Humans

Aboriginal people use fires to manage the landscapePenny Tweedie/Getty Images
Indigenous Australians have been managing the environment with fire for at least 11,000 years, according to an analysis of sediment cores retrieved from an ancient lake.
Michael Bird at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, says the findings suggest that a return to an Indigenous regime of more frequent but less intense fires could reduce the risk of catastrophic bushfires and improve environmental management.

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It has long been known that Australia’s first peoples, who are thought to have been on the continent for 65,000 years, carefully managed the landscape with fire to make it easier to move around and hunt prey. They also figured out that this benefited some animals and plants that they preferred and reduced the risk of more dangerous fires.
However, it has been difficult to establish how long this has been happening for, says Bird. That is because most waterways completely dry out in the dry season each year and the carbon in their sediments is destroyed.
Girraween Lagoon, near Darwin in the Northern Territory, is a massive sinkhole covering an area of about 1 hectare that has stayed permanently wet for at least 150,000 years. As the climate changed over millennia, so, too, did the vegetation around the sinkhole. “From Girraween Lagoon, we have got 150,000 years’ worth of sediment that has never dried out,” says Bird.
By analysing sediment cores from the lagoon’s bed, Bird and his colleagues were able to study three key metrics: the accumulation of micro-charcoal particles, the proportion of burnt material in the charred vegetation matter and a measure of the amount of the different kinds of carbon that remain after burning.
The first two metrics allow researchers to infer the intensity of fires, while the third indicates whether fires were cool enough to leave traces of grasses preserved.
Prior to the arrival of people, natural fires in the savannahs of northern Australia were ignited by lightning late in the dry season, when vegetation and the landscape had almost fully dried out. This kind of higher-intensity fire combusts biomass more completely, particularly fine fuels such as grass and litter, leaving less charred remains from grasses.
Indigenous fire regimes, on the other hand, burn frequently but with much less heat, affect small areas and are limited to the ground layer, promoting a mosaic of vegetation and helping to protect biodiversity.
Bird says the more recent layers in the cores show clear evidence of more frequent fires and grasses that haven’t been fully combusted, indicating cooler fires. These kinds of fires are a sharp departure from the previous natural pattern of fires and provide the tell-tale fingerprint of Indigenous fire management, he says.
Researchers collect sediment cores at Girraween Lagoon in Northern Territory, AustraliaMichael Bird
This signal can be seen in sediments dating back to at least 11,000 years ago, the study found, but before that point the metric for the proportion of grasses and tree remains becomes harder to study. Bird says there are hints of a human burning signal from as early as 40,000 years ago, but the evidence isn’t as clear-cut.
“It means that for at least 11,000 years, the savannah has grown up with humans,” he says. “The biodiversity has grown up with that fire regime. Take that kind of burning away and you start to see significant problems with biodiversity.”
David Bowman at the University of Tasmania, Australia, says the paper highlights the twin importance of climate and humans in shaping fire regimes.
“Separating climate from anthropogenic – and importantly Indigenous – fire management is a hugely important topic,” he says. “We are battling to counteract climate-driven wildfires globally and such a deep-time perspective will be an invaluable addition to current research and development of sustainable fire management.”

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Korolevo quarry in Ukraine, one of the oldest hominin sites in EuropeRoman Garba
Molecular dating has revealed that an area in Ukraine was occupied by humans 1.4 million years ago, making it one of the oldest hominin sites in Europe and possibly the oldest.
The site, at Korolevo in western Ukraine, has been studied since the 1970s. A large number of stone tools have been found buried in layers of sediment beside an outcrop of volcanic rock suitable to be made into tools.

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“This was like a magnet for bringing the people there, and they were camping nearby,” says Roman Garba at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.
No bones have been found as the soil is too acidic to preserve them, he says, but it is assumed that the hominins were Homo erectus, a species that evolved around 2 million years ago and spread from Africa to Europe and Asia.
While it has been clear that early hominins were present at the Korolevo site repeatedly over hundreds of thousands of years, we haven’t known exactly when they were present. But Garba’s team has now dated the oldest layer containing tools to 1.4 million years ago, using a technique called cosmogenic nuclide dating.
This method relies on cosmic rays that are so energetic that they can split the nuclei of atoms and generate unusual isotopes. However, these isotopes form only on exposed areas, as these cosmic rays don’t penetrate far into solid objects.
Once objects are buried, radioactive isotopes generated by cosmic rays decay into other isotopes, allowing the time of burial to be determined.
Another early hominin site in Dmanisi in Georgia has been dated to 1.7 million years ago, while other sites in France and Spain are around 1.2 million years old. This suggests that early humans moved from Africa through Georgia and into Ukraine, then west into the rest of Europe, says Garba, though it is also possible that some crossed the Bosphorus Strait in Turkey.
It has been suggested that some hominins crossed the Gibraltar Strait to reach Spain when sea levels were lower than present, then moved east into the rest of Europe, but there is no evidence to support this, says Garba.

