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During the coldest chapter of the Ice Age, when average temperatures in parts of Europe hovered below freezing year-round, survival demanded more than keen hunting skills. It required ingenuity, strategy—and good clothing.
At the open-air site of Kammern-Grubgraben in Austria’s Lower Waldviertel, archaeologists have pieced together evidence suggesting that some Ice Age communities adapted to the brutal conditions not only by changing what they hunted but by prioritizing what they wore. Their focus? Reindeer, prized not just for meat but for their extraordinary winter pelts.
Life on the Edge of Survival
Located on a windswept terrace overlooking the Kamp River, Kammern-Grubgraben bears signs of intensive winter use between 24,000 and 20,000 years ago, during the heart of the Last Glacial Maximum. Excavations, first begun in the 1980s and renewed in the 2010s, unearthed an abundance of stone tools, personal ornaments—and a striking concentration of Rangifer tarandus (reindeer) remains.
Rather than a broad, opportunistic diet, the inhabitants showed a distinct preference for hunting reindeer almost exclusively. While mammoth bones dominated earlier nearby Gravettian sites such as Krems-Hundssteig, the faunal record at Kammern-Grubgraben tells a different story: one of specialization.
"The reindeer skulls at Kammern-Grubgraben, still bearing antlers, point to winter deaths before the seasonal shedding," explains Kerstin Pasda of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, the study’s lead author.
Age analysis of the remains confirmed a targeted hunting pattern: calves and yearlings made up a large proportion of the reindeer assemblage, alongside prime-aged adults. Dental wear and cementum studies suggested that these hunts occurred exclusively during the cold months, from late autumn into deep winter.
Fur as a Lifeline
The researchers propose that these reindeer were not merely a source of calories. They were a critical resource for survival technology: winter hides.
Winter reindeer fur is uniquely adapted for insulation, with hollow hairs that trap heat and repel water—qualities that ethnographic studies show were highly valued among Arctic peoples.
"The fur of reindeer in winter is particularly valuable and convenient for the production of clothing for cold environments," Pasda notes.
Further strengthening this case is the remarkable number of eyed sewing needles found at the site—finely crafted tools capable of stitching tightly woven garments. The presence of such needles suggests a level of tailoring beyond simple draped skins, enabling fitted clothing that would have dramatically improved survival in sub-zero temperatures.
Rethinking Prehistoric Economy
The finds at Kammern-Grubgraben challenge a long-standing assumption: that Ice Age technologies were focused primarily on acquiring food. Instead, this site shows that clothing production, using targeted hunting strategies, may have been equally important.
Ian Gilligan of the University of Sydney, an expert on prehistoric clothing, who was not involved in the research, comments:
"This research illustrates a growing recognition among archaeologists that prehistoric technologies were often directed as much towards securing protection from the environment as towards procuring food."
Such adaptations likely made it possible for groups to stay year-round in colder regions previously considered too harsh for long-term occupation.
Threads Across Time
The shift toward tailored clothing echoes a broader evolutionary story. Humans spread into temperate and arctic environments only after developing sophisticated sewing technologies, a timeline that aligns with the appearance of eyed needles in the archaeological record.
Kammern-Grubgraben offers a glimpse into this pivotal adaptation—a moment when survival in a frozen world depended not only on what people hunted but how they clothed themselves afterward.
"The evidence from Kammern-Grubgraben reminds us that Ice Age innovation was as much about threads and fur as it was about spears and meat," Gilligan reflects.
As climate scientists warn of future environmental extremes, this Ice Age story of human resilience, ingenuity, and adaptation feels more timely than ever
Related Research & Suggested Reading:
* Gilligan, I. (2010). The Prehistoric Development of Clothing: Archaeological Evidence and Biological Implications. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 17(1), 15–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-009-9076-x
* Hoffecker, J. F. (2002). Desolate Landscapes: Ice-Age Settlement in Eastern Europe. Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n6zqg9
* Soffer, O., Adovasio, J. M., & Hyland, D. C. (2000). The “Venus” Figurines: Textiles, Basketry, Gender, and Status in the Upper Paleolithic. Current Anthropology, 41(4), 511–537. https://doi.org/10.1086/317382
* Reiss, L., Mayr, C., Pfeifer, S. J., Pasda, K., & Maier, A. (2025). Palaeoenvironmental Context of Upper Paleolithic Occupations in Central Europe During the Last Glacial Maximum. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-025-00215-4
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The Forgotten Migrant
When thinking about humanity’s migrations across continents, yeast is probably the last traveler that comes to mind. Yet new research led by Jacqueline Peña and her colleagues at the University of Georgia has revealed that wild strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae—the same species that leavens bread and ferments wine—carry silent records of ancient human journeys.
By examining over 300 genomes from yeast living quietly on the bark of oak and other trees, the team found that these seemingly wild populations are anything but untouched by human history. The patterns etched into their DNA trace events that stretch back to the last Ice Age, reflecting the ways humans moved, farmed, traded, and reshaped their environments.
“We are seeing distinct subpopulations within continents,” notes Jacqueline Peña, lead author of the study. “Even though these wild populations appear separate, they're not completely isolated from human activity.”
The study, published in Molecular Ecology, provides a rare look at how microorganisms have shadowed humanity’s expansion—and sometimes, how they’ve quietly rebelled against it.
A Wild Companion to Civilization
Although domesticated yeast has been shaping bread, beer, and wine since at least 7000 BCE, wild S. cerevisiae continued to live on trees, largely out of sight. Genetically, these forest populations are distinct from their domesticated cousins—but they also show unexpected scars and seams hinting at shared histories.
Through extensive genome analysis, researchers found that wild yeast populations in North America, Europe, and Japan likely originated from East Asia, diverging around 20,000 years ago—roughly when ice sheets were retreating and early humans began to domesticate plants.
“Approximate estimates of when forest lineages diverged coincide with the end of the last Ice Age, the spread of agriculture, and the onset of fermentation by humans,” the study explains.
The DNA of these treeside yeasts carries echoes of the very transformations that reshaped human societies.
Migration, Mixing, and the Great Wine Blight
One of the most surprising findings emerged when researchers noticed that yeast strains clinging to trees in southern Europe closely resembled those from the southeastern United States. The genetic link traces back to the 19th century, during the Great French Wine Blight.
When an invasive insect from North America devastated European vineyards, desperate vintners imported resistant grapevines from the American South. Along with the vines came stowaways—wild yeast, unknowingly grafted onto Europe's ancient soil.
“The imported American grapevines could have harbored North American yeast,” the team writes, noting that strains from Portugal and Slovenia now carry telltale genetic fingerprints from across the Atlantic.
In this way, human intervention inadvertently transported not just crops, but entire microbial lineages across oceans.
The Human Footprint in the Microscopic World
The research underscores a subtle but profound truth: even ancient and “wild” ecosystems bear the imprint of human action. Some wild yeast populations show clear signs of intermingling with domesticated strains—likely due to centuries of trade, farming, and migration.
Yet forest-dwelling S. cerevisiae have also maintained strong regional identities. In North America, researchers found several distinct lineages confined to different parts of the eastern United States. In Europe, finer substructures mapped closely to Iberia, Italy, Montenegro, and Greece.
This local diversity suggests that while human influence has been significant, it has not erased the natural evolutionary paths of these populations.
“Forests harbor many isolated yeast populations that are distinct from human-associated lineages,” the authors observe.
Understanding how these microorganisms navigate human-altered environments may offer clues not just to our past, but to how future ecosystems will respond to an increasingly globalized world.
A Microscopic Mirror of Human History
As studies like this deepen, they challenge the neat categories we often use to separate “natural” and “human-influenced” worlds. Just as language, crops, and livestock moved with migrating peoples, so too did tiny, unseen fellow travelers—altering landscapes in ways we are only beginning to recognize.
“If humans, without intending to, were moving microbes around thousands of years ago, just think about all the stuff that we are doing now,” remarks Douda Bensasson, senior author of the study. “We may be changing all kinds of things without knowing it.”
In the grooves of bark and the genetic twists of yeast, the story of humanity unfolds once again—not just in monuments of stone and bone, but in the living, breathing fabric of the forests themselves.
Additional Related Research
Here are some related studies you may want to explore:
* Wang, Q.-M., et al. (2012). "Surprisingly diverged populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in natural environments remote from human activity." Molecular Ecology, 21(22), 5404–5417. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05732.x
* Peter, J., et al. (2018). "Genome evolution across 1,011 Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolates." Nature, 556(7701), 339–344. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0030-5
* Almeida, P., et al. (2015). "A population genomics insight into the Mediterranean origins of wine yeast domestication." Molecular Ecology, 24(21), 5412–5427. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.13341
* Gayevskiy, V., Lee, S., & Goddard, M. R. (2016). "Saccharomyces eubayanus and the origin of lager beer yeast species Saccharomyces pastorianus." FEMS Yeast Research, 16(8). https://doi.org/10.1093/femsyr/fow076
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The Forgotten Burden
In the sun-drenched valleys of Bronze Age Nubia—modern-day Sudan—women moved through the rural landscape with baskets balanced on their heads and tumplines wrapped tightly around their foreheads. These were not symbolic acts of endurance. They were survival.
More than 3,500 years later, the imprint of that daily labor is still inscribed in bone.
At Abu Fatima, an ancient cemetery near the capital city of Kerma, a new study has taken a closer look at the skeletal remains of 30 individuals, unearthing physical traces of a world where the labor of women was essential, taxing—and all but erased from traditional historical narratives. The research, led by Jared Carballo and Uroš Matić, now published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, is a reminder that human history is often told through what survives—but also what is overlooked.
“In some way, the study reveals how women literally have carried the weight of society on their heads for millennia,” notes Carballo.
Bones as Biographies
Archaeology often begins with fragments—pottery, tools, a cracked tooth—but what happens when the evidence of daily life is the body itself?
Carballo and Matić's team employed a deeply interdisciplinary approach: osteological analysis, ethnography, and iconographic comparison across North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. The site at Abu Fatima provided a compelling case. Of the 14 women studied, many showed specific changes to the cervical vertebrae and upper skull—patterns consistent with long-term head-loading using tumplines, straps that pass from the forehead over the top of the head and connect to a load.
In contrast, male skeletons from the same cemetery showed signs of different stress: asymmetrical strain on the shoulders and arms, especially the right side—likely from shoulder- or arm-carrying methods.
One woman in particular, labeled individual 8A2, emerged as especially telling. She had lived past 50—an advanced age for the Bronze Age—and was buried with prestige items: a leather cushion and an ostrich feather fan. But her body told another story.
Her skull bore a deep depression behind the coronal suture, and her neck vertebrae showed evidence of severe osteoarthritis—consistent with decades of carrying weight by tumpline.
Chemical analysis of her dental enamel suggested she wasn’t born locally. She was a migrant who had likely adapted to the demands of rural life in Nubia—perhaps transporting water, food, or children across long distances in the heat.
Hers was a life of movement, strain, and invisible labor.
The Gendered Architecture of Bone
These findings support a growing current in anthropological research: that bones aren’t just biological—they’re cultural. They record how bodies move, how labor is divided, and how roles are rehearsed, imposed, and endured over time.
This perspective draws on concepts like body techniques (the culturally specific ways bodies are used in everyday life) and gender performativity (the idea that gender is enacted through repeated behaviors, not simply inherited). Together, they help explain how physical difference isn’t always about biology, but about experience.
