Evolutionary Insights by Anthropology.net

When the last Ice Age released its grip on northern Europe, vast landscapes emerged from the ice. Among them was a rugged, newly exposed frontier—the British Isles. While the southern lowlands began to host reindeer hunters and mobile foragers, the highlands and islands of Scotland remained largely uncharted in the archaeological record. Until now.

A new study in the Journal of Quaternary Science suggests that at least one band of Late Upper Paleolithic foragers made their way to the windswept tip of the Isle of Skye, a place so remote it has long been considered beyond the reach of early postglacial settlement. Their toolstone traces—small but significant—point toward a likely Ahrensburgian presence in northwestern Scotland around 11,000 years ago.

A surprising find on the edge of Europe

The site in question lies at the far northern end of Skye, in a landscape carved by retreating glaciers and shaped by Atlantic storms. Lithic artifacts recovered during recent surveys—specifically tanged points, backed bladelets, and other microliths—match the technological signature of the Ahrensburgian tradition, which spread across northern Europe in the terminal Pleistocene.

The Ahrensburgian culture is best known from the North European Plain, where hunter-gatherers adapted to the cold, open tundra with a specialized hunting toolkit aimed at reindeer. Their presence in mainland Britain has long been debated. Evidence has trickled in from sites in Yorkshire and Kent, but Skye, until now, was off the archaeological map.

“These are not Mesolithic microliths,” says Karen Hardy, lead author of the study. “They’re tanged points, indicative of an Ahrensburgian horizon, likely brought by groups moving along the coast as the ice retreated and sea levels changed.”

The timing aligns with a narrow climatic window at the end of the Younger Dryas, when cold adapted species—and the humans who followed them—had a brief final foothold in northern Britain before Holocene warming and sea-level rise transformed the landscape.

A land bridge lost to the sea

One of the study’s most compelling arguments rests on the paleogeography of the North Atlantic shelf. During the Late Glacial period, sea levels were much lower than today. The Inner Hebrides, including Skye, were not isolated islands, but part of an expansive coastal plain that extended far west into what is now submerged under the sea.

These conditions would have made coastal migration possible—and even practical—for reindeer and humans alike. As glaciers receded, herbivores expanded into new pastures, drawing hunters behind them.

“We must consider not only what is visible today,” Hardy notes, “but also what has been lost to the sea. The edge of everything then was not where it is now.”

As sea levels rose in the early Holocene, these low-lying corridors were gradually drowned, erasing a vital chapter of human movement. What remains are scattered clues—like the artifacts on Skye—that hint at deeper stories.

Minimal evidence, maximal implications

Skepticism is natural when dealing with such fragmentary finds. The lithic assemblage from Skye is small, and no bone or organic remains have survived to provide radiocarbon dates. But the tool forms and stratigraphic context match known Late Glacial typologies. The study leans on comparative typology, technological analysis, and landscape modeling to build its case.

Importantly, this site adds to a growing body of evidence that Late Upper Paleolithic peoples were more mobile and more widespread in Britain than previously assumed. And it reinforces the idea that coastal and insular zones—often marginalized in reconstructions of early prehistory—may have played pivotal roles in human dispersals.

Rewriting Britain’s Late Glacial map

The suggestion of an Ahrensburgian presence in Skye challenges longstanding narratives that confine Late Upper Paleolithic activity to southern England. Instead, it points to dynamic forager lifeways adapted not only to the continent's interior but also to its shifting coasts and island fringes.

This discovery, modest in size but bold in implication, helps reframe the final chapters of Ice Age human history in the British Isles.

“At the far end of everything,” the study’s authors write, “there were people.”

And they left behind not grandeur, but fragments—a chipped blade here, a broken tang there. Enough to glimpse the long-forgotten routes taken by the hunters who ventured, briefly, to the cold margins of the world.

Suggested Related Research

* Grimm, S. B., & Weber, M.-J. (2008). The chronostratigraphy of the Late Paleolithic Federmesser-Gruppen complex: A re-evaluation. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 38(1), 1–28.

* Barton, R. N. E., Roberts, A. J., & Roe, D. A. (1991). The Late Glacial in north-west Europe: Human adaptation and environmental change at the end of the Pleistocene. CBA Research Report 77. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000335

* Conneller, C., & Schadla-Hall, R. (2003). Beyond Star Carr: The Vale of Pickering in the tenth millennium BP. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 69, 85–105. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0079497X00001128

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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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