracas culture.
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A subcontinent of its own India is special - geologically, biologically and culturally. But South Asia could also be something anthropologically unique: immigrants with agricultural experience were copied there, but they were not allowed to contribute to the gene pool.
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Search for clues In 2005, researchers on the traces of our past brought quite a few things to light. And some of it turned out to be wrong. They would have been a sensational advance in anthropology, but now they turn out to be more of an embarrassing misstep:
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Mind matter Genealogy is a difficult field - especially when it comes to the Stone Age roots of modern Europeans. Deep down, are we descendants of hunters, farmers, or both? A new pedigree provides information. Passionate genealogists can tell you a thing or two about it:
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The oldest portrait of a woman from the Maya period discovered Archaeologists have found the oldest known female portrait of the Mayan civilization in Guatemala. The face without a body carved into a stone stele may have been created in the 4th century.
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The power of the idea 12,000 years ago, the first farmers swept aside the ancien régime of hunter-gatherers in the Near East. A few thousand years later, the revolutionary idea spread to Europe. Did the revolutionaries also assert themselves with the revolutionary know-how?
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Homo sapiens made a stop too Humans spread across the earth from Africa - this is the opinion of most anthropologists. But this conquest has not been smooth. Where are the roots of humanity? Probably in Africa. Because according to the generally favored "
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Atomic bomb tests allow dead bodies to be determined Atomic bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s may allow modern-day forensic scientists to age dead people, a Swedish-American team of researchers suggests. Kirsty Spalding from the Karolinska Institute and her colleagues used the radioactive carbon isotope 14C.
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