“Bone modifications are not simply the result of aging,” the authors write.“They also reflect social patterns, such as the division of labor and gender roles.”
This daily burden was not merely physical. It was generational. Ethnographic records show that head-carrying—still common across rural Africa, Asia, and Latin America—is a learned technique, taught early and refined over time. Carballo’s team traced this practice not just through bones, but through ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, where Nubian women appear with baskets high atop their heads, performing labor that would never be mentioned in royal decrees or temple inscriptions.
Carriers of Memory
The archaeological record is full of silences. War leaves monuments. Trade leaves amphorae. But women’s labor—especially domestic or logistical—rarely leaves written traces.
Head-loading may seem mundane, but its physical toll reveals the foundational roles women played in ancient economies. Transporting food and water, moving goods between households or villages, even bearing children—this was the infrastructure of survival. And like so much women’s labor, it was essential yet historically invisible.
“Head-loading was not only a physical effort but also a material expression of inequality and resilience,” the study concludes.
In individual 8A2, we find more than arthritis. We find a story. A woman from elsewhere who spent her life in motion, whose every step left pressure on the spine and grooves in the bone. And when her body was finally still, she was buried with both status and wear—an emblem of how prestige and labor were not mutually exclusive.
Toward a More Complete Past
The Abu Fatima findings open new windows onto the social fabric of ancient Nubia. They suggest lines of future inquiry—about migration, logistics, women’s mobility, and the physical demands of motherhood and daily sustenance in ancient agrarian societies.
But they also raise important questions about what histories get told—and who gets left behind.
The story of human evolution has too often prioritized hunting over hauling, spear-throwing over child-carrying, war over water-fetching. But to understand ancient societies in full, researchers must look at the labor that built them—from the ground up.
Sometimes, that labor leaves behind amphorae or grain silos. Other times, it leaves behind a vertebra compressed by decades of silent work.
Related Research & Further Reading
* Schrader, S. A., & Smith, S. T. (2019). Gendered labor and bioarchaeology: Reconstructing women's work in the ancient Nile Valley. Current Anthropology, 60(3), 350–375. https://doi.org/10.1086/703171
* Ogundiran, A. (2020). The Yoruba: A New History. Indiana University Press. (Chapters on embodied labor and gender roles in West African archaeology)
* Robb, J., & Harris, O. (2013). The body in history: Europe from the Paleolithic to the future. Cambridge University Press.
* Kusimba, C. M. (2021). Matriarchs, merchants, and slaves: Archaeologies of social complexity in coastal Kenya. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 63, 101305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101305
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Farming After the Fire
The Neolithic Revolution has long been framed as a triumph of human ingenuity—the dawn of agriculture, of domestic animals, of sedentary villages. But what if this turning point wasn’t planned at all? What if it began as an act of survival?
A recent study by Prof. Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem offers a different lens. Published in the Journal of Soils and Sediments, the research proposes that widespread wildfires and hillslope erosion—not cultural innovation alone—may have created the ecological conditions that forced people to abandon foraging and begin farming across the southern Levant.
The shift, Frumkin argues, wasn’t just a matter of discovery. It was a response to catastrophe.
“These fires likely removed vast tracts of vegetation,” Frumkin writes.“This led to severe soil degradation on hillslopes and the accumulation of fertile soil in valley basins—ideal locations for early farming communities.”
A Landscape on the Edge
Frumkin’s team stitched together data from an unusual cross-section of the Earth: lakebeds, speleothems in caves, Dead Sea levels, and sediment cores from ancient soils. Each layer told part of the story. The most telling signal? Micro-charcoal embedded in lake sediments and cave formations dating to around 8,200 years ago.
This period aligns with the 8.2 kiloyear event—a dramatic climate dip tied to changes in solar radiation and monsoon circulation. In the Levant, it triggered intense, dry thunderstorms. Lightning strikes set the parched hills ablaze, torching forests and grasslands across what’s now Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.
“Our findings point to an intense period of natural wildfires and vegetation collapse caused by increased lightning during the early Holocene,” said Frumkin.
The fires were not isolated. They coincided with other disruptions: falling Dead Sea levels, shifts in carbon and strontium isotopes, and evidence of soil movement from uplands to lowlands.
From Hills to Valleys: Where Fertility Gathered
After the fires, the hills became unstable. Without roots to hold the earth, soil washed downslope during rains, accumulating in the valleys—low-lying, water-rich areas that became, quite literally, the cradle of agriculture.
The soil deposits in these basins were rich, reworked, and thick—prime ground for Neolithic settlements. Archaeological surveys show that many of the region’s earliest farming villages clustered along these alluvial fans and floodplains, especially in the Jordan Valley.
“Neolithic settlements in the southern Levant clustered over thick reworked soil deposits,” the study notes. “These soils, derived from eroded hillsides, offered both fertility and access to water—key ingredients for early agriculture.”
This geography of settlement suggests that farming didn’t begin where it was easiest to live—but where it was possible to survive.
Collapse, Not Choice
The popular narrative of the Neolithic often centers on progress. Humans, it is said, chose to sow, plant, domesticate. But Frumkin’s work adds a different voice to the chorus: adaptation, not ambition.
“This wasn’t a gradual cultural shift,” Frumkin argues. “It was a response to environmental collapse.”
In this version of prehistory, farming wasn’t a brilliant idea. It was what came after the forests fell and the hills began to bleed.
Archaeological layers show clear traces of this transformation. Flint tools give way to sickles. Storage pits emerge. Animal bones shift in species and age profile, reflecting herding. What’s missing is the gradual buildup that would mark a purely human-engineered transition.
Lessons in Fire and Soil
Today, the idea that climate change reshapes civilizations is no longer academic. But Frumkin’s study is a reminder that environmental crises have shaped humanity before—and may do so again.
His reconstruction of early Holocene southern Levant is not a romantic one. It’s a picture of charred ground, thinning forests, and collapsing ecosystems. Yet it’s also a story of resilience—of how humans, faced with fire and flood, turned ash into grain.
“Agriculture and settlement patterns were likely shaped by necessity, not just innovation,” the paper concludes.
This reframing does not diminish the Neolithic—it complicates it. Farming was not simply the birth of civilization. It was a way through crisis. And perhaps, a fragile one.
Further Reading and Related Research
* Rosen, A. M. (2007). Civilizing Climate: Social Responses to Climate Change in the Ancient Near East. Rowman Altamira.
* Weiss, H., & Bradley, R. S. (2001). What drives societal collapse? Science, 291(5504), 609–610. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.291.5504.609
* Bar-Yosef, O. (2011). Climatic fluctuations and early farming in West Asia. Current Anthropology, 52(S4), S175–S193. https://doi.org/10.1086/658368
* Maher, L. A., et al. (2011). Hunter-gatherers and early sedentism in the Jordan Valley. Journal of Field Archaeology, 36(1), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1179/009346911798356793
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Life After the Ice
The windswept floor of Mongolia’s Gobi Desert doesn’t readily reveal its secrets. But beneath its cracked sediment and the shifting shoreline of long-vanished lakes, archaeologists are beginning to piece together a story not just of survival—but of deep cultural adaptation.
In a new study published in Radiocarbon, a team led by Dr. Przemysław Bobrowski presents firm evidence that hunter-gatherer communities were living—and experimenting with pottery—along the paleolakes of the Gobi nearly 11,200 years ago. That’s nearly 2,000 years earlier than previously assumed for the region.
“The dates we have obtained show that the knowledge of making pottery vessels reached the Gobi Altai region almost 2,000 years earlier than previously thought,” Bobrowski explains. “Chronologically, they correspond, for example, to early dates for pottery from northern China.”
The study focuses on sites near Lake Baruun Khuree in the Tsakhiurtyn Hundi (Flint Valley) region, roughly 700 kilometers south of Ulaanbaatar. This high desert basin, ringed by the Arts Bogdyn Nuruu massif, has long been known for its flint outcrops and Paleolithic tool workshops. But the new findings suggest that its human story stretches well into the early Holocene—with pottery, ostrich eggshell jewelry, and evidence of lakeshore settlement.
A Quiet Revolution in Clay
In the archaeological record of East and Central Asia, the earliest ceramics are often associated with the late Upper Paleolithic to Mesolithic transition—typically tied to slow-burning hearths, storage pits, and seasonal camps. Yet the Baruun Khuree sites offer something more definitive: a tight correlation between pottery fragments and securely dated hearths, using eleven radiocarbon samples calibrated between 11,251 and 10,535 years before present.
This matters.
For decades, Mongolia’s earliest pottery had been pegged to around 9,600 cal BP. The new dates from Baruun Khuree push the timeline back by nearly two millennia, placing the Gobi alongside some of the earliest ceramic-producing cultures of northeast Asia.
The ceramics themselves are distinctive—gray to reddish in color, with a thickness rarely exceeding 7 to 8 millimeters. Their simplicity belies their significance: they represent not just an innovation, but the transmission of an idea across landscapes that, by modern standards, seem forbiddingly vast.
Ostrich Beads and the Material Memory of the Steppe
The Gobi Desert was never a cultural void. Among the most evocative finds from the Baruun Khuree sites are fragments of ostrich eggshells—some fashioned into pendants, others into beads.
These aren’t random curiosities. They speak to long-standing symbolic practices in early Holocene Central Asia, where Struthio anderssoni, the now-extinct East Asian ostrich, once roamed. The production of eggshell ornaments—requiring precise drilling, grinding, and polishing—suggests skilled craftsmanship and cultural continuity with Pleistocene traditions found further south and east.
“Ostrich eggshell beads and pendants were discovered at the excavated sites,” the team reports. “These artifacts, along with the lithics and ceramics, help define a distinctive material culture near the Gobi’s paleolakes.”
Lakes that Remember
The paleolakes themselves—now little more than saline flats and ghosted shorelines—were once freshwater basins fed by glacial melt and Holocene precipitation. During the post-Last Glacial Maximum warming, these lakes became magnets for human activity.
Archaeological survey around the paleolake network south of the massif revealed not just occupation, but deliberate site selection. Camps like FV 133, FV 134A, and FV 139 offered access to freshwater, toolstone, game, and—crucially—social space.
“Surface prospection revealed the existence of a network of paleolakes... and numerous sites associated with communities inhabiting this area in the Pleistocene,” says Bobrowski.
One site, FV 139, yielded the oldest dates: between 11,251 and 11,196 cal BP. Younger occupations—still well within the early Holocene—were found at the other Baruun Khuree sites. Together, these chronologies point to seasonal or cyclical return, perhaps over multiple generations.
Pottery Without Agriculture
What makes this find especially compelling is what’s missing: domesticated plants or animals. Unlike Neolithic cultures in the Near East or China, these early Holocene groups in Mongolia were foragers—not farmers.
Yet they made pottery.
This defies the classic narrative that ties ceramics to agricultural surplus. Instead, it echoes findings from Japan’s Jōmon culture or Siberian taiga groups, where ceramic innovation arose among complex hunter-gatherers managing aquatic or lacustrine ecosystems.
“Baruun Khuree appears to represent one of the earliest securely dated episodes of Holocene hunter-gatherer activities in the Gobi desert,” the authors argue.
In this view, pottery may have emerged not from sedentism, but from mobility: light, transportable containers for boiling, brewing, or storing precious resources near lake margins.
