Philippa Kaur

The Roman road network mapped by Itiner-eItiner-e
A comprehensive new map of Roman roads has boosted the known size of the empire’s land transport network by almost 60 per cent – and it is available for anyone to explore online.
The project, called Itiner-e, brings together topographic mapping, satellite imagery and centuries of historical records in what its creators say is the first open dataset of its kind.
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“It emerged from enormous frustration,” says Tom Brughmans at Aarhus University in Denmark. “It’s like the most enigmatic topic in Roman archaeology. We even have proverbs that say, ‘All roads lead to Rome’. So why on Earth can’t I download all the Roman roads? Where are they?”
Brughmans and his colleagues incorporated evidence from a large set of studies and traced more realistic paths for previously known routes to produce a map of the road network as it might have looked around AD 150. They also gave the placement of each stretch of road a confidence rating, based on the quality of the source.
According to their data, the total length of the road network at this time was around 299,171 kilometres – much more than the previous estimate of 188,555 kilometres given by the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World.

The dataset also reveals that, although we have strong evidence for the starts and ends of many roads, only 2.8 per cent of the network’s length can be located precisely – within 50 metres in mountains and 200 metres on flat land.
The Roman roads through mountain passes leading to Delphi in ancient GreeceItiner-e
For Brughmans, this reflects how difficult it can be to get funding to excavate entire Roman roads, which means a lot of work simply hasn’t been done. Major roads have also been built over many times throughout history, so it can be difficult to uncover the original path.
Although Roman roads are famous for being straight, it is a myth that they always were, says Catherine Fletcher at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Straight wasn’t always cheap or practical, especially through mountainous terrain,” she says. “Often, where there was a pre-existing route in place, the Romans would adapt it rather than build anew.”

Improved knowledge of the Roman road network can potentially inform our understanding of many highly impactful events in European history. The emergence of early Christianity, mass migration and continent-wide pandemics are all phenomena that were influenced by the Roman road system, says Brughmans.
Despite their importance, roads often get overlooked because they aren’t as glamorous as amphitheatres and gladiators, says Fletcher. “[It’s like that] famous scene in Monty Python,” she says, “where they’re talking about what the Romans did for us, and they go, ‘And the roads… Well, obviously the roads! The roads go without saying’.”

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The skull now identified as Béla of MacsóBorbély Noémi/Tamás Hajdu et al. 2025
More than 700 years ago, a Hungarian duke was murdered in a brutal and very bloody head-on attack in a convent. Now, researchers studying an ancient skeleton excavated in Budapest have confirmed it belonged to the duke and revealed shocking details of his assassination.
“There were so many more serious injuries than would be necessary to kill somebody,” says Martin Trautmann at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Archaeologists uncovered the man’s remains — which had been buried in dismembered pieces in the convent floor — during a 1915 excavation of a Dominican convent on Margaret Island, in the middle of the river Danube in Budapest. At the time, the researchers suspected it might be the body of 29-year-old Béla of Macsó, the grandson of King Béla IV, who had built the convent.
Historical records from 13th-century Austria indicate the young duke was assassinated on the island over a feud for the Hungarian throne in November 1272. The bones showed multiple signs of trauma, but the scientists lacked the tools and technology to confirm their suspicions.
The skeleton was apparently lost during the second world war, says Tamás Hajdu at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, but it resurfaced in 2018 in a wooden box at the Hungarian Museum of Natural History. Its re-discovery prompted investigations with modern techniques, including a facial reconstruction last year.

The skeleton had nine injuries to the head and face and another 17 to the rest of the body, all occurring at the time of death, says Hajdu. To determine how the attack unfolded, Trautmann and his colleagues marked an educational model skeleton with the same cuts and played out various scenarios. “It was step by step, injury by injury, like a stop-motion movie,” he says.
The injuries suggested two or three people accosted the man from the front and the sides, and he used his arms to block the blows, Trautmann says. “They were flanking the victim, so there was no easy way to escape.”
Eventually he fell and cracked open his skull, but continued to fight with his left leg, lying on his side, until someone stabbed though his spinal column. His attackers then inflicted multiple injuries to the head and face.
Those might have been fatal, but it is also possible the man bled to death. “There was a lot of bleeding,” Trautmann says.
Radiocarbon dating placed the death in the mid-13th century. Dental plaque analyses revealed a luxurious diet that included cooked wheat semolina and baked wheat bread.
DNA analyses identified the man as a fourth-generation descendant of King Béla III of Hungary and an eighth-generation relative of a 13th-century regional Russian prince, Dmitry Alexandrovich – aligning with historical records about the duke’s family history.

