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Ice Age Artists Turned the Natural Patterns of Mammoth Tusks into Art 18,000 Years Ago
Around 18,000 years ago, artists living in what is now northern Ukraine carved small human figures from mammoth ivory. A new study suggests that the patterns covering these objects were shaped by the natural structure of the ivory itself. Researchers made the discovery after examining 18 figurines from Mizyn, one of Ukraine’s most important Upper…
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Ancient DNA Reveals Ice Age Humans Disproportionately Targeted Female Woolly Mammoths
Ancient DNA recovered from more than 500 woolly mammoths has revealed an unexpected pattern in the relationship between Ice Age people and one of the largest animals they shared the landscape with: at archaeological sites associated with human activity, female mammoths vastly outnumber males. An international team analyzed genomic data from 521 woolly mammoths from…
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Europe’s First Toolmakers Were Innovators, Not Imitators: 42,000-Year-Old Evidence Reshapes Human Prehistory
A groundbreaking study has revealed that Europe’s earliest modern humans developed their own stone tool technologies 42,000 years ago — independently of the Near East. Researchers from the University of Tübingen and the University of Arizona argue that these early toolmakers were innovators, not imitators, challenging the long-held view that technological advances in Europe were…