Toward a Deeper Timeline of Gobi Prehistory
Mongolia’s archaeological record is sparse when it comes to early ceramics. The Baruun Khuree sites may prove pivotal—not just for recalibrating the timeline of pottery in the region, but for reframing how early Holocene communities adapted to changing environments after the Ice Age.
The team is continuing work on both the ceramic and eggshell assemblages, with further publications expected. As Bobrowski notes, this is just the beginning of what these sites can tell us:
“We are currently carrying out several specialist analyses... and another publication focusing on the pottery and ostrich eggshell adornments we discovered is in preparation.”
The Gobi, long viewed as a marginal frontier, is emerging as a center of innovation—one where people retooled their material worlds to meet the demands of a warming planet, drying lakes, and shifting migratory patterns.
Clay and shell, it turns out, still speak.
Related Research and Further Reading
* Kuzmin, Y. V. (2006). Chronology of the earliest pottery in East Asia: Progress and pitfalls. Antiquity, 80(308), 362–371. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00093676
* Jordan, P., & Zvelebil, M. (2009). Ceramics before farming: The dispersal of pottery among prehistoric Eurasian hunter-gatherers. Left Coast Press.
* Zhang, C., & Hung, H.-C. (2010). The emergence of agriculture in southern China. Antiquity, 84(323), 11–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00099737
* Kuzmin, Y. V., & Shewkomud, I. Y. (2023). Early ceramics in the Russian Far East and Mongolia: A comparative review. Archaeological Research in Asia, 35, 100416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2023.100416
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Tombs Without Thrones
High on the grassy ridgelines of Neolithic Ireland, where fog slips across stone like whispered memory, early farmers raised monuments that still loom over the living. Passage tombs like Newgrange and Knowth, older than the pyramids, have long been cast as the burial vaults of prehistoric kings and queens. But new genetic evidence is unsettling that tale.
A recent study published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal led by Neil Carlin of University College Dublin peels back the earth not just from bones, but from assumptions. The analysis of ancient DNA from 55 individuals buried across multiple Irish tombs suggests that these were not family mausoleums for ruling elites, as once believed. Instead, they may have been gathering points for scattered communities—communal resting places for a far more complex, cooperative society.
“We cannot say that these tombs were the final resting places of a dynastic lineage who restricted access to ‘burial’ within these tombs to their relatives,” the researchers write.
From Hearth to Monument
The Irish Neolithic (c. 3900–2500 BCE) began with modest tombs—court tombs, portal tombs, and simple stone chambers that mirrored the small, genetically tight-knit communities that built them. But by 3300 BCE, something changed. People began constructing passage tombs: large, carefully engineered burial mounds accessed by stone corridors. These tombs often housed dozens of individuals—and genetic data now suggests they were anything but close family.
Carlin and his colleagues combed through both genetic profiles and archaeological context. They found that while earlier tombs reflect intimate kinship networks, later megalithic monuments show a marked rise in genetic diversity. Few of the buried individuals shared immediate ancestry.
“This reflects how the kin groups using these tombs were interacting on a larger scale and more frequently choosing to have children with others from within these extended communities,” the team concluded.
Rather than entombing their bloodlines, these people were memorializing their collectives.
Rethinking Ritual, Kinship, and Power
Earlier interpretations of Irish passage tombs leaned heavily on hierarchy. Previous DNA work had even proposed elite lineages with incestuous ties, invoking images of Neolithic dynasties. But Carlin’s study reframes these sites not as symbols of dominance, but of diplomacy.
This wasn’t a society where power flowed from blood. It was one where participation mattered more than pedigree. Passage tombs, it seems, became ceremonial gathering places—perhaps visited cyclically for ritual feasts, monument maintenance, and the burial of the recently dead. A sort of sacred commons, where belonging was marked by shared effort, not shared genes.
The idea finds echoes elsewhere in Neolithic Europe. From the Orkney Islands to Brittany, megalithic architecture often suggests collective building, with few signs of hierarchy. The Irish case adds genetic substance to that architectural reading.
“Instead of seeing the Neolithic period as one ruled by powerful dynasties,” Carlin suggests, “we should view it as a more equal society.”
The researchers stop short of calling it egalitarian in the modern sense. But the data strongly suggest that authority—if it existed—was more horizontal than vertical.
After Four Centuries, a Shift
For nearly 400 years, Ireland’s early farmers buried their dead simply. But by the time passage tombs appeared around 3300 BCE, societies had grown in scale and complexity. With this came a shift in how kinship was understood—not just genetically, but socially and politically.
What triggered this change? The study doesn’t pin it to a single cause, but hints at wider transformations: population growth, expanding trade networks, and the forging of new regional identities. Burial, once a private act, became public performance. And tombs became the stage.
“These were times when the past was being materially constructed in stone, in acts of commemoration that helped shape social memory and identity,” the authors write.
DNA, Stone, and What Comes Next
The implications ripple beyond Ireland. For archaeologists, this study is a reminder to reconsider assumptions about ancestry, authority, and architecture. For anthropologists, it’s an invitation to explore how social bonds form and function beyond bloodlines.
As Carlin and colleagues note, more work is needed—new ancient genomes, deeper contextual analysis, and better integration of material culture and biology. But the shift in perspective is already underway.
Neolithic Ireland wasn’t just a land of farmers and tomb builders. It was a place where people reimagined community—where identity may have been measured not by lineage, but by shared lives and collective memory etched in stone.
Further Reading & Related Research
* Booth, T. J., & Brück, J. (2020). Death is not the end: Secondary burial in Neolithic Britain. Antiquity, 94(373), 1111–1129. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.129
* Sánchez-Quinto, F., et al. (2019). Megalithic tombs in western and northern Neolithic Europe were linked to a kindred society. PNAS, 116(19), 9469–9474. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818037116
* Furholt, M. (2021). Mobility and social differentiation in the European Neolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 62, 101294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101294
* Skoglund, P., & Mathieson, I. (2018). Ancient genomics and the peopling of the Americas. Science, 362(6419), eaav5447. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav5447
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In the vast timeline of human evolution, one question has nagged at researchers more than most: how did cooperation, a risky and often costly behavior, come to define Homo sapiens?
A recent study out of the University of Tsukuba offers an unexpected answer. It wasn't stability, safety, or predictability that shaped our social instincts—it was the opposite. Through computational models based on evolutionary game theory, Masaki Inaba and Eizo Akiyama argue that environmental chaos may have pushed humans toward cooperation, particularly among scattered and resource-strapped groups.
Published in PLOS Complex Systems, the study reframes the widely discussed “variability selection hypothesis” (VSH). Originally proposed to explain the emergence of enhanced cognitive abilities during the Middle Stone Age (MSA), the VSH posits that fluctuating African environments—oscillating between arid and humid phases—forced early humans to develop better brains. But Inaba and Akiyama suggest the pressures may have run deeper. They may have fostered not just better thinkers, but better collaborators.
“While the variability selection hypothesis has traditionally focused on individual cognitive adaptations,” the authors write, “our model demonstrates that environmental instability may also have been crucial in shaping collective behavior.”
When the Weather Doesn’t Hold, the Group Must
Using multi-agent simulations set across virtual regions experiencing differing degrees of environmental volatility, the researchers constructed two key models:
* Regional variability – where some areas were stable while others were unpredictable.
* Universal variability – where all areas experienced similar shifts.
Their results point to a striking conclusion. When different regions varied independently—when some were flush with resources and others were destitute—cooperation thrived. This allowed individuals or groups in harsher regions to form cooperative strategies to survive, often gaining from indirect reciprocity or inter-group sharing.
“In conditions of regional environmental variability,” the authors note, “cooperators gain footholds by exploiting imbalances in resource distribution, establishing niches in areas where defection would otherwise dominate.”
In contrast, when environmental stress hit all areas equally (universal variability), cooperation floundered. With no safe zones and no favorable gradients, cooperation provided few immediate benefits and no long-term security.
This nuanced conclusion reframes how archaeologists might look at the social behavior of early humans, especially in Africa between 300,000 and 50,000 years ago—a period marked by extreme climate swings, as seen in geological records from Lake Malawi and marine cores from the Horn of Africa.
Implications for the Evolution of Sociality
The authors connect their findings to a broader theoretical framework: cooperation isn't a luxury of abundance; it’s a strategy for managing scarcity. In contexts where risk and resource unpredictability are unevenly distributed across space, sociality can be a hedge against extinction.
That idea fits with archaeological observations from the African MSA. Artifacts from sites like Blombos Cave in South Africa and Olorgesailie in Kenya suggest complex behaviors—ochre use, shell bead production, long-distance obsidian transport—that imply trust, planning, and collaboration across groups.
This aligns with the growing body of work tying environmental instability to behavioral innovation. In periods of environmental stress, humans didn’t just react—they adapted socially. They may have shared tools, joined forces on hunting expeditions, or formed kin networks across landscapes fragmented by climate oscillations.From Prehistory to Policy
Although grounded in deep time, the implications extend to the present. Inaba and Akiyama suggest that modern societies facing global-scale variability—climate change, pandemics, geopolitical shifts—could benefit from understanding how cooperation emerged in the past. Instead of viewing large-scale crises as times of fragmentation, their model implies such moments might enable collaborative behavior, given the right structural incentives.
“Our findings,” the researchers write, “highlight the importance of asymmetries in risk and opportunity in fostering cooperative strategies—not just in prehistory, but in contemporary policy contexts.”
The takeaway? Cooperation is not an evolutionary accident that emerged during tranquil times. It may be one of the most durable legacies of chaos.
Related Research
* Potts, R. (1996). Evolution and environmental change in early human prehistory. Current Anthropology, 37(S1), S1–S38.https://doi.org/10.1086/204472
* Brooks, A. S., Yellen, J. E., et al. (2018). Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa. Science, 360(6384), 90–94.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao2646
* Foley, R. (1999). The evolutionary consequences of lateral and temporal variation in climatic and ecological conditions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 354(1379), 1957–1965.https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1999.0537
* Stiner, M. C., & Kuhn, S. L. (2006). Changes in the "connectedness" and resilience of Paleolithic societies in Mediterranean ecosystems. Human Ecology, 34(4), 693–712.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-006-9029-0
* Wadley, L. (2015). Those marvellous millennia: the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 50(2), 155–226.https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2015.1039236
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In a limestone cavern carved into the flanks of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains, archaeologists recently recovered an object no larger than a matchstick—yet carrying profound implications. Found amid layers of Mesolithic debris in Damjili Cave, Azerbaijan, this human figurine—crafted from sandstone with a striped belt and stylized coiffure—offers a rare glimpse into the symbolic world of hunter-gatherers teetering on the cusp of the Neolithic.
The object, just 51 mm in length and 15 mm wide, lacks facial features. It is faceless, but not formless. A neat hairstyle curls toward the back, and a carved belt wraps the torso, perhaps denoting identity, status, or gender—though the figurine’s sex remains debated. According to a collaborative report published by Japanese and Azerbaijani researchers in Archaeological Research in Asia, this is the first such artifact known from Mesolithic layers in the South Caucasus. Its presence is stirring new conversations about ideology, identity, and artistic expression during a key turning point in Eurasian prehistory.