Additional genetic analyses showed Eastern Mediterranean origins on the individual’s mother’s side and Scandinavian origins on the father’s side — consistent with historical knowledge about the duke’s ancestry — and that he probably had dark skin, dark curly hair and light brown eyes.
The study sheds “convincing” light on a poorly understood historical event that has few recorded details, says Tamás Kádár, an independent medieval historian in Budapest. With no firsthand witnesses, the Austrian text mainly states the duke “was struck down in miserable slaughter on an island near Buda” with his limbs “cut into pieces” that were gathered by his sister and aunt.
The new scientific work attests to the passion of the murder, says Kádár, who wrote a biography of Béla of Macsó. “The fact that his body was hacked apart, and perhaps even further mutilated after death, undoubtedly indicates great hostility and hatred,” he says. “The primary aim was to kill Béla, to eliminate him. The main goal was his prompt and certain death.”

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Historical accounts say Ingólfr Arnarson was the first Norse settler of Iceland, arriving in the 870s, but this may not be truePublic domain
Norse people may have lived in Iceland almost 70 years earlier than historians thought, and their arrival might not have been the environmental disaster it is often portrayed as.
Historical accounts suggest that people first settled in Iceland in the 870s. This early migration is often depicted as an ecological disaster driven by Viking raiders or Norse settlers as they cleared the island’s forests for fuel, building material and fields. Forests now cover just 2 per cent of the country.

Firm evidence for when the first settlers arrived has been hard to come by. Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient wooden longhouse near the fjord of Stöðvarfjörður in the east of Iceland dating to around AD 874, underneath which is an older longhouse thought to be a summer settlement built in the 800s rather than a permanent home, but this finding hasn’t yet been reported in a scientific paper.
Now, Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues have examined environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from two sediment cores drilled at Lake Tjörnin in central Reykjavík, one of Iceland’s earliest and longest-occupied settlements, to see which species were present when. By examining layers of volcanic ash and using radiocarbon dating and plutonium isotope analysis, the researchers put together a timeline spanning from about AD 200 to the modern day, aligned with known historical events.
One key marker they used is known as the Landnám tephra layer, the ash and fragments left over from a volcanic eruption in about AD 877. Most evidence of human occupation in Iceland sits above this layer, so it was laid down after the eruption.

“Signs below the tephra are like the smoking gun that there was earlier human activity,” says Chris Callow at the University of Birmingham, UK, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Willerslev and his colleagues suggest people arrived almost 70 years before that mark: about AD 810. That is because at this point, they saw an increase in a compound known as levoglucosan, an indicator of biomass burning, as well as a rise in viruses associated with sewage.
“If it had been 850, I wouldn’t have been so surprised, but 810 is early for Viking expansion in the North Atlantic,” says Callow. “Overall, this is a nice confirmation of what we might have suspected, but it’s still quite controversial to have a date as early as 810.”
Putting together this comprehensive environmental history of the region is phenomenal, but the evidence for such an early date isn’t conclusive, says Kathryn Catlin at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. “When it comes to sewage biomarkers, there is a little bump around 800 and then nothing until 1900. Where are all the indicators of humans in sewage biomarkers and the intervening time period?” she says. And although biomass burning can indicate the presence of people, fires can also be caused by natural sources like lightning, she adds.
Willerslev and his colleagues, who declined to speak to New Scientist, also found that the arrival of settlers coincided with an increase in local biodiversity. The DNA record suggests they brought grazing livestock with them, grew hay meadows and practised small-scale barley cultivation for brewing beer.

Contrary to the conventional view of rapid deforestation, eDNA from pollen revealed that birch and willow trees expanded during the settlement period. For example, birch pollen grains increased fivefold between AD 900 and 1200, which the researchers think could have been down to deliberate management, keeping livestock away from trees to ensure settlers continued to have easy access to wood for timber and fuel.
“This is the nail in the coffin for that old just-so story of the Vikings getting to Iceland and then, suddenly, ‘oh no, the environment is destroyed’,” says Catlin.
Noticeable numbers of sheep, cattle, pigs and horses don’t appear until several decades after the initial settlement, which Willerslev and his colleagues suggest is because it would have taken about 20 years to build big enough herds to be detectable in the eDNA record.
Callow suggests an alternative reason: it could be that the first people didn’t bring many animals with them because they were coming just for the summer season in search of walrus ivory. “They could have been killing a few walruses and then going home again,” he says.
The eDNA suggests that pronounced loss of biodiversity, including birch and willow trees, didn’t occur until after 1200. Willerslev and his colleagues suggest this was associated not with the presence of settlers, but with climate cooling related to the Little Ice Age – a period of colder conditions from about 1250 to 1860 – plus volcanic eruptions and storm surges.

