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The Stone Age of Southwestern Tanzania

By Pamela R.Willoughby, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: "East Africa has always been important for the study of human evolution. It has the longest record of fossil hominids, extending back almost 5 million years. It also has a number of sites which show that the archaeological or cultural record goes back to 2.5 million years ago.
But recently, it became clear that East Africa, and Africa in general, is as important for the later stages of human evolution as it is for the earlier ones. Genetic and fossil evidence show that our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa, as early as 200,000 years ago. Then around 50-40,000 years ago, descendants of this founder population spread out, replacing (or possibly interbreeding with) hominid groups in Eurasia such as the neandertals, and ultimately peopled the globe"...LINK

Klasies River Caves

From ABOUT Archaeology November 18, 2003: What does it mean to be human? Archaeological excavations at one of the earliest Homo sapiens site on the planet, the Klasies River Caves site in South Africa, teach us about our ancestors... LINK

90.000 year old red ocher

The Qafzeh Cave in Israel contains skeletal remains of modern Homo sapiens that are more than 90,000 years old, as well as more-recent signs of human occupation. Investigators now say that red ocher found in Qafzeh Cave's oldest sections supports the controversial theory that symbolic thinking, a hallmark of modern-day human thought, arose deep in the Stone Age... Link

Hyena den is peephole on Stone Age Britain

A hyena den littered with bones from long extinct animals has been unearthed on an English hillside, giving a rare glimpse into life in Stone Age Britain. The hundreds of gnawed bones from woolly rhinoceroses, mammoths, wolverines and deer lay buried on the hilltop in Rutland for up to 40,000 years. Archaeologists also found flints and chippings made by Neanderthals or early modern humans who used the hill's distinctive sandstone outcrop as a resting place in the middle of the last ice age...Link

Woolly mammoth butchery site unearthed

A Neanderthal "butchery site" complete with the bones of tall woolly mammoths, molars bigger than a man's head and 50,000-year-old flint tools...Link

Stone Age camp fire could be Britain's earliest

Evidence of what could be one of the earliest fires in Europe has been discovered in Wiltshire.

Charcoal deposits that archaeologists believe date back 275,000 years were discovered during an archaeological investigation near Salisbury last winter...Link

The earliest occupation of Europe: Scandinavia

An article by Jørgen Holm & Lars Larsson.

This paper examines claims for Middle and Lower Palaeolithic finds from Scandinavia, within the context of the geological history of the area, where glaciers repeatedly modified Pleistocene landscapes. Though no unambiguous primary context traces of pre-Hamburgian occupation are known yet, a review of various localities in southern Denmark shows that this area has a great potential for such finds, to be exploited in future research...Link

Varggrottan - Susiluola - Wolf Cave - Die Wolfshöhle

The settlement of the Neanderthals in Fenno-Scandinavia (Finland).

The multidisciplinary research project at the Wolf Cave cavern on Vargberget (“Wolf Mountain”) in Kristinestad near the border of Karijoki was initiated  in 1997.  The investigations at the cavern are being carried out by the National Board of Antiquities, in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Finland and the Helsinki University Department of Geology. The investigations have produced very interesting results but the finds have also been much more diverse and difficult to interpret than originally expected. The current interpretation is that the cavern has been occupied by humans before the last Ice Age, more than 120 000 years ago...Link

Neanderthal butchery site in Norfolk, UK

An extraordinary collection of mammoth remains and flint tools unearthed in a Norfolk quarry may be evidence of the first Neanderthal hunting camp discovered in Britain ...Link

The Neanderthal dead: exploring mortuary variability in Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia

Litteraturliste/References

Link (pdf)

Mars close encounter 57,617 BC

Mars and Earth pass closer to each other this year than at any time during the last 60,000 years...

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