Humans

Skulls found in the banks of the river Thielle in Cornaux/Les Sauges in Switzerland are now stored at the Laténium Museum in HauteriveSchweizerischer Nationalfonds/Fonds national suisse
For decades, scientists have wondered about the history of 20 people, as well as a handful of farm animals, who seemingly drowned 2000 years ago in a Swiss river. One idea is that these individuals were sacrificed from a bridge, which later collapsed. But new evidence supports the notion that, for at least some of them, their demise – along with the bridge’s – was due to a natural disaster.
In 1965, archaeologists uncovered… More

Sasithorn Phuapankasemsuk/Getty Images
Try to imagine an environment largely untouched by humans and the Amazon rainforest might spring to mind. After all, large swathes of this South American landscape are blanketed in thick vegetation, suggesting it is one corner of the world that humans never managed to tame. Here, there must have been no deforestation, no agricultural revolution and no cities. It seems like a pristine environment.
Or so we thought. But a very different picture is emerging. Archaeologists working with Indigenous communities have been shown crumbling urban remains and remote sensing technologies such as lidar are revealing the footprints of vast ghost cities. With so much evidence of ancient human activity, it is now thought the pre-Columbian Amazon was inhabited by millions of people – some living in large built-up areas complete with road networks, temples and pyramids.
But that’s not all this research reveals. Paradoxically, it also provides evidence that the traditional view of the Amazon isn’t completely wide of the mark. For instance, while the ancient Amazonians managed their landscape intensively, they didn’t deforest it. And although they developed complex societies, they never went through a wholesale agricultural revolution. This might suggest that the pre-Columbian Amazonians broke the mould of human cultural development, which is traditionally seen as a relentless march from hunting and gathering to farming to urban complexity. The truth is more surprising. In fact, we are now coming to understand that there was no such mould – civilisation arose in myriad ways. What looks like an anomaly in the Amazon is actually a shining example of a process that was as vibrant and diverse as the rainforest itself.
Despite… More

Ancient ritual stick discovered in Cloggs cave, AustraliaGunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation
Wooden artefacts found in an Australian cave suggest that an Indigenous ceremony documented in the 19th century may have been practised 12,000 years ago, making it possibly the oldest known cultural ritual anywhere in the world.
Between 2019 and 2020, a team of archaeologists and members of a local Indigenous community called the GunaiKurnai from south-eastern Australia conducted an excavation at Cloggs cave, near the Snowy river in Victoria.
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The site had been partly dug in the 1970s, but during the new work the team discovered two preserved fireplaces, which contained mostly unburnt artefacts made of wood from local Casuarina trees. Chemical analysis revealed these artefacts were smeared with animal or human fat and dated to between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago, making them among the oldest wooden artefacts found in Australia.
On its own, this would have been a major but mysterious discovery. However, the researchers and community members were at the same time examining an ethnographic report by 19th-century anthropologist Alfred Howitt, who researched the customs and traditions of tribes in south-eastern Australia in the 1880s.
In 1887, very close to Cloggs cave, he recorded the practices of Indigenous “wizards”, now referred to as “mulla-mullung”, who are powerful GunaiKurnai medicine men and women. He wrote a detailed account of one ceremony that involved smearing animal or human fat on throwing sticks made of Casuarina wood and placing them in small ceremonial fires as a magic charm or curse. He understood the ritual to be used against an enemy or someone whom those conducting the ritual wished to harm.
“The wizard has during this time been singing his charm; as it is usually expressed, he ‘sings the man’s name,’ and when the stick falls the charm is complete. The practice still exists,” wrote Howitt.
Bruno David at Monash University in Melbourne and Russell Mullett, a GunaiKurnai elder, say the similarities between the archaeological discoveries and the ethnographic account have convinced them that the same ritual was used for up to 12,000 years.
Mullett says he was convinced of the connection because Howitt’s account so closely matched what they had found in the cave – the type of wood and the fats smeared on the stick, positioned exactly as Howitt had described.
“This cements the longevity of our oral traditions and knowledge and the transferral of that knowledge from generation to generation,” says Mullett.
David says the conclusions grew slowly following the discovery of such rare timber artefacts.
“Archaeologists never get to see the performances behind such ancient deposits,” he says. “To me, it’s absolutely remarkable the physical evidence that corresponds so closely to the cultural knowledge has survived virtually intact, and for so long. It exactly matches the practices described by Howitt.”
“The team’s methods are meticulous and remarkable,” says Paul Taçon at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
There were lots of changes to these communities over time, says Taçon, but this ritual seems to have stayed the same. “What strikes me about this case is that this same form of ritual practice must have been considered to have been important and effective to have been perpetuated over such a long period of time.”