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Becki Gill
It is fair to say that the family tree of ancient humans is not written in stone. Just take the case of the Denisovans, the enigmatic ancient humans who were, until recently, known only from a few fragments of bone. In June, molecular evidence indicated that a mystery skull from China was actually a Denisovan. These ancient people suddenly had a face.
Or did they? Anthropologist Christopher Bae at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa is one of those who disagrees with the conclusions. He still feels the skull in question belongs where it was previously, that is, attributed to a species called Homo longi. In fact, Bae is at the heart of the tumultous debates about what our family tree ought to look like. In the past five years, he and his colleagues have suggested we add two ancient human species into the mix: Homo bodoensis and Homo juluensis.
Both suggestions caused controversy, partly because Bae and his colleagues wilfully broke the formal rules that govern how species are traditionally named. He is unrepentant, however, arguing that the rules themselves have become fossilised relics that make no allowance for removing species names that are now considered offensive, or for ensuring that names are easy for everyone to pronounce. He spoke to New Scientist about all this – and how his interest in human evolution was sparked by the mysteries in his own origin story.

Michael Marshall: What was it that first drew you into studying ancient humans?
Christopher Bae: The basic goal of palaeoanthropology is to reconstruct the past, even without all of the pieces of the puzzle. Being originally adopted, where the first year of my life is a complete blank, the field resonated with me. In my own case, I was born in Korea, then I was abandoned when I was about a year old, and I lived in an orphanage for about six months before being adopted by an American family.

When I was an undergraduate student, I was able to go to Korea for the first time on an exchange programme, and during that trip I went to the adoption agency where I came from. I asked the manager whether there was any chance that I could actually find my biological parents. They said, to be honest, your Korean name is not real and your date of birth is not real. You shouldn’t even bother trying. There’s absolutely no chance. I kind of gave up at that time.
So I was interested in my own roots and I couldn’t figure out how to find them. But then I took an introduction to biological anthropology course, and I found a field where I could actually explore origins. It’s kind of like building my own origins.
Two species that often pop up in discussions about our direct ancestors are Homo heidelbergensis and Homo rhodesiensis. But in 2021, you were part of a team that proposed replacing them both with a new species named H. bodoensis. Why?
My colleague, Mirjana Roksandic [at the University of Winnipeg, Canada], and I organised a session at a 2019 anthropology conference focused on the H. heidelbergensis question. There was general agreement that H. heidelbergensis is what we call a “wastebasket taxon” because anything from the Chibanian Age [775,000 to 130,000 years ago] that doesn’t clearly belong to Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens tended to be assigned to it.

So what happens to the H. heidelbergensis fossils that do constitute a distinct group of hominins, do they get a new name?
If we get rid of H. heidelbergensis, the next name, based on the rules of priority, is H. rhodesiensis. But that species was named after Northern Rhodesia, the old name of present-day Zambia, which itself was named after Cecil Rhodes. Now, do we really want to name the potential ancestor of modern humans after a known colonialist like Rhodes? So, when we were putting that paper together, we said, you know what, we’ll come up with a new name, and we’ll name it after Bodo [a 600,000-year-old skull from a site in Ethiopia].