“We are seeing a rare symbolic artifact from a time and place where such expressions are nearly absent,” said Yutaka Nishiaki, lead author of the study and professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Tokyo. “It marks a conceptual shift, suggesting that the construction of human identity—beyond survival—was becoming increasingly important during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.”
A Region in Transition
Damjili Cave has long been known as a cultural palimpsest. Nestled in the Gazakh district of northwestern Azerbaijan, the cave preserves archaeological deposits that span over 100,000 years. But recent excavations, led by the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences in collaboration with Japanese institutions, have targeted the transitional period between the Mesolithic and Neolithic—roughly 12,000 to 8,000 years ago.
This was an era of profound change in the South Caucasus. Climate shifts at the end of the Pleistocene transformed ecosystems. Mobile foraging bands began experimenting with food storage, semi-permanent dwellings, and new toolkits. Yet symbolic artifacts from this period in the region have been frustratingly rare.
That’s what makes the figurine from Damjili exceptional.
“This find plugs a symbolic hole in the Mesolithic archaeology of the Caucasus,” said Ulviyya Safarova, the Azerbaijani archaeologist who discovered the figurine during the 2023 field season. “We know these communities were innovating technologically, but now we can trace how their inner symbolic lives may have been changing, too.”
Figurines Beyond Fertility
Human figurines from prehistoric contexts often stir debates around meaning. In Paleolithic Europe, so-called "Venus figurines" have traditionally been interpreted as fertility symbols, matriarchal deities, or even Paleolithic pornography. But more recent scholarship urges caution, emphasizing local context and function over universal interpretation.
At Damjili, the figurine’s belt and hairstyle seem intentional, but no overt sexual features are present.
That hypothesis aligns with recent theories that see figurines not just as ritual objects but also as tools for negotiating emerging social complexity. As populations became more sedentary, competition for resources and space would have demanded new forms of group cohesion—identity became as important as survival.
Made of Sandstone, Shaped by Culture
The sandstone figurine underwent non-destructive imaging and geochemical analysis in Japanese laboratories, confirming its anthropogenic origin. Its stylized body contrasts sharply with utilitarian stone tools from the same layer, which include microliths and bladelets. While those tools spoke to subsistence, the figurine whispers of belief, memory, and personhood.
It is worth noting that sandstone is not native to the immediate cave environment, implying that the material—or the finished object—was brought in from elsewhere.
“This object was not incidental,” Nishiaki noted. “Its production, transport, and deposition required intention. That’s what makes it valuable as a marker of symbolic cognition.”
The figurine’s presence alongside other Mesolithic tools suggests it was part of everyday life rather than a one-off ceremonial deposit. In this sense, it may be closer to a personal amulet or social token than to later Neolithic fertility statues.
Reassessing the South Caucasus
The Damjili figurine joins a growing corpus of prehistoric portable art found across Eurasia, but it stands out for both its context and its age. In the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia, human figurines proliferate by the Neolithic, often in clay or limestone. But the South Caucasus has remained understudied, partly due to political factors and limited excavation seasons.
Finds like this suggest that symbolic life in the region was more robust than previously believed.
“The figurine compels us to think of Mesolithic people in the Caucasus not as passive foragers awaiting the Neolithic ‘package’ but as active participants in cultural innovation,” said Raven Garvey, an anthropologist not involved in the study. “The symbolic world was already blooming.”
Related Research
Here are some studies that provide valuable context to the Damjili Cave discovery:
* Minaev, P. V., & Fedorov, V. A. (2023). Symbolic behavior during the Upper Paleolithic: Reassessing the role of portable art in early Eurasia. Quaternary International. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2023.06.002
* Goring-Morris, A. N., & Belfer-Cohen, A. (2018). From the Epipaleolithic to the Neolithic in the Near East: Where is the evolution? Current Anthropology, 59(S18), S571–S584. https://doi.org/10.1086/699884
* Soffer, O., Adovasio, J. M., & Hyland, D. C. (2000). The “Venus” figurines: Textiles, basketry, gender, and status in the Upper Paleolithic. Current Anthropology, 41(4), 511–537. https://doi.org/10.1086/317383
* Bar-Yosef Mayer, D. E., Vandermeersch, B., & Bar-Yosef, O. (2009). Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic Qafzeh Cave, Israel: indications for modern behavior. Journal of Human Evolution, 56(3), 307–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.10.005
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The Marsh Ambush: What a 300,000-Year-Old Horse Hunt Reveals About Early Human Cooperation
A horse bone bed in northern Germany offers rare insight into the minds and methods of pre-modern humans—and how deep the roots of social intelligence may go.
On the edge of a shallow lake in what is now Lower Saxony, Germany, a group of hunters closed in on a herd of wild horses. It was late summer, perhaps early autumn, some 300,000 years ago. The animals had followed a familiar path through floodplain grasses to drink. As they reached the shore, something ancient stirred among the reeds.
Hidden there, armed with wooden spears, the hunters waited.
What unfolded next was no improvisation. It was a coordinated ambush—one requiring knowledge of terrain, animal behavior, and the actions of others. It may have ended in a moment of frenzy, with mares and foals brought down in muddy water, but it was conceived long before the herd reached the lake. It had to be.
This is the scene reconstructed by archaeologists from evidence at the site of Schöningen 13 II-4, where thousands of horse bones, butchered with precision and scattered in seasonal clusters, suggest that communal hunting—once considered a hallmark of Homo sapiens—was already well underway in the Middle Pleistocene.
“We’re looking at a highly structured social and cognitive event,” said zooarchaeologist Jarod Hutson of the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center in Germany. “This wasn’t a matter of chance or instinct. It was cooperative planning.”
A Strategic Kill
The Schöningen horse site has been excavated for decades, but recent analysis of over 9,000 bones, including jaws, ribs, and long bones, has added depth to the story. The remains represent at least 54 wild horses, many killed in their prime and butchered for marrow, liver, and fat-rich tissue. Tool marks show deliberate dismemberment. Notably, there are few bones from adolescent horses—individuals who tend to break away from family groups and are harder to predict. This absence suggests that hunters intentionally targeted family herds, likely because of their consistent group behavior.
“Family herds are predictable,” said Hutson. “And that predictability made them vulnerable.”
Hunters exploited topography and group structure. Herd behavior was used against the animals. Lake mud became a trap. Juveniles slowed the group. Sentinels likely redirected the herd from higher ground. Kill zones were selected and prepared.
This was not the work of scattered foragers. It was an enterprise.
Weapons from a World Before Fire
Perhaps the most famous finds at Schöningen are the wooden spears—some of the oldest known in the world. Ten have now been recovered, along with dagger-like sticks, splitting tools, and over 1,500 stone implements. But there's no sign of fire. No hearths. No burned bones. If the hunters ate on-site, they likely consumed raw organ meats before transporting other parts elsewhere.
The spears, carefully carved and balanced, were not crude clubs. One, known as “Spear II,” measures more than 2 meters long, with a weighted base and tapered point—reminiscent of javelins used by athletes today.
“They understood aerodynamics, even if they couldn’t have named it,” said archaeologist Ashley Lemke, who studies ancient hunting strategies. “They were building tools with specific forms and purposes.”
More Than Survival
The hunting party at Schöningen may have included dozens of individuals—possibly men, women, and children—each with a role. Some drove the herd. Others delivered the kill. Still others butchered and distributed meat. If this sounds familiar, it should: similar strategies were observed among 19th-century Plains societies in North America and forager groups in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Communal hunting creates bonds,” said Eugène Morin, who has studied cooperative hunting among Indigenous groups across continents. “It’s about food, but it’s also about coordination, signaling, memory, and trust.”
Those intangible elements—the ones that don't fossilize—are what make Schöningen extraordinary. The bones hint at more than biology. They suggest anticipation. Division of labor. Perhaps even storytelling after the hunt.
A Wider Pattern Across Deep Time
Schöningen isn’t alone. Sites like Gesher Benot Ya’aqov in Israel (780,000 years ago) and Gran Dolina in Spain (400,000 years ago) also show evidence of systematic, group-based hunting. In Spain, Neanderthal ancestors drove bison off ledges. In Israel, prime-aged deer were repeatedly harvested from lakeshores.
In Germany, more recent Neanderthal groups left behind evidence of hunting elephants at Neumark-Nord—massive undertakings that required teamwork and foresight. Across these contexts, a pattern is emerging: early humans and their relatives hunted not as scattered opportunists, but as organized, tactical cooperators.
“They weren’t wolves or orcas following instinct,” said Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, who has studied communal hunts at Atapuerca. “They were planning, strategizing. That kind of behavior demands symbolic thought.”
And perhaps even language.
Rethinking the ‘Modern’ in Human Behavior
For decades, archaeologists framed the emergence of modern human behavior as a sudden cognitive shift around 50,000 years ago. Art, ritual, language—all seemed to bloom at once. But the record now suggests a more gradual evolution, one that began hundreds of thousands of years earlier.
At Schöningen, no art has been found. No graves. No beads. But there is strategy, collaboration, and memory—a set of behaviors that, in many ways, define our species.
“The idea that planning, cooperation, and innovation belong only to Homo sapiens doesn’t hold anymore,” said Mark White of Durham University. “We’re seeing tactical, discerning, highly effective hunters in much earlier periods.”
Further Reading and Related Research
* Morin, E., et al. (2024)."Why do humans hunt cooperatively? Ethnohistoric data reveal the contexts, advantages, and evolutionary importance of communal hunting." Current Anthropology, 65(5), 876–921.https://doi.org/10.1086/732354
* Rodríguez-Hidalgo, A., et al. (2017)."Human predatory behavior and the social implications of communal hunting at Gran Dolina." Journal of Human Evolution, 105, 89–122.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.01.007
* Gaudzinski-Windheuser, S., et al. (2023)."Widespread evidence for elephant exploitation by Last Interglacial Neanderthals on the North European plain." PNAS, 120(50), e2309427120.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2309427120
* White, M., et al. (2016)."Shoot first, ask questions later: Interpretative narratives of Neanderthal hunting." Quaternary Science Reviews, 140, 1–20.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.03.004
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At first glance, Tel Shiqmona appears unassuming—a rocky outcrop overlooking the Mediterranean just south of modern-day Haifa. But beneath its surface, archaeologists have found what may be the most robust evidence yet of a long-standing, industrial-scale dye production facility operating between 1100 and 600 BCE. Not for clay, copper, or olive oil, but for something far more elusive: color.
And not just any color.
Purple, long a marker of prestige in the ancient Mediterranean, wasn’t merely an aesthetic choice. In the Iron Age, wearing Tyrian purple was often a sign of political power, spiritual authority, or dynastic wealth. Now, a team of archaeologists, chemists, and historians has traced that power to a gritty workshop where craftspeople crushed marine snails, fermented their innards, and produced one of the most expensive pigments of the ancient world.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to document half a millennium of continuous, large-scale production of mollusk-based purple dye in a single place,”said Golan Shalvi, lead author of the study and director of excavations at the University of Haifa’s Zinman Institute of Archaeology.
The findings, published in PLOS ONE, reframe how archaeologists understand Iron Age economies—not just as agricultural or military engines, but as specialized manufacturing hubs deeply embedded in regional politics and global trade.