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Pictograms from Upuigma-tepui rock shelter in Canaima National Park, VenezuelaUNIVERSIDAD SIMON BOLIVAR
An archaeologist has tracked down more than 20 rock art sites in south-eastern Venezuela decorated with evocative geometric designs that may date back several thousand years. The pictograms and petroglyphs offer a rare glimpse into the culture of people who lived in the forested highlands that now make up Canaima National Park, long before the arrival of Europeans.
José Miguel Pérez-Gómez of Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela, has collaborated for years with the Indigenous Pemón community to document the remote art, which he… More

Neanderthal reconstruction at the Museum of Natural History Vienna in AustriaNeanderthals/Alamy Stock Photo
A Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome survived until at least the age of 6, if interpretations of a fossilised ear bone are correct. The find adds to the evidence that Neanderthals, far from being brutish and unfeeling, routinely showed compassion for other members of their society, although researchers disagree on the extent to which the child may have needed extra attention.

“Neanderthals were clearly caring for people in their group, and this is a lovely example that really brings home how much they cared,” says Penny Spikins at the University of York in the UK, who wasn’t involved in the research.Advertisement
The Neanderthal fossil was found in Cova Negra, a cave near the town of Xàtiva in eastern Spain. The cave has been excavated on and off since the 1920s, revealing that it was home to Neanderthals between 273,000 and 146,000 years ago.
Sorting through animal remains from Cova Negra, researchers led by Mercedes Conde Valverde at the University of Alcalá in Spain identified a fragment of hominin bone. It was found in disturbed sediments, so can’t be reliably dated. The bone is part of the temporal bone from the side and base of the skull, and includes parts of the inner ear.
Conde Valverde and her colleagues used CT scans to create a 3D model of the bone. This allowed them to identify it as being from a Neanderthal, not a modern human. Based on its developmental state, the bone belonged to a child who was at least 6 years old, and probably no more than 10.
The team found several distinctive features in the development of the inner ear, specifically in three tubes called the semicircular canals that are involved in hearing and balance. One of the canals was unusually wide. Another was connected to a neighbouring chamber called the vestibular aqueduct, which is normally separate. Furthermore, the cochlea, which is crucial for hearing, was especially small.
This combination of features is found only in people with Down’s syndrome, says Conde Valverde. In this genetic condition, instead of having two copies of chromosome 21, a person generally has three. The condition can cause learning disabilities, problems with hearing and balance, and distinctive facial features.

It has probably existed as long as humans: a study of ancient DNA, published in February, found six cases of Down’s syndrome in babies and young children, one dating back almost 5000 years.
The newly identified child would have needed more care than other Neanderthal children, says Conde Valverde. For instance, moving from place to place may have been difficult due to attacks of vertigo, which can be a symptom in Down’s syndrome.
“We think that probably the mother needs help,” she says, because the time demands of increased childcare would take her and potentially the father away from other key activities, such as obtaining food.

Conde Valverde says the other Neanderthals in the group are unlikely to have expected the child to contribute much practical help, so they must have cared for them out of pure compassion.
Sarah Turner at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, doesn’t think this low expectation is necessarily true. “People with Down’s syndrome contribute in all sorts of ways to modern human societies,” she says. “And I am sure that was true in Neanderthal society too.”
The Neanderthal temporal bone fossil found in Cova Negra, SpainJulia Diez-Valero
“There is a lot of variation in terms of what is considered a disability and how people with disabilities are treated in different human contexts,” says Turner. “Compassion is one possible motivator, but without knowing about someone’s life and how they were treated and behaved, I don’t think we can say too much about how and why they survived.”
Turner has also previously shown that wild primates can survive for a long time even if they are born with disabilities or developmental conditions. This included one instance of a baby chimpanzee born with what appeared to be Down’s syndrome, who survived as long as the mother had help from an older daughter, but died after the daughter had a baby of her own and could no longer help.

The new study adds to the evidence of caregiving and compassion among Neanderthals, says Spikins. For instance, an adult male Neanderthal whose remains were found in Shanidar cave in Iraq had a damaged arm and leg and was “probably deaf and blind in one eye”. He lived another 10 to 15 years after getting these injuries, so “he must have been looked after”.
Conde Valverde and Spikins both dismiss the idea that caregiving behaviour would have been done in the expectation of getting help once a child has grown up.
“It comes very much from our society, this idea of analytically thinking if someone’s going to be productive,” says Spikins. The reality is that we evolved to live in tight-knit groups and an instinct to care for each other was crucial. People with Down’s syndrome are often “tremendously affectionate and very sociable”, she says, “and that counts for such a lot in these kind of small-scale societies”.