What was the reaction to your paper?
When it went out for review, half the reviewers said, this has got to be published because we have to have this discussion out there. The other half of the reviewers said, this is ultimate garbage, it should not be published. Not surprisingly, there was a back-and-forth as soon as the paper came out.
Is there any emerging consensus yet?
We had a workshop in 2023 in Novi Sad in Serbia. We had about 16 or 17 palaeoanthropologists working on this topic. We all agreed that H. heidelbergensis has become a wastebasket taxon. The other major conclusion was that H. rhodesiensis should be removed from circulation because of Rhodes’s colonial history. In fact, only one of the palaeoanthropologists in attendance thought rhodesiensis was not problematic.
The Xujiayao site in northern ChinaChristopher J Bae
It is the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) that ultimately judges cases like this. Has it responded to your H. bodoensis argument?
The ICZN published a paper in the Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society in 2023, a pre-emptive strike, and it said: We’re not going to remove any names from circulation where there may be ethical issues. We actually ended up going down a rabbit hole as a result of this, and challenging the ICZN. [Editor’s note: The ICZN’s 2023 statement recognised that scientific names might cause offence, but said it is outside the scope of the commission to assess the morality of persons honoured in eponyms. It also emphasised the importance of zoologists following its code of ethics when naming new species.]
Are species names really important enough to fight over?
Yes and no. For instance, there’s a beetle from a few caves in Slovenia. In the 1930s, an Austrian entomologist [Oskar Scheibel] said, I’m going to name this as a new species, after Adolf Hitler. Nowadays, the beetle [Anophthalmus hitleri] is a hot product as a keepsake. On the black market, people are selling them because a lot of neo-Nazis want to collect them. It’s eventually going to lead to the extinction of these poor innocent beetles, who haven’t done anything to bother anybody.
What’s the alternative?
I would say, talk with your local collaborators and find a species name that would be acceptable for them, because they’re the ones who are going to have to deal with it and live with it on a regular basis. I would hope that we stop using people’s names to name species or we’ll continue to run into problems down the road. I think that’s the direction that we’re going to go – and change is in the air. The ICZN is trying to change how they can attract members from the Global South and give them more of a voice. And some other major associations such as the American Ornithological Society have recently voted to remove egregious species names from the biological organisms they study.

You fell foul of the ICZN rulebook again last year, regarding some ancient human fossils from a site in northern China called Xujiayao. What’s the story there?
Researchers found a bunch of different hominin fossils at that site in the 1970s representing more than 10 individuals, but the fossils were all separate pieces. My colleagues and I, including Xiujie Wu [at the Chinese Academy of Sciences], worked on these fossils. Wu actually did a virtual reconstruction of the posterior part of one skull. And when we looked at it, we said, wow, this looks really, really different from other similar-aged hominins.
What sort of differences are we talking about?
Size and shape differences. Our average cranial capacity is about 1300 to 1500 cubic centimetres. These guys have a cranial capacity between 1700 cm³ and 1800 cm³ – so much, much larger than your average human. Furthermore, based on a shape analysis, it was clear that the Xujiayao fossils – and fossils from a nearby site named Xuchang – consistently fell away from the other fossils and grouped together. That’s what led us to naming a new species.
Bae examines a human fossil found in Serbia that may belong to Homo bodoensisChristopher J. Bae
But the name you chose was controversial. Can you explain why?
Where species names actually come from is quite fascinating. In this case, we could have named it after Xujiayao – which is the type site – and then added “-ensis” at the end, making it Homo xujiayaoensis. This follows the ICZN rules.
And in Latin, that means “Homo belonging to Xujiayao”. But you didn’t like that option?
The problem is, only people who speak Chinese will be able to pronounce it, let alone spell it correctly. Names actually mean something. You need to be able to pronounce and spell them. So we came up with “julu”, which literally means “big head”.
If we follow the ICZN rules, though, then we are required to add an “i” at the end, making “Homo jului”. However, in our view, again, people would not be pronouncing it correctly unless they understood Chinese. Some people might say “julu-eye”, others would say “julu-ee”. This is why we chose Homo juluensis.
How does your new species relate to the mysterious Denisovan humans, who lived in what is now East Asia during the Stone Age?
If you look at the second molars from the Denisova cave in Siberia and the second molars from Xujiayao, they look almost exactly the same. You could actually take the Xujiayao molar and put it in Denisova, and then take the Denisova molar and put it in Xujiayao, and few people would know the difference.

But earlier this year, another group of researchers linked those same Denisovan fossils to a different ancient species from China called Homo longi – and that idea seems to have gone down well with many researchers.
In China, actually, most palaeo people agree with our H. juluensis argument. A lot of Westerners that are familiar with the Chinese record also tend to agree.
But what about evidence from the skull that appeared in June? Researchers extracted ancient proteins from a skull attributed to H. longi and found a match with proteins extracted from known Denisovan fossils.
When you talk to most geneticists, they say that you could probably discount the protein analysis for species-level identification. You can get at a broader level, like a cat and a dog, but it’s really hard to identify distinctions at a finer level.
Replica of a Denisovan molar, originally found in Denisova Cave in 2000Thilo Parg CC BY-SA 3.0
Would you still accept H. longi as a valid species?
Oh yeah, I actually like H. longi and the fossils assigned to it. The debate revolves around what other fossils, if any, should be assigned to longi or whether some of these other fossils should be assigned to juluensis. It is interesting nowadays that the longi supporters seem to be trying to lump everything into longi, despite clear morphological variation in the Chinese fossils.
I’ve seen a few strongly negative reactions from other palaeoanthropologists to some of your research. How do you and your colleagues respond to that?
At this point in our careers, we’ve developed thick skin.