While part of Georgia is in Europe geographically and the whole country is seen as part of Europe politically, the site of Dmanisi is geographically located in Asia, says Garba. So he and his team regard Korolevo as the oldest human site in Europe that has been reliably dated.
“Korolevo represents, to our knowledge, the earliest securely dated hominin presence in Europe,” the paper states.
“I agree that the new age estimates are important, and they support the idea of an early east-west dispersal,” says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London.
But this was already apparent because four other sites in western Europe have already been dated to around 1.4 million years ago, he says.
Garba says that while it is possible that these other sites are as old, the dating of them is questionable. “We can’t be as sure about them,” he says. “They are not secure or not robust.”
“I respectfully disagree,” says Stringer.

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An ancient bronze hand found at Irulegi in northern SpainJuantxo Egana
Inscriptions found on a 2000-year-old metal hand may be written in a language related to modern-day Basque. If this interpretation is correct, it could help explain the origins of the Basque language – one of the biggest mysteries in linguistics.

However, other linguists say there isn’t enough evidence to link the inscriptions with Basque.Advertisement
The bronze hand was found in July 2021 on a hilltop called Irulegi in the Pyrenees in northern Spain. Archaeologists had been digging there since 2007, first to uncover a medieval castle and then to explore a much older settlement from the Iron Age.
That settlement was founded between 1500 and 1000 BC. It came under attack, possibly by the Romans, and was abandoned in the first century BC.
The Irulegi hand is a sheet of bronze 14 centimetres long, 12.8 cm wide and just 0.1 cm thick, with a greenish patina. On the back of the hand are four lines of text, which were first scratched in and then re-written by punching dots into the metal.
Most of the words can’t be linked to any known language, but the first word is “sorioneku”. Mattin Aiestaran at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, and his colleagues argue that this is similar to the Basque word zorioneko, which means “of good fortune”. Additionally, the last word is “eráukon”, which they compare to the Basque verb zeraukon.
The Irulegi hand, bearing an inscription in a mysterious languageMattin Aiestaran, et. al.
The hand was probably meant to signify or attract good luck, perhaps by appealing to a deity, says Mikel Edeso Egia at the Aranzadi Science Society in Donostia – also called San Sebastián – in Spain, which supported the excavations.
The researchers further argue that the hand is evidence of languages related to Basque being spoken in northern Spain for 2000 years. Whereas most languages spoken in Europe today belong to the Indo-European language family, Basque doesn’t. “It’s not related to any other language that we know of,” says Edeso Egia. Previous research has tentatively linked Basque to a group of people called the Vascones who, according to classical sources, lived in the Pyrenees.
However, the idea that the inscriptions on the hand are in a language related to Basque isn’t universally accepted. After the hand was first described in a 2022 book, linguists Céline Mounole at the University of Pau and the Adour Region in France and Julen Manterola at the University of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz published a critique.
“The evidence is not enough,” says Manterola. This is partly because there are so few words on the Irulegi hand: not enough to properly compare it with known languages, he says.
Furthermore, the link with Basque rests almost solely on the similarity of “sorioneku” and zorioneko. “We can’t really relate any of the other words with historical Basque,” says Mounole.
Even that similarity may be misleading, says Manterola. Similar phrases in Basque have changed in predictable ways over the centuries to reach their current forms, but if “sorioneku” became zorioneko, it must have followed a very different path.
“We are hoping that more inscriptions will appear,” says Mounole. “In this case, we would be able to know more about this language and its possible relation with the Basque language.”

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A reconstruction of the skull of a Homo naledi childBrett Eloff Photography/Wits University
This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox for free every month.
The word “fossil” is one that I type out rather frequently. You’ll often read stories about new hominin remains in which they are described as fossils. But hang on. Fossils take a long time to form, so how old does a human bone or tooth need to be before it counts as a fossil? Should we be hurling this word… More

Remains of a dog and a baby girl laid to rest at Seminario Vescovile near Verona, ItalyLaffranchi et al. (CC-BY 4.0)
Late Iron Age people in northern Italy were sometimes buried with their dogs or horses – possibly just because they loved them.