A Color Born from Rot
Tyrian purple doesn’t come easily. The dye is made from the hypobranchial gland of several Mediterranean sea snails—Hexaplex trunculus, Bolinus brandaris, and Stramonita haemastoma. Extracting the dye requires not only killing hundreds of snails per gram of pigment, but also a precise fermentation process that includes controlled exposure to air and, sometimes, heat. The gland’s secretion starts off green and only turns purple upon oxidation, a transformation as magical as it is malodorous.
Despite its historical fame, few sites have offered clear evidence of where and how this dye was produced. Shell middens and colored sherds have turned up sporadically across the Levant and Aegean, but Shiqmona is the first place where an entire purple dye facility—vats, tools, architecture, and residue—has been found and contextualized within a diachronic archaeological record.
“What we see at Shiqmona is more than sporadic shell processing. It’s a vertically integrated dye production complex, sustained over centuries,” said Ayelet Gilboa, co-author and senior archaeologist at the University of Haifa.
A City That Smelled of Snails
Shiqmona was no sleepy fishing village. Excavations show the site housed a series of workshops, each with massive clay vats, some over 70 centimeters wide, many stained with a deep purple band where oxidized dye once sloshed. Chemical analyses confirmed the pigment’s origin from Hexaplex trunculus.
The site yielded over 175 artifacts connected to dye manufacture: vat fragments, crushed shells, grinding stones, and purple-streaked potsherds. Many of these were found inside buildings—contrary to long-held assumptions that the smell of rotting snails would have pushed production outside settlement walls.
“There’s been a myth in the literature that these dye facilities were remote or hidden. But Shiqmona shows the opposite. The industry was part of the built environment,” said Shalvi. “This was a place of work, noise, and probably a lot of smell—but also expertise.”
Some of the vats were large enough to hold 350 liters of fluid. Based on ceramic petrography, they were made locally with coastal clay rich in foraminiferal chalk and marine microfauna—fabrics specific to the Carmel coast.
Craft and Power in the Iron Age Levant
Shiqmona’s industrial output waxed and waned with political fortunes. Production ramped up in the 9th century BCE, coinciding with the rise of the northern Kingdom of Israel. Later, during Assyrian occupation, the site flourished again. When the Babylonians sacked the region in the 6th century BCE, production stopped—and so did the occupation of Shiqmona.
The site’s stratigraphy mirrors larger historical arcs, suggesting that purple dye wasn't merely a luxury good but also a node in a larger economic and symbolic system.
“This dye wasn’t just for elites—it helped create elites,” said Naama Sukenik, an Israel Antiquities Authority expert on ancient textiles. “Access to and control over this kind of production would have reinforced status in both secular and ritual spheres.”
What the Snails Still Tell Us
Today, the same rocky reef that once hosted abundant Muricidae is a marine nature preserve. The mollusks have declined across the Mediterranean, stressed by pollution and warming seas. But on calm days, divers still spot them clinging to the rocks near Shiqmona—biological ghosts of an industry that shaped empires.
Modern analysts aren’t just mining color from the past. They’re reconstructing how ancient people organized labor, managed marine resources, and produced craft knowledge over generations. In the process, they're sketching a more complete picture of what it meant to be a node in the ancient global economy—not just for kings, but for craftspeople.
Related Research
* Sukenik, N., et al. (2021). “Late Bronze and Iron Age textiles from the Southern Levant and the dyeing technologies they reflect.” Antiquity, 95(383), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.30
* Mylona, D. (2013). “Purple-dye production in the Aegean: archaeological, historical and ethnographic approaches.” In The Aegean and its Cultures (eds. Galanaki et al.). INSTAP Academic Press.
* Koren, Z. C. (2005). “High-performance liquid chromatography of royal purple dye in ancient textiles.” Journal of Archaeological Science, 32(3), 417–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2004.11.005
* Shalvi, G., et al. (2025). “Tel Shiqmona during the Iron Age: A first glimpse into an ancient Mediterranean purple dye ‘factory.’” PLOS ONE, 20(4), e0321082. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0321082
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In the shadows of the Beni-Snassen Mountains, tucked into a cave called Taforalt, archaeologists have been piecing together an unexpected story about the rituals of late Pleistocene humans. Not just about who they buried—but what they buried with them. Among the artifacts and bones of those interred are the carefully butchered remains of Otis tarda, the great bustard, a bird that once roamed the open plains of North Africa in numbers.
Now, researchers say, those bones tell a story not just about a species in decline, but about a species—our own—trying to make meaning of life and death.
A Bird of Ceremony
The great bustard is not an easy bird to ignore. Males can weigh up to 18 kilograms, placing them among the heaviest animals capable of flight. Their courtship displays are as elaborate as their plumage, and their preferred habitat—open grasslands—makes them conspicuous. Today, only a handful survive in Morocco, their population isolated and critically endangered.
But 15,000 years ago, the bird was more than just a presence on the plains. In the archaeological layers of Taforalt, also known as Grotte des Pigeons, researchers have unearthed not only bustard bones, but strong evidence of their ritual use.
“The repeated presence of butchered bustard remains in the graves suggests a deliberate and symbolic act,” said ornithologist Joanne Cooper of the Natural History Museum in London. “It wasn’t casual consumption. These birds were selected and prepared for something more meaningful.”
Ritual Feasting in a Cemetery Cave
The burials at Taforalt are some of the oldest known in Africa, dating back nearly 15,000 years. Dozens of human skeletons have been found there, some seated, some accompanied by grave goods—and, in certain cases, pieces of great bustards.
One such grave, identified as Individual 14, contained a large male bustard's sternum, bearing precise cut marks. It was laid beside the human’s legs, likely placed there with intention. Another bustard bone from the cave carries what appears to be a human bite mark—puncture wounds made by upper canines, with no matching indent from the incisors, a detail consistent with the local cultural practice of tooth evulsion.
“The positioning of these remains, and the anatomical locations of the cuts, point to a specific way of processing and consuming the birds,” said Cooper. “It resembles the kind of structured feasting we associate with ritual contexts.”
The birds were not abundant in the mountains surrounding the cave. Early humans would have had to travel across the plains to hunt them, then haul their massive carcasses back up to the burial site. That effort suggests intentionality—a ceremonial behavior involving food, memory, and perhaps, offerings to the dead.
A Cultural Link That Spans Millennia
The evidence from Taforalt does more than document the diet of early North Africans. It helps resolve a long-standing question about the great bustard’s status in the region. Some researchers had argued that the species was a relatively recent arrival in Morocco, perhaps crossing over from Iberia in historic times.
Radiocarbon dating of the bustard bones—many with signs of juvenile development, indicating year-round hunting—places them squarely within the Late Pleistocene. The birds were not only present but breeding locally, and they appear to have been a familiar part of the landscape and cultural imagination.
“This assemblage confirms that great bustards were a long-term, native part of Morocco’s fauna,” Cooper noted. “They weren’t just hunted. They were known.”
Extinction, Memory, and the Future
Today, the Moroccan population of great bustards numbers fewer than 80 individuals, confined to a tiny range near Tangier. While the birds have survived for millennia, human pressures—habitat loss, hunting, and more recently, collisions with power lines—are pushing them toward disappearance.
Ironically, their oldest known interaction with humans was one of reverence.
“Understanding that these birds held cultural and possibly spiritual meaning for our ancestors might help build modern conservation support,” said Cooper. “They were part of people’s identity, not just their subsistence.”
If early humans could expend energy to transport and prepare these birds for burial feasts, perhaps today’s societies can mobilize to protect the last of them.
Related Research
* Munro, N.D. & Grosman, L. (2010).Early evidence (ca. 12,000 B.P.) for feasting at a burial cave in Israel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(35), 15362–15366.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1001809107
* Alonso, J.C., et al. (2009).Genetic diversity of the great bustard in Iberia and Morocco: risks from current population fragmentation. Conservation Genetics, 10, 379–390.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-008-9580-9
* Humphrey, L.T., et al. (2012).Iberomaurusian funerary behaviour: Evidence from Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, Morocco. Journal of Human Evolution, 62(2), 261–273.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.11.001
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Roughly 41,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field—our planet’s protective shield—flickered and faltered. The magnetic poles drifted from their usual places, the field weakened to a tenth of its modern strength, and aurorae flared over continents that rarely see them. This episode, known as the Laschamps excursion, did not just create celestial fireworks. According to new research, it may have also reshaped the evolutionary story of humans in Europe and beyond.
A study led by Agnit Mukhopadhyay and colleagues at the University of Michigan has reconstructed Earth’s geospace system during the Laschamps event with unprecedented detail. Their three-dimensional models show a planet bathed in increased ultraviolet and cosmic radiation—especially across Europe and northern Africa—at precisely the moment when Homo sapiens was expanding and Homo neanderthalensis was fading from the archaeological record.
A Planet Under Radiative Siege
The Earth’s magnetic field is more than a compass guide; it is a dynamic structure, sculpted by molten currents in the planet’s outer core. This geomagnetic engine typically keeps high-energy particles from the sun and beyond at bay. But every so often, it stumbles. During the Laschamps excursion, that stumble was dramatic.
“The field dropped to about 10% of its current strength and the poles tilted more than 75 degrees from their typical positions,” said Mukhopadhyay, whose team modeled the resulting distortions in the magnetosphere and auroral zones.
This collapse caused the auroral oval—the region where solar particles enter the atmosphere and cause polar lights—to balloon in size and drift equatorward. In modern times, auroras flicker over polar skies. During Laschamps, they lit up places like France and the Sahara.
More concerning than the view was the fallout: these auroras marked regions where harmful radiation could reach the ground.
Caves, Clothes, and Ochre: A Human Strategy for Survival
As the magnetic field declined, the effects on Earth’s surface intensified. Ozone depletion, increased ultraviolet radiation (UVR), and heightened cosmic ray exposure would have been especially hazardous to early humans. Ocular damage, folate depletion, and immune suppression are all possible outcomes of such exposure.
Yet archaeological evidence suggests Homo sapiens didn’t just survive this celestial hazard—they adapted. According to co-author Raven Garvey, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan, modern humans likely used a suite of cultural technologies to mitigate UV exposure.
“Tailored clothing, for instance, may have provided both thermal insulation and photoprotection,” Garvey explained. “And ochre, which is frequently found at Aurignacian sites, has demonstrated sunscreen-like properties.”
Unlike Neanderthals, who probably wore simpler, draped garments, Homo sapiens left behind tools such as bone awls and needles—strong indicators of sewn, form-fitting clothing. These innovations would have allowed longer forays away from shelters and greater exposure to irradiated landscapes, without the same risk.
The study also points to a spike in cave use during this period. While caves served many purposes—shelter, ritual, art—they also shielded inhabitants from solar exposure. It is plausible, Garvey noted, that some caves were used not just for their cultural or symbolic significance but as literal refuges from a more dangerous atmosphere.
The Disappearance of Neanderthals, Revisited
Neanderthals had persisted in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, enduring multiple glacial cycles. But by about 40,000 years ago, they vanish from the fossil record. The timing aligns closely with the Laschamps excursion.
“What distinguished anatomically modern humans from Neanderthals wasn’t just biology, but behavior,” said Mukhopadhyay. “This study suggests that environmental challenges—like a weakened magnetic shield—may have amplified the advantages of innovation and adaptation.”
This is not to say the Laschamps excursion alone caused Neanderthal extinction. Their decline was almost certainly due to multiple factors, including demographic pressures, climatic variability, and competition. But the added stress of global radiation, combined with a lack of protective technologies, may have tipped the scales.
