Aux origines

A step pyramid dated to 4,600 years ago has been uncovered in southern Egypt, at the ancient settlement of Edfu, by a team led by Gregory Marouard of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. One of seven “provincial” pyramids constructed before the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, the Edfu pyramid was made of local sandstone blocks and clay mortar, had no internal chambers, and may have been dedicated to the royal cult of the king. “The construction itself reflects a certain care and a real expertise in the mastery of stone construction, especially for the adjustment of the most important blocks,” Marouard said at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. But less than 50 years after its construction, offerings were no longer made at the Edfu pyramid. Scholars think that the provincial pyramids were abandoned when Khufu began work on the Great Pyramid.

Two studies show how the legacy of Neanderthals endures 30,000 years after their extinction, finding Neanderthal genes in skin and hair that may have helped humans evolve.

A Newport engineer says his discovery about how the Egyptian pyramids were built threatens to shake up the world of archaeology. Peter James revealed to Sarah Dickins how he thinks the accepted theories about pyramid building are wrong. Cast your mind back to pictures in school books about the building of the ancient pyramids and you probably remember images of hundreds of workers in loincloths heaving massive stones up ramps. Peter...

Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa...

Neanderthals buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France. The bouffia Bonneval at La Chapelle-aux-Saints and its Neandertal burial pit [Credit: Cédric Beauval]Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm that burials took place in western Europe prior to the arrival of modern...

The ancestor of snakes and lizards likely gave birth to live young, rather than laid eggs, and over time species have switched back and forth in their preferred reproductive mode, according to new research.

Some 60,000 years ago, in a small limestone cave in central France, Neandertals dug a grave and laid an elderly member of their clan to rest. ...

Scientists have found evidence for catastrophic oceanographic events associated with climate change and a mass extinction 375 million years ago that devastated tropical marine ecosystems.

DNA from Neanderthals may play a role in the appearance of our hair and skin. Up to 1/5 of their DNA has survived in human genomes.

Lorsqu'on parle de l'âge de pierre, on imagine trop souvent des hommes avec les cheveux et la barbe hirsutes, le front bas, vêtus de peaux de bêtes...

The most complete sequence to date of the Neanderthal genome, using DNA extracted from a woman's toe bone that dates back 50,000 years, reveals a long history of interbreeding among at least four different types of early humans living in Europe and Asia at that time, according to University of California, ...

It sounds like a plot from an Indiana Jones film, but explorers claim to have found ruins hidden deep in a dense and dangerous Amazonian jungle that could solve many of South America's mysteries – and lead to one of the world's most sought-after treasures. The vast structure is a wall, sloping at a 60 degree angle, with a flat area at the top where many of the artefacts have been found [Credit: Telegraph]The multinational team has...

Neanderthals buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France.

Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich deposits in Ethiopia. Horse evolution [Credit: H. Zell]About the size of a small zebra, Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli—named for geologist Giday WoldeGabriel, who earned his PhD at Case Western Reserve in 1987—had three-toed hooves and grazed the...