Archaeologists have often suspected that the ancient, worldwide custom of including animals in human graves was associated with higher socioeconomic status, beliefs about the afterlife or traditions in certain families. But after thorough investigation, researchers are now starting to wonder whether such “co-burials” were simply an expression of love to a devoted non-human family member, says Marco Milella at the University of Bern in Switzerland.Advertisement
He and his colleagues revisited the bones excavated from the 2200-year-old Seminario Vescovile burial ground just east of Verona in Italy, where the Cenomani people lived in metal-making communities before and during the Roman conquest.
Most of the 161 graves found at the site contained just the remains of a person, but 16 also included animals, either whole or in parts. Of those, 12 were pork or beef products, apparently meant as food offerings to the deceased, says Zita Laffranchi, also at the University of Bern.
The other four people, however, were buried with dogs or horses or both of these animals, which weren’t used for food in that population. They included a middle-aged man with a small dog, a young man with parts of a horse, a 9-month-old baby girl side-by-side with a dog and – most unexpectedly – a middle-aged woman with a pony laid on top of her and a dog’s head above her own.
“At first the excavators were surprised to find human legs under a horse, and the first idea was: we have a horse rider here, we have a warrior,” says Laffranchi. But the woman was buried without weapons, suggesting her relationship with the 1.3-metre-tall pony wasn’t related to warfare.
The team found no particular trends in the ages of the people who were buried with animals, and DNA analyses suggested they weren’t genetically related to each other. Chemical analysis of these cadavers didn’t reveal any differences in diet – which would be linked to socioeconomic status – compared with those in human-only graves, either.
The findings point to the possibility that people from ancient populations felt so connected with their animals that their loved ones chose to bury them together, say the researchers. “And why not?” says Milella. “We definitely cannot exclude that.”
Another explanation could be that the animals had symbolic meaning for the afterlife, the researchers add. For example, in the Gallo-Roman religion, the Celtic goddess of horses, Epona, was believed to protect individuals after death. And Gallo-Romans also apparently sometimes linked dogs with the afterlife. In fact, burying dogs with infants might even have been intended to protect the parents from the loss of future babies.
Even so, the animals in the graves seem to have benefited from good human care rather than being disposable stock – especially the dogs, which appear to have been fed human food and show signs of wound treatment and healing.
As such, it is also possible that people were buried with animals for both symbolic and affectionate reasons, says Milella.

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PRISMA ARCHIVO/Alamy
IT IS the ultimate taboo: in most societies, the idea of one human eating another is morally repugnant. Even in circumstances where it could arguably be justified, such as when a plane crashed in the Andes in 1972 and starving passengers ate the dead to survive, we still have a deep aversion to cannibalism. One of the survivors, Roberto Canessa, has since described the passengers’ actions as a “descent towards our ultimate indignity”.
Ethically, cannibalism poses fewer issues than you might imagine. If a body can be bequeathed with consent to medical science, why can’t it be left to… More

Simon Pemberton
IN GOUGH’S cave in Cheddar Gorge, south-west England, archaeologists have found the remains of at least six individuals. Many of the bones were intentionally broken and the fragments are covered in cut marks, the result of people using stone tools to separate them and remove the flesh. What’s more, 42 per cent of the bone fragments bear human teeth marks. There is little doubt: the people who lived in this cave 14,700 years ago practised cannibalism.
Today, cannibalism is a taboo subject in many societies. We see it as aberrant, as is clear in films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. We associate it with zombies, psychopaths and serial killers like the fictional Hannibal Lecter. Positive stories of cannibals are few and far between. But perhaps it is time for a rethink because, despite our preconceptions, evidence is accumulating that cannibalism was a common human behaviour.
Our ancestors have been eating each other for a million years or more. In fact, it seems that, down the ages, around a fifth of societies have practised cannibalism. While some of this people-eating may have been done simply to survive, in many cases, the reasons look more complex. In places like Gough’s cave, for example, consuming the bodies of the dead seems to have been part of a funerary ritual. Far from a monstrous affront to nature, cannibalism may be a way of showing respect and love for the dead, say some archaeologists.

Tales of cannibals can be found throughout human history. In Homer’s Odyssey,… More

Simon Pemberton
IN GOUGH’S cave in Cheddar Gorge, south-west England, archaeologists have found the remains of at least six individuals. Many of the bones were intentionally broken and the fragments are covered in cut marks, the result of people using stone tools to separate them and remove the flesh. What’s more, 42 per cent of the bone fragments bear human teeth marks. There is little doubt: the people who lived in this cave 14,700 years ago practised cannibalism.
Today, cannibalism is a taboo subject in many societies. We see it as aberrant, as is clear in films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. We associate it with zombies, psychopaths and serial killers like the fictional Hannibal Lecter. Positive stories of cannibals are few and far between. But perhaps it is time for a rethink because, despite our preconceptions, evidence is accumulating that cannibalism was a common human behaviour.
Our ancestors have been eating each other for a million years or more. In fact, it seems that, down the ages, around a fifth of societies have practised cannibalism. While some of this people-eating may have been done simply to survive, in many cases, the reasons look more complex. In places like Gough’s cave, for example, consuming the bodies of the dead seems to have been part of a funerary ritual. Far from a monstrous affront to nature, cannibalism may be a way of showing respect and love for the dead, say some archaeologists.

Tales of cannibals can be found throughout human history. In Homer’s Odyssey,… More