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Lottery millions for cave art museum

Millions of pounds of heritage lottery money has been given to safeguard the UK's finest example of ice age cave art.

Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire is a limestone gorge believed to mark the most northern explorations of ice age man. It houses Britain's earliest cave art, discovered two years ago, and is said to have the world's most elaborately carved cave ceiling.

The £4.26m award will fund the creation of a national centre of excellence for telling the ice age story to schoolchildren, the local community and tourists. A museum and education centre will be built and a local road rerouted to protect the site ... Guardian

Flute Dates Origins of Music to Ice Age

German archaeologists have discovered one of the world's oldest known musical instruments — a 30,000-year-old flute finely carved from a woolly mammoth's ivory tusk.

Pieced together from 31 fragments found in Geißenklösterle Cave in the Swabian Mountains of southern Germany, not far from modern day Stuttgart, the flute measures 18.7 centimeters (7.4 inches) and features three finger holes ... Discovery Channel

After the hunt, ice age man chilled out - with a flute

He is better known for his hunting skills, but now it appears that ice age man did not merely chase prey - he was also fond of music.

German archaeologists revealed yesterday that they had discovered one of the world's oldest musical instruments, a 35,000-year-old flute carved from the tusk of a now-extinct woolly mammoth ... Guardian

Cliff carvings date back to Paleolithic age

The earliest cliff carvings in Damaidi in Zhongwei County of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region can be traced back 20,000 to 30,000 years, the late Paleolithic age, a Chinese archaeologist said ... Xinhua

Ice-age ivory flute found in German cave

A 35,000-year-old flute made from a woolly mammoth's ivory tusk has been unearthed in a German cave by archaeologists, says the University of Tuebingen.

The flute, one of the oldest musical instruments discovered, was pieced together from 31 fragments found in a cave in the Swabian mountains in southwestern Germany, the university said on Friday ... Reuters

Warum starb der Neandertaler aus?

Mindestens 200 000 Jahre hatte er Zeit, sich an das raue Klima in Europa zu gewöhnen, dann verschwand er nahezu schlagartig. Das rätselhafte Aussterben des Neandertalers beschäftigt die Anthropologen nach wie vor.

Es war eine kulturelle Revolution: Statt grobschlächtig behauener Steine tauchten plötzlich effektive und fein verarbeitete Werkzeuge auf. Es entstand - nahezu aus dem Nichts - eine figurative Kunst auf erstaunlich hohem Niveau, wie die fantasievollen Fresken in der Höhle von Chauvet oder die filigranen Elfenbeinfigürchen von der Schwäbischen Alb auf eindrucksvolle Weise zeigen. Vor 35 000 Jahren brach in Europa die Kulturstufe des Aurignacien an und läutete damit die jüngere Altsteinzeit, das Jungpaläolithikum, ein ... spektrumdirekt

Handy in a fight

Left-handers have aeons of violent history to thank for their existence, a team of French scientists has found.

Although left- and right-handers have co-existed since at least the upper palaeolithic, 40,000 years ago, the former are a minority in every human civilisation. But quite why they have persisted is a puzzle, because left-handers often have a lower birth weight, smaller body size and are more likely to suffer from certain medical disorders ... EducationGuardian.co.uk

New Book: Acheulean Culture in Peninsular India: An Ecological Perspective

In the Foreword of this book, India's venerable prehistoric archaeologist, V. N. Misra, states that, "Palaeolithic studies in India have made ... tremendous progress during the last four decades" although he opines that an understanding of human evolution and behavior from the record is still "fragmentary" and "incomplete." In an attempt to indicate what has been learned about the Acheulean, Raghunath Pappu has summarized the available evidence from a multitude of surveys and excavations ... RedNova News

Flint found in Gloucestershire

President of the Forest of Dean Archaeology Group, Dr Alf Webb got more than he bargained for while out on a mission to get a photograph for his new book. The 80-year-old archaeological expert, who is writing a book about the archaeology of the Dean, came across what he is certain is a spearhead from the Solutrean period which dates back to 18,000 BCE ... Stone Pages Archaeo News

Im Wohnzimmer der Feuersteins

Vor 13700 Jahren hinterließen Menschen in einer französischen Höhle Kunst, Werkzeuge und Fingerabdrücke. Nun rekonstruiert ein deutscher Forscher das Leben der Steinzeit ... Die Zeit