Implications for the Search for Life (and for Our Own Future)
The study’s models don’t just illuminate the past. They also cast a wary eye forward. Earth’s magnetic field is currently weakening at a rate of about 1% every two decades. If another excursion were to occur, the consequences could be catastrophic—not for survival per se, but for technology.
“Satellite systems, communication networks, even air travel would all be at risk during such an event,” said Mukhopadhyay. “But there’s another lesson here, too. Life found a way through one of Earth’s most volatile episodes.”
The research may also inform the search for life on exoplanets. Planets lacking strong magnetic fields are often dismissed as poor candidates for life. But Earth’s own history tells a more nuanced story.
“If early humans could survive an event like Laschamps,” Garvey added, “then life might find a foothold even on worlds where radiation levels are high—given the right behaviors or biotechnologies.”
Further Reading & Related Research
* Cooper, A. et al. (2021).A global environmental crisis 42,000 years ago. Science, 371(6527), 811–818.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb8677
* Nilsson, A. et al. (2022).Recurrent ancient geomagnetic field anomalies and the South Atlantic Anomaly. PNAS, 119(25), e2200749119.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200749119
* Gao, J. et al. (2022).Effects of the Laschamps excursion on geomagnetic cutoff rigidities. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 23(10).https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GC010261
* Brown, M. et al. (2018).Earth’s magnetic field is probably not reversing. PNAS, 115(20), 5111–5116.https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722110115
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For at least 10,000 years, humans have worked the land to feed families, build communities, and form civilizations. But the way those lands were used—how they were divided, worked, and governed—did more than sustain life. It shaped who got rich, who stayed poor, and how power was passed on across generations.
A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers one of the most detailed archaeological analyses to date of the roots of economic inequality. The researchers combed through the physical traces left behind by ancient households—47,000 of them, to be precise—spanning over 1,700 sites across the globe. The question: When did wealth begin to pool in the hands of a few, and why?
"Wealth inequality wasn’t simply the result of agriculture, or even population growth," said Amy Bogaard, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford who co-led the study."It crystallized when land itself became scarce—and a select few managed to monopolize it."
This study complicates the long-standing idea that inequality is a modern invention. It also dismantles the romanticized view of ancient societies as inherently egalitarian. Rather, inequality emerged when ecological limits met social opportunity—and when land, once abundant, became a battleground of resource control.
From Hoe to Plow: The Tools That Divided Households
Wealth, in the deep past, wasn’t stored in bank accounts. It was baked into the size of homes, the volume of grain bins, and the acres one could farm or irrigate.
The team, including experts from 27 institutions worldwide, used house sizes as a proxy for household wealth. The logic: bigger homes meant greater storage, labor access, and control over land. When that gap between big and small grew wide, so too did inequality.
One major pattern stood out: land-hungry farming—especially systems involving animal-powered plows—tended to generate steep economic divides. Those who could afford the oxen or manage irrigation systems had an edge. Over time, their advantage became institutionalized.
“Animal traction was transformative,” said Shadreck Chirikure of the University of Oxford.“But it also meant that wealth, once embedded in community networks, could be concentrated into fewer hands.”
These land-intensive strategies didn’t always begin with inequality in mind. Terracing, irrigation, and plowing were often communal ventures. But as scarcity grew—due to environmental constraints or population pressures—cooperation gave way to competition. The tools of survival became the engines of hierarchy.
When Governance Intervened—Or Failed To
The story isn’t one of inevitability. While many societies tipped toward inequality, others resisted.
Places like Teotihuacan in central Mexico or Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley developed complex urban systems without allowing wealth to cluster in elite hands. Despite their size, archaeological evidence suggests relatively even distribution of house sizes and public investment in civic infrastructure.
"We found that governance mattered," noted archaeologist Helena Hamerow.“Societies that invested in collective structures often buffered against runaway inequality—even when farming systems intensified.”
Such examples challenge the idea that inequality is a necessary price of complexity. Instead, they suggest that choices—about land tenure, cooperation, and redistribution—shaped whether wealth stayed shared or slipped into silos.
Lessons Buried in Deep Time
Wealth inequality today often feels like a product of modern capitalism. But its foundations were laid millennia ago, in decisions about how to plow a field or allocate water.
That long view matters. As modern societies wrestle with questions of fairness and sustainability, the archaeological record offers a sobering perspective. Inequality, once embedded, can endure for generations. But it isn’t a given.
“Studying ancient land use systems offers more than historical curiosity,” said Bogaard.“It gives us a mirror—one that shows where competition can run unchecked, and where governance has softened its edge.”
From Bronze Age villages to early cities, the roots of inequality can be traced in stone foundations and soil layers. And as this study shows, those roots grew differently across the world—depending not just on environment, but on the social imagination of what a fair society could be.
Further Reading and Related Research
* Kohler, T. A., Smith, M. E., Bogaard, A., Feinman, G. M., Peterson, C. E., Betzenhauser, A., ... & Ortman, S. G. (2017)."Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica."Nature, 551(7682), 619–622. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24646
* Smith, M. E., & Chirikure, S. (2021)."Wealth Inequality in Ancient Societies: Cross-cultural Patterns and Implications for the Present."Journal of Archaeological Research, 29, 371–413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-020-09153-5
* Bowles, S., & Choi, J. K. (2013)."Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(22), 8830–8835. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1212149110
* Flannery, K. V., & Marcus, J. (2012).The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire.Harvard University Press. Link
* Feinman, G. M., & Carballo, D. M. (2018)."The Role of Collective Action in the Evolution of Pre-Modern States."Human Nature, 29(3), 203–219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-018-9314-4
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In the long arc of human history, what makes a settlement persist? Fresh water, fertile land, favorable climate—these are obvious candidates. But a recent study suggests another, less intuitive pattern: the most enduring settlements tended to be those with stark differences in wealth.
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study draws on data from over 47,000 houses spanning nearly 3,000 archaeological sites and 10,000 years of human history. Led by Professor Dan Lawrence of Durham University, the research asks a thorny question: Is inequality the price of sustainability?
“We wanted to understand the relationship between continuity and equality,” said Lawrence.
“What we found is that, as humankind's systems become larger and more complex, inequality has tended to increase alongside longer persistence. But the two are not mutually dependent.”
Reading Inequality in Clay and Stone
Archaeologists often lack direct records of economic systems in ancient societies. But houses, or rather their sizes, offer a durable proxy. Bigger dwellings tend to belong to those with greater access to labor, resources, and status. Smaller ones reflect the opposite. In this study, disparities in house sizes were quantified using the Gini coefficient—a statistical tool commonly used to assess modern income inequality.
From prehistoric farming hamlets to early urban centers, the data show that settlements with greater internal disparities in house sizes tended to stick around longer. But causality, the authors emphasize, is not the point.
“It is not the case that inequality is simply a necessary by-product of building complex, sustainable societies,” Lawrence noted.
Rather, both inequality and longevity appear to be outcomes of the same broader processes: increasing population density, technological complexity, and layered political hierarchies.
The Paradox of Persistence
At first glance, the correlation seems troubling. Could rising inequality have somehow stabilized early cities? Possibly—but not because inequality itself provided any inherent benefit.
Large settlements were often better resourced and more capable of managing complex challenges—irrigation, trade, defense, and governance among them. These capacities also provided the scaffolding upon which economic disparities could rise.
Yet this does not mean inequality caused durability.
“We need to be aware of, and attentive to, the historical interplay between inequality and sustainability,” Lawrence explained.
“At a time of ever-increasing wealth inequality and sustainability challenges, including climate change, the lessons from the past 10,000 years could be invaluable.”
Rethinking Sustainability
The findings directly challenge a pervasive assumption that sustainability and equity must always be linked—or that long-term societal success demands egalitarianism. In reality, ancient settlements found ways to persist despite, or perhaps because of, rising inequality. But that doesn’t mean they were just or ideal.
Nor does it imply that inequality is essential today.
The researchers are careful to avoid deterministic interpretations. They argue instead for a nuanced understanding: that both settlement duration and inequality are shaped by the size and complexity of social systems. This leaves room for imagining a future where stability and equity are not at odds.
“Humankind might be able to achieve sustainable persistence without the need for increased inequality,” said Lawrence.
A Dataset Like No Other
This study is part of a larger initiative titled “Global Dynamics of Wealth Inequality,” a special feature in PNAS. It leverages a globally compiled dataset unprecedented in archaeological scope, allowing comparisons across regions, timespans, and social structures.
Each home counted represents a sliver of a broader story—some carved in stone, others pressed from mud. Assembled together, they allow scholars to peer into the structural forces that helped societies persist—or fracture.
Related Research
For readers interested in further exploring the topic, here are key companion studies and relevant scholarship:
* Feinman, G. M., et al. (2025).Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16).https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400698121
* Explores global patterns in wealth inequality using house-size distributions across 50,000 ancient homes.
* Kohler, T. A., et al. (2017).Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica.Nature, 551(7682), 619–622.https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24646
* Offers a comparative analysis of wealth disparities across continents and cultures in the prehistoric and early historic periods.
* Ortman, S. G., et al. (2020).The pre-Hispanic Pueblo world: Societies of the Southwest from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.Cambridge University Press.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108676794
* Explores persistence and social dynamics in ancient Pueblo settlements of North America.
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When archaeologists sift through the remains of ancient settlements, they are not just uncovering lost homes—they are mapping the roots of inequality. Long before pharaohs ruled and scribes recorded human affairs, the seeds of economic disparity had already taken hold.
In a sweeping new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team analyzed the size of more than 47,000 houses across 1,100 archaeological sites. Their conclusion is clear: wealth inequality is not a modern invention, nor did it arise only with the rise of kings or written law. It grew slowly, subtly, and globally alongside agriculture.
“Many people imagine early societies as egalitarian,” notes archaeologist Tim Kohler of Washington State University.
“But the data show that wealth inequality took root surprisingly early.”
Measuring Inequality in Mudbrick and Stone
The researchers turned to one of the most consistent archaeological indicators of wealth: house size. Larger houses, they argue, reflect not only more living space but also access to better materials, skilled labor, and prime land. By applying the Gini coefficient—a widely used metric for measuring inequality—to house sizes, the study created a cross-cultural snapshot of economic disparity over 10,000 years.
The results were nuanced. Small farming communities that emerged shortly after the advent of agriculture tended to be more equal. But as populations grew and settlements became more complex, disparities widened.
“The shift wasn’t instantaneous,” says Kohler.
“It grew gradually as societies expanded, populations increased, and resources became more constrained.”
When Land Becomes Power
Agriculture brought abundance, but it also brought limits. Once people stopped moving and began farming fixed plots of land, ownership and inheritance began to matter. In densely populated settlements, the competition for arable land likely created winners and losers.
Some families built terraces or dug irrigation canals to make the most of their land—innovations that increased productivity but also required labor, tools, and cooperation. Over time, these advantages accumulated, and so did inequality.
The emergence of hierarchical settlements, where elites lived in larger, more elaborate dwellings near central public buildings, reflected not just economic advantage but also political power. Inequality, the study suggests, was both a product and a driver of early social complexity.
Technology: A Double-Edged Trowel
Not all innovations favored the powerful. Iron tools, for example, often had an equalizing effect. By making high-quality implements more widely available, iron smelting may have helped reduce inequality in some societies. This contradicts the common belief that technological change always benefits elites first.