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Illustration of a teenage girl who is the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan fatherJOHN BAVARO FINE ART/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
For only the second time, researchers have obtained the full genome of a Denisovan, a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia. The DNA was extracted from a single 200,000-year-old tooth found in a Siberian cave.

The genome reveals that there were at least three populations of Denisovans, with different histories. It also shows that early Denisovans interbred with an unidentified group of ancient humans – and with a hitherto-unknown population of Neanderthals.
“This is a bombshell paper,” says David Reich at Harvard University.
“This study really expanded my understanding of the universe of the Denisovans,” says Samantha Brown at the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Spain.
Denisovans were the first ancient humans to be described using just DNA. A sliver of finger bone from Denisova cave in Siberia held DNA unlike that of either modern humans or the Neanderthals from western Eurasia. The genome revealed that Denisovans interbred with modern humans: people in South-East Asia, including the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, carry Denisovan DNA.

Since the initial reports in 2010, researchers have identified a handful of other Denisovans, all from East Asia. In June, a skull from Harbin, China, was identified as a Denisovan using molecular evidence, revealing for the first time what a Denisovan face looked like. However, while several specimens have yielded fragments of DNA, the original specimen has been the only one to yield a high-quality genome.
Researchers led by Stéphane Peyrégne at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany have now added a second. (Peyrégne declined to be interviewed because the study hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed.)
The team found a single molar tooth, belonging to a male Denisovan, in Denisova cave in 2020 and sequenced an entire genome from the preserved DNA.
Based on the number of mutations in the genome and comparisons to other ancient humans, the team estimated that the individual lived about 205,000 years ago. In line with this, the sediments in which the tooth was found were dated to 170,000-200,000 years ago. In contrast, the other high-quality genome is from a Denisovan who lived 55,000-75,000 years ago, meaning that the new genome reveals a much earlier stage of Denisovan history.

Based on comparisons with other remains from Denisova cave, the team says there seem to have been at least three discrete Denisovan populations. The oldest group included the male whose tooth was analysed. A second group replaced this older population at Denisova cave, thousands of years later.
“Understanding how early Denisovans were replaced by later Denisovans highlights a significant human event,” says Qiaomei Fu at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in China.
The third group, not represented at the cave, interbred with modern humans, based on DNA testing. In other words, all the Denisovan DNA in modern humans comes from a population of Denisovans that we know little or nothing about.
The new genome reveals that Denisovans repeatedly interbred with Neanderthals, who sometimes lived in or near Denisova cave. Crucially, the genome includes traces of a Neanderthal population that lived 7000-13,000 years before the male Denisovan. These traces don’t match any known Neanderthal genome, suggesting the Denisovans interbred with a Neanderthal group that has not yet been sequenced.
The Denisovans also seem to have interbred with an unidentified group of ancient humans, one that had evolved independently of Denisovans and modern humans for hundreds of thousands of years. One possibility is Homo erectus, which, based on current knowledge, was the first hominin to migrate outside of Africa, living as far afield as Java, Indonesia. However, no DNA has yet been recovered from H. erectus, so we can’t be sure.
“It’s endlessly fascinating that we keep discovering these new populations,” says Brown.

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The mummified remains of a boy buried in a copper box between 1617 and 1814Annamaria Alabiso
An adolescent boy buried around three centuries ago in a copper box in northern Italy has become the only near-complete green mummy ever known.
Other ancient body parts have been partially mummified or turned green after burial with copper or bronze objects, like the green, mummified hand of a newborn baby clutching a copper coin, buried in a ceramic pot in medieval Hungary.

The Italian mummy, however, is complete except for the feet. Apart from its left leg, it is almost entirely green from skin to bone.
The mummy was discovered in the basement of an ancient villa in Bologna in 1987 and sent for forensic analysis at the University of Bologna. Medical examiners determined it was the body of a boy aged 12 to 14. Since then, it has been carefully stored at the university.
Annamaria Alabiso, a conservation scientist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, was part of an investigation of the mummy by a wide array of specialists, including geneticists, anthropologists, radiologists, mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists. “It was a very remarkable multidisciplinary collaboration,” she says.

