Philippa Kaur

GunaiKurnai Elder Uncle Russell Mullett on the balcony of Cloggs CaveJessica Shapiro
A recent discovery in Cloggs cave, Australia, revealed something extraordinary about humanity’s relationship with time. Several metres into the limestone grotto, archaeologists working with the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation found telltale signs of an ancient ritual: two ceremonial sticks covered in animal fat and highly specific burn marks. Here is the amazing part. The sticks were 12,000 years old, and they were almost identical to ones used for rituals in the late 19th century by local mulla-mullung, or sorcerers.
That means the GunaiKurnai people… More

Artist’s impression of a group of Homo floresiensis with a freshly killed stegodon (Stegodon florensis insularis)MAURICIO ANTON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Severe drought caused by climate change may have led to the decline of Indonesia’s pygmy elephants and the “hobbit”-like humans who hunted them.
Until about 50,000 years ago, Homo floresiensis, standing about a metre tall, thrived on the South Pacific island of Flores by consuming meat from dwarf pachyderms called stegodons.

Researchers originally thought that the tiny hominins – whose bones were discovered… More

African wildcats seem to have been part of the human diet in the Levant 10,000 years agoNSP-RF/Alamy
About 10,000 years ago, foxes and wildcats made up a notable part of people’s diets in what is now Western Galilee in Israel.
Archaeologists have long attributed the abundance of small carnivore bones in early Levant settlements to people harvesting fur and to symbolic associations like tooth ornaments.

But now, Shirad Galmor, while at Tel Aviv University in Israel, and her colleagues have found… More

Ancient human remains are rare and don’t necessarily contain DNAShutterstock/Microgen
It was an otherwise ordinary day in 2015 when Viviane Slon had her eureka moment. As she worked at her computer, the results revealed the sample she was examining contained human DNA. There was nothing so unusual about that in itself: at the time, the ancient DNA (aDNA) revolution was in full swing, and surprising new insights about our ancestors were being gradually unveiled. But Slon’s sample wasn’t from human remains – it was just dirt from a cave floor. That immediately told her she was onto something big.
Many archaeological sites yield tools and artefacts that tell us about human occupation, but few have provided the bones or teeth that could still harbour human aDNA. Even when such remains are present, the chances that genetic material survives within them is slim because DNA is damaged by heat, moisture and acidity. So finding another source of aDNA – the soil itself – was a game changer. “That opens up hundreds of prehistoric sites that we couldn’t work on before,” says Slon.

Besides, humble dirt can reveal a lot about our distant past. Whereas fossils provide snapshots of prehistory, sediment gives a DNA source that can, in theory, generate an unbroken narrative. Researchers can study hominins predating the practice of burial. They can work out which groups created particular tools and other artefacts, learning more about their cognitive and artistic… More

A reconstruction of the dress from an Iron Age grave in the Netherlands, created by Prehistorisch Dorp in EindhovenHanna Geels
A 2800-year-old red and blue checked dress found in an Early Iron Age grave in the Netherlands might be the oldest double-colour woven garment in Europe.
The skeleton of the elite individual who once wore this striking outfit had completely decayed due to harsh, sandy soil. But through mineralisation underneath metallic jewellery, remnants of the much-decayed and now-brown wool dress provide evidence that the dyed textiles came from clothing, says Karina Grömer at the Natural History Museum, Vienna.… More

Skeleton of Homo naledi, found in the Rising Star cave system in South AfricaJohn Hawks/Shutterstock
Blazing the Trail
Australian Museum, University of Sydney, BreakThru Films
It is after 10pm and I am on a cycleway in Sydney returning from dinner with friends. It is a warm evening in the week before Christmas and people are still out on the streets, gathering for end-of-year drinks.
As I cycle, I’m using my Air Pods to listen to a podcast broadcast by Bluetooth from my smartphone. The podcast, downloaded from invisible Wi-Fi, is about the origins of humanity. It strikes me that,… More

The stones that make up Stonehenge came from all over BritainHeritage Image Partnership Ltd /Alamy
Stonehenge may have been built to symbolise a unification in Stone Age Britain. The idea could explain why so many of the stones making up the monument were brought in over huge distances.
Located on Salisbury plain in southern England, Stonehenge seems to have been built in phases between 3100 and 1600 BC. There is an outer ring of vertical sarsen stones topped by horizontal lintels; inside that is a smaller ring of vertical bluestones and a number of other stones, including a horizontal… More