Governance also played a role. In some regions, communal institutions or redistribution systems may have dampened inequality, allowing large societies to grow without extreme economic disparity.
“There are factors that may increase inequality,” Kohler notes.
“But these factors can be leveled off or modified by different human decisions and institutions.”
A Prehistory of Possibilities
The study’s findings challenge the assumption that inequality is inevitable once societies become large and complex. The archaeological record, stretching across six continents and 10 millennia, shows otherwise. Inequality is not a default state of civilization—it is a historical process shaped by choices, constraints, and cultural norms.
This research, conducted in collaboration with 27 scholars and the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis, offers more than historical insight. It reminds us that inequality has always been negotiable.
“Although history has shown us that technology and population growth can raise the potential for inequality,” Kohler says,
“people have implemented systems that mute that potential.”
In a world where economic divides continue to widen, the past may hold not only cautionary tales but also strategies for balance.
Related Research
Here are additional studies that connect or expand on this research:
* Feinman, G. M., et al. (2025).Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16).https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400698121
* Kohler, T. A., et al. (2017).Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica.Nature, 551(7682), 619–622.https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24646
* Scheidel, W. (2017).The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.Princeton University Press.Link to publisher
* Smith, M. E., & Peregrine, P. N. (2012).Comparative Archaeology: A Framework for Analysis.Springer.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6520-0
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For much of history, the rise of inequality has been treated like gravity: inevitable, natural, and inescapable. From the sprawling villas of Roman elites to the thatched huts of the poor in medieval Europe, textbook history often presents wealth disparity as a consequence of human progress.
But what if that assumption is wrong? What if inequality wasn’t a guaranteed outcome of agriculture, population growth, or the emergence of powerful rulers?
A sweeping archaeological analysis led by Gary Feinman of the Field Museum of Natural History offers a strikingly different view. Drawing on data from over 50,000 ancient homes spread across six continents and 10,000 years of human history, the research team measured the economic disparities of the past through one of its most visible clues: the size of people's houses.
“There are factors that may make inequality more likely,” said Feinman, “but human decisions and social institutions have consistently shaped whether or not it took hold.”
Measuring Inequality in Clay and Stone
To capture economic inequality across time and geography, the research team calculated the Gini coefficient—a statistical tool commonly used today to assess income distribution—for each of more than 1,000 archaeological settlements. House size, it turns out, is a surprisingly consistent proxy for household wealth.
“From the Valley of Oaxaca to the Indus Valley, bigger homes almost always mean thicker walls, more elaborate features, and evidence of greater access to resources,” said Feinman.
A Gini coefficient of 0 means complete equality, while 1 indicates maximal inequality. The sites analyzed ranged from Neolithic farming villages to preindustrial urban centers, each revealing a different pattern in how inequality took root—or didn’t.
The results offered no tidy historical arc. Inequality didn't uniformly rise with the emergence of agriculture, nor did it always spike when populations boomed. In fact, some large and politically complex societies maintained surprisingly modest levels of economic disparity.
No Single Path to Power
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pushes back against what scholars call "grand narratives"—those sweeping, linear explanations of human development often centered on ancient Greece, Rome, or medieval Europe.
“We found no one-size-fits-all explanation,” said co-author Lane M. Nicholas. “The idea that big populations or new technologies automatically lead to widening inequality simply doesn’t hold up in the archaeological record.”
Instead, the picture that emerges is one of human agency. People in different places made different choices about governance, resource sharing, and social cooperation.
Some communities implemented checks and balances that curbed wealth concentration. Others developed traditions or institutions that emphasized reciprocity and mutual aid. These decisions mattered—and they still do.
Inequality as a Choice, Not a Destiny
Perhaps the most provocative implication of the study is its relevance to the present. The researchers argue that economic inequality is not an inevitable byproduct of complexity or innovation, but a social and political outcome shaped by cultural norms, leadership decisions, and institutional structures.
“What this study suggests,” said Feinman, “is that we have choices. Societies of the past faced the same pressures—population growth, technological shifts, political upheaval—and yet not all of them responded by concentrating wealth at the top.”
In this way, archaeology provides a counter-narrative to modern fatalism. By examining how ancient people organized themselves, distributed resources, and adapted to change, we get a clearer picture of the possibilities for the future.
Related Research
Here are other peer-reviewed studies that further illuminate the social and economic lives of early human societies:
* Kohler, T. A., Smith, M. E., Bogaard, A., Feinman, G. M., Peterson, C. E., Betzenhauser, A., ... & Ortman, S. G. (2017). “Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica.” Nature, 551(7682), 619–622. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24646
* Smith, M. E., & Peregrine, P. N. (2012). “Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference.” In The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies (pp. 1–28). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139022716.002
* Flannery, K. V. (1999). “Process and Agency in Early State Formation.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 9(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774300015233
* Hegmon, M., et al. (2008). “Social Transformation and Its Human Costs in the Prehispanic U.S. Southwest.” American Anthropologist, 110(3), 313–324. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00041.x
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The Puzzle of the Missing Fires
In the bleak cold of the Last Glacial Maximum, it seems obvious that fire would have been essential for human survival. And yet, the archaeological record for that period—from roughly 26,500 to 19,000 years ago—tells a strangely quiet story. Hearths, once the heart of Paleolithic domestic life, seem to vanish from many known European sites.
This curious absence has stirred debate. Did hunter-gatherers abandon fire? Were they unable to find enough fuel during these harshest years of the Ice Age? Or has the archaeological record simply failed to preserve these ephemeral traces of life?
A recent study from a team of researchers working at Korman’ 9, a Paleolithic site in Ukraine’s middle Dniester valley, begins to offer some clarity. The results, published in Geoarchaeology, point not to a lack of fire, but to a high degree of sophistication in how it was managed, built, and possibly even seasonally adapted.
Evidence from a Frozen Frontier
Using an array of geoarchaeological techniques—including micromorphology, microstratigraphy, and colorimetric soil analysis—the team identified three distinct hearths at the site. Each one was flat and open, built directly into the soil without constructed walls or pits.
But don’t let their simplicity fool you.
“People perfectly controlled the fire and knew how to use it in different ways, depending on the purpose,” said archaeologist Philip R. Nigst of the University of Vienna.
One hearth, in particular, stood out: larger, deeper, and capable of producing higher temperatures than the others—above 600°C. This suggests that different fires may have been used for different tasks or in different seasons, perhaps reflecting shifts in resource availability or group mobility.
A Fire of Flesh and Bone?
The hearths appear to have been primarily wood-fueled, with charcoal traces pointing to spruce as a frequent fuel. But there's more to the story. Some animal bones found near the hearths were scorched at over 650°C. Whether these bones were simply caught in the flames or deliberately burned as fuel is still under investigation.
“We are currently investigating whether they were used as fuel or just accidentally burned,” said zooarchaeologist Marjolein D. Bosch, who collaborated from institutions in Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Bone and fat as supplementary fuels would make sense in a landscape where wood was scarce, particularly in the frigid steppes of glacial Ukraine. These substances also burn hot and slow—valuable properties for people working with stone tools or cooking tough game meat.
The Science of Seasonal Use
The spatial organization of the hearths suggests more than just fire-making know-how. It hints at long-term planning. Seasonal reuse of the site was likely, with hearth construction varying in size and intensity based on shifting needs.
“Our results show that these hunter-gatherers used the same place at different times of the year during their annual migrations,” Nigst explained.
This adds to a growing picture of Ice Age mobility that wasn’t random but followed familiar, practiced routes, guided by game movement, environmental rhythms, and social memory.
Why Are Hearths So Rare?
Despite these findings, hearths from the Last Glacial Maximum remain elusive across Europe. Could the typical freeze-thaw cycles of glacial soils have obliterated fragile fire features? Or is the scarcity telling us something more profound?
“Was most of the evidence destroyed by the ice-age-typical, alternating freezing and thawing of the soil?” asked lead author William Murphree of the University of Algarve.
“Did they not use fire, but instead rely on other technological solutions?”
These questions remain open, and they point to a deeper need to reassess what we expect fire-use to look like archaeologically. We may simply be missing it—either through poor preservation or methodological blind spots.
Fire as Cultural Technology
Fire is not merely a survival tool. It’s a cultural signature—a human technology that supports cooking, warmth, light, storytelling, and symbolism. At sites like Korman’ 9, the flames leave more than ash behind. They preserve a trace of how people adapted to climatic extremes with skill, patience, and ingenuity.
In studying Ice Age pyrotechnology, archaeologists are peeling back another layer of Homo sapiens’ evolutionary adaptability. The ability to use fire efficiently in one of Earth's most unforgiving climates may have played a crucial role in allowing our species to endure and expand.
Related Research
Here are some other studies that complement and contextualize these new findings:
* Henry, A. G., Brooks, A. S., & Piperno, D. R. (2014). Plant foods and the dietary ecology of Neanderthals and early modern humans. Journal of Human Evolution, 69, 44–54.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.12.014
* Sorensen, A. C., Scherjon, F., & MacDonald, K. (2022). Fire use in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic: A taphonomic perspective. Quaternary Science Reviews, 292, 107651.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107651
* Wrangham, R. (2009). Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Basic Books.(Though not a paper, Wrangham’s influential book explores the evolutionary role of fire and cooking in Homo sapiens.)
* Mentzer, S. M. (2014). Microarchaeological approaches to the identification and interpretation of combustion features in prehistoric archaeological sites. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 21(3), 616–668.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-013-9182-3
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“Language carves up the world in ways that reflect what matters most to its speakers.”
That insight—often stated in anthropological circles—is easy to romanticize but hard to quantify. Now, a new study led by cognitive scientists and linguists has attempted to do exactly that. Using machine analysis of over 1,500 bilingual dictionaries spanning more than 600 languages, researchers report that vocabulary is not just a passive catalog of the world, but a cultural archive shaped by what humans find urgent, beautiful, or sacred.
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study by Khishigsuren, Regier, Vylomova, and Kemp represents one of the largest systematic efforts to test whether cultural preoccupations—like snow in the Arctic or horses in Mongolia—are etched into the lexicons of the world's languages.
“We wanted to ask not just whether Inuit languages have many words for snow,” said the team, “but whether the same patterns hold across dozens of cultures and environmental niches.”
Language as Cultural Fossil
The researchers assembled a dataset of 1,574 bilingual dictionaries between English and 616 world languages. Rather than extracting full entries (often restricted by copyright), they used word frequency metadata—how often terms appeared across definitions and example sentences—to estimate lexical density for specific concepts.
They evaluated 163 cultural concepts previously suggested in the anthropological and linguistic literature, ranging from “snow” to “love,” “horses,” “ghosts,” and “taste.” Then they ran statistical comparisons to see which languages had a higher-than-expected number of words tied to each concept.
Inuit languages, long subject to the popular “many words for snow” claim, topped the charts for snow-related vocabulary. Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, for example, includes kikalukpok (“noisy walking on hard snow”) and apingaut (“first snowfall”). The findings lend quantitative support to what had often been dismissed as folk mythology or, worse, an academic hoax.
“The idea that Eskimo-Aleut languages have an extensive snow lexicon has been derided for decades,” noted the authors. “But our analysis suggests there’s actually something to it.”