The researchers ran multiple in-depth chemical and physical analyses of the mummy. Radiocarbon dating placed the boy’s death to between 1617 and 1814, says Alabiso, and the mummy shows no clear signs of trauma or disease.
Copper helped preserve the hard and soft tissues – as expected, given its known antimicrobial properties, says Alabiso. But it also reacted with acids that leaked out of the body and corroded the box. This created copper corrosion products that interacted with chemical compounds in the bone. Little by little, copper ions replaced calcium in the boy’s skeleton, solidifying the bone structure in the long term while tinting the affected areas various shades of green.
As for the skin, it was covered by a crusty film of copper corrosion products called patina – the pale-green coating that develops on copper and bronze statues. The patina developed when copper reacted with water and carbon dioxide as the body broke down, says Alabiso.
“This completely changes our point of view on the role of heavy metals, as their effects on preservation are more complex than we might expect,” she says.

The bottom of the box eventually cracked open – possibly due to the acid – letting the liquid spill out so that the body stayed in a cool, dry chamber with little oxygen, which slowed decomposition. The boy’s feet might have detached and got lost at this time, says Alabiso.
“It was just a very emotional experience for me to work with these unique human remains,” she says.
Giulia Gallo at the Collège de France in Paris recently saw images of the mummy for the first time – and was delighted. “Oh wow, it’s incredible!” she says. “It’s so beautiful! This whole case study is quite fascinating.”
Gallo says the researchers have done an excellent job of exploring all the physical and chemical processes leading to the body’s mummification and colour changes. “The evidence strongly substantiates their argument concerning both the preservation and coloration of the tissue and bone.”

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Neanderthals may have used ochre crayons to draw on cave wallsGorodenkoff/Getty Images
A remarkable yellow crayon unearthed in Crimea, still sharp after more than 40,000 years, indicates that painting lines on objects was part of Neanderthal culture. This discovery is the firmest evidence yet that some Neanderthal groups used coloured pigments in symbolic ways – behaviour once regarded as the sole domain of our species.
“It’s really exciting. It adds a new facet to what we know about symbolic use of colour,” says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge, who wasn’t involved with the research.

The use of ochre – an iron-rich mineral with red, yellow or orange hues – has ancient roots, dating back at least 400,000 years in Europe and Africa. Bits of ochre are found at many Neanderthal sites, where they seem to have been used for practical purposes such as tanning clothing and as fire accelerants, as well as sometimes smeared on shell beads.
Neanderthals may have also used ochre to decorate their bodies, clothing and other surfaces, but such traces have long since disappeared. To investigate further, Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues carried out a detailed analysis of ochre pieces found at Neanderthal sites in Crimea, Ukraine. By studying how ochre pieces were modified by Neanderthals, as well as performing a microscopic analysis of how they became worn down, the researchers could build a picture of how the objects were used.
The most compelling of these ochre objects was a yellow one that was at least 42,000 years old and had been ground and scraped into a crayon-like shape about 5 to 6 centimetres long. Detailed analysis shows that the tip had been worn down through use, then resharpened, indicating that it was reused over time as an implement to make marks.

“It was a tool that had been curated and reshaped several times, which makes it very special,” says d’Errico. “It’s not just a crayon by shape. It’s a crayon because it was used as a crayon. It’s something that may have been used on skin or a rock to make a line – the reflection, perhaps, of an artistic activity.”
The tip of an ochre fragment that has been used as a crayon and then resharpenedd’Errico et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eadx4722
April Nowell at the University of Victoria in Canada, who wasn’t involved with the research, concurs. “You only maintain a point on a crayon if you want to make precise lines or designs,” she says.
The research team also identified another more ancient broken crayon, perhaps 70,000 years old, made from red ochre.

“It tells us so much just from those small bits of ochre,” says Pomeroy. “It’s that little bit of humanity that we can relate to. It really brings those individuals into touching distance.”
The Crimean crayon discoveries add to the small but growing body of evidence indicating the artistic talents of Neanderthals, such as 57,000-year-old finger carvings on a cave wall in France and mysterious circles crafted from stalagmites 175,000 years ago in another French cave.
They also lend weight to the idea that symbolic behaviour has very deep roots in our evolutionary past, rather than being a capacity that developed relatively recently only in Homo sapiens. “The underlying cognitive ability for symbolic behavior is undoubtedly shared by the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Denisovans and Neanderthals more than 700,000 years ago,” says Nowell.

Ancient caves, human origins: Northern Spain

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