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The people of Easter Island built hundreds of monolithic statues called moaiStephanie Morcinek via Unsplash
The widespread claim that the ancient people of Easter Island experienced a societal collapse due to overexploitation of natural resources has been thrown into fresh doubt. Instead, there was a small and stable population that lived sustainably for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, an analysis of historical farming practices suggests.
Famous for its towering stone statues, Easter Island – also known as Rapa Nui – in the Pacific Ocean is thought to have been inhabited by Polynesians since around AD 1200. At that time, its 164-square kilometres were covered in palm forests, but these were quickly destroyed, probably by a combination of rats and over-harvesting.
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According to a narrative popularised by the historian Jared Diamond, the unsustainable use of resources led to runaway population growth and a subsequent collapse before Europeans arrived in 1722.
The islanders mainly supported themselves through rock gardening, a form of agriculture that has been widely practised in places where soils are poor or the climate harsh. Stones are scattered around fields to create microhabitats and wind breaks, preserve moisture and supply important minerals.
Previous studies have suggested that as much as 21 square kilometres of Rapa Nui was covered in rock gardens, supporting a population of up to 16,000 people.
To find out more, Carl Lipo at Binghamton University in New York and his colleagues used satellite imagery combined with machine learning models trained with ground surveys to generate an island-wide estimate of rock gardening sites.
This found that the maximum area of the stone gardens was only 0.76 square kilometres. The researchers estimate that such a system wouldn’t have been able to support more than 4000 people – roughly the population estimated to live there when Europeans arrived. In other words, the team argues, the population remained remarkably stable.
Researcher Robert DiNapoli, from Binghamton University in New York, inspects a rock gardenCarl Lipo
Lipo says that those who continue to use Easter Island as a case study of degradation and collapse need to look at the empirical evidence. “The results we produce continue to support our hypothesis that the island never… [had] a massive population that overconsumed its resources,” he says. “Overall, we do not see evidence in the archaeological record of a population collapse before European arrival.”
Instead, there is growing weight behind the suggestion that islanders transformed their environment in ways that allowed them to live sustainably for generations, says Lipo. “Small populations and low-density, dispersed settlement patterns enabled the communities to reliably produce sufficient food for more than 500 years until the arrival of Europeans.”
Dale F. Simpson at the University of Illinois says more work is needed to evaluate whether the precision and accuracy of the model calculations used in the research fit the archaeological record.
“Overall, this [study] highlights that although the Rapa Nui [people] are often portrayed as a collapsed culture bounded by socio-political competition, ecological overexploitation and megalithic overproduction, the discussion would be better served if it recognised the Rapa Nui as a Polynesian island culture of adaptation and survival that has thrived for almost a millennium,” says Simpson.

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The 2000-year-old wine found in a Roman tomb in Carmona, SpainJuan Manuel Román/University of Cordoba
A reddish liquid found in a 2000-year-old Roman mausoleum in Spain is the oldest known liquid wine in existence, a chemical analysis has revealed.
“I was surprised and full of disbelief,” says José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola at the University of Cordoba in Spain. “It seemed impossible that a liquid could have remained in this state for 2000 years.”
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Until now, a sealed vessel found near Speyer, Germany, and believed to be about 1700 years old, was thought to contain the oldest known wine, but it has never been opened.
The Spanish tomb, accidentally discovered in 2019 in Carmona, near Seville, dates from the 1st century AD and belonged to a wealthy family. Eight burial niches, carved in its walls, held six urns made from limestone, sandstone or glass. Half of them contained the cremated remains of women and the other half those of men. Two urns bore the names of the deceased: Hispanae and Senicio.
One of the glass urns, encased in a lead shell, contained bone remnants of a 45-year-old man, a gold ring bearing the image of the two-faced Roman god Janus, and approximately 5 litres of liquid.
Ruiz Arrebola and his team studied the composition of the reddish liquid by various methods, including liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. They found that it had a pH of 7.5 – much more alkaline than normal for wine, indicating strong decay.
Its mineral profile was similar to that of modern sherry and fino wines from Spain. It also contained seven polyphenols, natural antioxidant compounds, exclusively found in wine.
The entrance to the mausoleum in Carmona where the wine was foundJuan Manuel Román/University of Cordoba
The absence of syringic acid, a compound produced when the main pigment in red wines decomposes, confirmed its identity as a white wine. The wine was probably meant for the deceased to drink on their voyage into the afterlife.
“The discovery of a 2000-year-old liquid presumed to be wine in a Roman urn is rare and significant, providing unique insights into Roman burial practices,” says Davide Tanasi at the University of South Florida. “It demonstrates the continuity between ancient and contemporary wine production.”
Ruiz Arrebola plans to carry out further tests to identify any remains of microbes such as bacteria or yeasts that might be present in the wine.

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Ancient humans occupied the Umm Jirsan lava-tube cave in Saudi ArabiaGreen Arabia Project
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 study of rock art, especially cave paintings, used to be strongly focused on Europe. But in recent years, it has expanded after major discoveries in Indonesia and mainland Asia. One of the latest additions to the scientific record comes in the form of giant snakes found in South America.
Along the Orinoco river in Colombia and Venezuela,… More