Other Arctic languages, such as Ahtena and Central Alaskan Yupik, also scored highly for snow, as did Scots, which boasts terms like doon-lay (a heavy fall of snow), feughter (a light dusting), and fuddum (drifting snow).
Beyond Stereotypes: Love, Rain, and the Smell of Fish
The researchers were equally interested in concepts beyond the Arctic tundra. Hindi showed a lexical richness around love; Japanese scored highly on obligation and duty. Mongolian, perhaps unsurprisingly, excelled in words for horses, while Oceanic languages, including Marshallese, showed exceptional vocabulary for smell.
Marshallese words include:
* jatbo – “smell of damp clothing”
* meļļā – “smell of blood”
* aelel – “smell of fish lingering on the body or utensils”
And while snow-rich vocabularies were clustered in cold environments, rain-related language didn’t follow a neat climatic gradient. For instance, East Taa, spoken in arid parts of southern Africa, had abundant terms for rain, including ritual and metaphorical expressions such as lábe ||núu-bâ (“honorific address to thunder to bring rain”) and |qába (“ritual sprinkling to bring rain”).
“For rain, it’s not just about how much falls from the sky—it’s about how much it matters when it doesn’t,” said the authors. “People in dry regions may talk about rain more because it’s precious.”
The Perils of Quantifying Culture
Despite the scale of the analysis, the authors are cautious. Dictionary data isn’t perfect. Sometimes high word counts are inflated by the presence of example sentences or grammatical structures. For example, the top concepts for the language Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German) included “of,” “the,” and “and”—function words that slipped through filtering mechanisms.
And there’s a broader risk: turning cultural patterns into data points can encourage oversimplified or stereotyped narratives. Words exist within systems of meaning, and context matters as much as quantity.
“This kind of work can offer insights,” the authors emphasized, “but it should never be used to essentialize or stereotype people.”
Still, the study suggests that linguistic diversity remains a rich—if sometimes messy—window into human experience. It reinforces the idea that the mind doesn’t just mirror the world—it molds it. And it leaves open intriguing questions for future work: How do children acquire these culturally rich vocabularies? How fast do they change under environmental or social pressures? What happens to culturally dense concepts in endangered or creolized languages?
As climate change, migration, and globalization reshape human lives, they may also reshape our lexicons. But for now, the words we inherit still carry the echoes of past landscapes, economies, and rituals.
Related Research
Here are some relevant and complementary studies:
* Regier, T., Kemp, C., & Kay, P. (2015). Word meanings across languages support efficient communication. Cognitive Science, 39(6), 1111–1137.https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12180
* Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). The senses in language and culture. The Senses and Society, 6(1), 5–18.https://doi.org/10.2752/174589311X12893982233635
* Everett, C. (2013). Linguistic relativity: Evidence across languages and cognitive domains. Mouton de Gruyter.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110347024
* Bohnemeyer, J., & Brown, P. (2007). Where does the linguistic system start and stop? Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas.https://hdl.handle.net/10150/225992
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A Puzzle in the Permafrost
In the quiet hills near Medzhybizh, a small Ukrainian town nestled along the Southern Bug River, something unexpected has emerged from the deep past: splintered ivory fragments, unmistakably shaped by ancient hands. These are not the ornamental carvings of Ice Age artists. They are tools—fashioned from mammoth tusk, weathered by time, and dating back roughly 400,000 years.
That age alone would be noteworthy. But what sets these artifacts apart is what they reveal: that some of our distant hominin ancestors were not just using stone—they were thinking beyond it.
“What we’re seeing here is early evidence of cognitive flexibility,” said a researcher familiar with the findings.“These hominins weren’t just surviving. They were choosing, experimenting, maybe even teaching.”
Published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, the study by Ukrainian archaeologists Vadim Stepanchuk and Oleksandr O. Naumenko pushes back the timeline for intentional ivory working by nearly 300,000 years. The implications are hard to overstate. Until now, the earliest known examples of ivory modification dated to about 120,000 years ago, attributed to Homo sapiens and possibly Neanderthals. This new find opens the possibility that Homo heidelbergensis, or another archaic hominin species, may have pioneered these techniques.
The Site: Medzhibozh A
First identified in 2011 and excavated over several field seasons through 2018, the site known as Medzhibozh A lies within a deeply stratified Pleistocene terrace. Based on a suite of sedimentological and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating, the ivory-bearing layer has been placed within Marine Isotope Stage 11—a warm interglacial period approximately 400,000 years ago.
From that ancient layer, archaeologists recovered 24 ivory fragments. Eleven of them bore unmistakable marks of human manipulation: flake scars, trimmed edges, and signs of deliberate shaping using techniques otherwise seen in lithic technology.
One fragment stood out—a pointed implement fashioned with enough precision to suggest a specific, possibly repeated function. Another appeared to be a core, from which other pieces had been struck.
“The presence of bipolar-on-anvil flaking—a technique known from stone tool assemblages—on ivory is especially significant,” said an independent analyst reviewing the material.“It implies a transfer of learned behaviors across materials.”
Material Matters: Why Ivory?
Ivory is not the easiest material to work with. Unlike stone, it behaves less predictably under force. It splits, splinters, resists control. Which makes its presence here even more intriguing.
Was ivory simply a substitute for stone in a resource-poor landscape? Or was it chosen deliberately for its properties—or even its symbolism?
Stepanchuk and Naumenko propose several scenarios: necessity in an environment lacking quality flint; curiosity-driven experimentation; or pedagogical use in teaching tool-making skills. All suggest a degree of intentionality and foresight.
“What matters isn’t just that they made tools,” one researcher commented,“but that they chose an unconventional material to do so. That speaks to adaptability—and imagination.”
Beyond Survival: Teaching and Learning?
The notion that these early humans were experimenting with ivory also implies something else: that knowledge was being shared. Skill passed from hand to hand, perhaps from elder to youth.
This may be the earliest archaeological hint of social learning in technological contexts. In other words, these tools could be fossils of ideas—evidence that cognition was moving from instinct to instruction.
“If these were practice pieces, as some suggest, then they are not just tools—they are textbooks,” said one paleoanthropologist not involved in the study.“That would place culture, in its earliest form, hundreds of thousands of years deeper into our past.”
Interpreting the Evidence
Caution is warranted. Dating can be tricky, especially in open-air sites. Post-depositional processes can move artifacts, and distinguishing deliberate human marks from natural damage is notoriously difficult. But the authors argue that the consistency of the modifications, the presence of multiple flaking techniques, and the recurrence of similar tool forms make a purely natural origin unlikely.
This isn't a one-off anomaly. It appears to be a pattern.
Rethinking the Hominin Mind
What emerges from the Medzhibozh fragments is not just a new archaeological data point—it’s a narrative shift. The stereotypical image of early humans as strictly reactive, opportunistic beings—shaping stone and little else—is giving way to a more dynamic portrait: one of experimentation, abstraction, and cultural transmission.
And all of it was happening long before Homo sapiens walked onto the stage.
Related Research
To better understand the context of these findings, the following studies offer complementary insights into early material culture and cognitive evolution:
* Wynn, T., & Coolidge, F. L. (2011). The implications of the working memory model for the evolution of modern cognition. International Journal of Evolutionary Biology.https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/741357
* Joordens, J. C. A., et al. (2015). Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature, 518, 228–231.https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13962
* Backwell, L., d’Errico, F., & Wadley, L. (2008). Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science, 35(6), 1566–1580.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2007.11.006
* Nowell, A., & Davidson, I. (2010). Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition. University Press of Colorado.(Book – no DOI, but widely cited for comparative discussions.
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A Jawbone from the Edge of the Map
Long before shipping lanes crossed the Taiwan Strait, and long before Taiwan was an island at all, an archaic human jawbone settled into the mud of the ancient seabed. There it rested for tens of thousands of years — until a fishing net hauled it back into daylight.
Today, that jawbone, known as Penghu 1, is reshaping ideas about the Denisovans, a shadowy population of archaic humans whose genetic echoes still linger in modern people across Asia and Oceania.
“Penghu 1 shows Denisovans were not just mountain specialists or cold-adapted northerners,” said Takumi Tsutaya, a biological anthropologist and lead author of the new study. “They lived across a much wider range than anyone expected.”
The Most Elusive of Human Relatives
The Denisovans have always been strange occupants of the human family tree. They were first identified not from their faces or skeletons, but from their DNA — extracted from a finger bone and a few teeth found in Siberia’s Denisova Cave.
It was only later that a few scattered fossils from Tibet and China hinted at what Denisovans might have looked like. Thick-boned jaws. Massive molars. A distinctive anatomy built for endurance.
But until now, the Denisovans seemed a population defined by the mountains and cold — known from Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau.
Then came Penghu 1.
Protein Clues in the Absence of DNA
Pulled from a fishing net and eventually donated to Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science, the Penghu 1 jaw retained no usable DNA. But researchers turned to another molecular witness: ancient proteins.
From the tooth enamel of the jaw, scientists extracted over 4,200 protein fragments. Two of those fragments carried distinctive Denisovan signatures — chemical variants rarely seen in humans or Neanderthals.
“Retrieving this kind of molecular evidence from a fossil recovered from the sea floor — that would have been impossible even a decade ago,” noted Sheela Athreya, a paleoanthropologist not involved in the research.
Anatomy that Speaks of Asia, Not Siberia
Alongside the molecular evidence, the physical features of Penghu 1 add to the story. The jaw’s robust structure and the shape of its tooth roots closely resemble a Denisovan jaw from Xiahe, China, discovered high on the Tibetan Plateau.
But Taiwan is 4,000 kilometers from Denisova Cave. Its climate could hardly be more different.
Tsutaya and his colleagues suggest that Denisovans were astonishingly adaptable — capable of thriving in the cold of Siberia, the thin air of Tibet, and the humid lowlands of what is now Taiwan.
“It’s a level of ecological flexibility we don’t often credit archaic humans with having,” Tsutaya said.
How Old is the Jaw? Nobody Knows — Yet.
The fossil defies easy dating. Seawater had long since stripped away its collagen, eliminating possibilities for radiocarbon analysis.
Still, the geography offers clues. During Ice Age glacial periods, sea levels dropped, and Taiwan was connected to mainland Asia. The researchers suggest Penghu 1 likely dates to either 70,000–10,000 years ago, or perhaps an earlier window between 190,000 and 130,000 years ago.
That range overlaps with the known Denisovan timeline — but also leaves room for other possibilities.
A Species or a Population?
The question of who exactly the Denisovans were remains unsettled. Some researchers, including paleoanthropologist Xiujie Wu, propose that fossils like Penghu 1 belong to a distinct species: Homo juluensis. But others urge caution.
“Until we know who the fossils called Denisovans were, we can’t know their fate or their relationship to Homo sapiens,” Athreya cautioned.
For now, Penghu 1 joins a small but growing collection of Denisovan fossils stretching across Asia — from Tibet to Taiwan, from Siberia to the South China Sea.
If Denisovans were as widespread and ecologically versatile as this latest find suggests, the story of human evolution in Asia may be due for a rewrite.
Suggested Related Research
* Chen, F., et al. (2019). A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature, 569, 409–412. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1139-x
* Slon, V., et al. (2017). The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Nature, 561, 113–116. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0455-x
* Massilani, D., et al. (2020). Denisovan ancestry and population history of early East Asians. Science, 370(6516), 579–583. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba0909
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