New research from several fields of study may finally have pinpointed the main reasons for why you and I are Homo sapiens and not Homo denisova or Homo neanderthalensis. We now know that modern humans in populations outside of Africa ….
Category: Prehistory
Scientists have been arguing for over a decade about the validity of comparing climate changes in the current geological period (the Holocene-Anthropocene epochs) with climate changes in the Eemian epoch, which lasted from about 130,000 years ago to about 115,000 ….
We define culture as the collection of beliefs and behaviors that distinguish between one group and others. This includes language, music, literature, technology, architecture, and clothing in the 21st century but tens of thousands of years ago “modern” human cultures ….
Somewhere around 69-77,000 years ago a supervolcano centered on what is now Lake Toba in northern Sumatra, Indonesia (just to the south of Thailand in Southeast Asia) exploded, clouding the Earth with a large amount of volcanic ash. We call ….
There are two factors that have always influenced human history: the availability of food and the proximity of water. Water is not only vital for sustaining life, it has served as barriers to protect isolated populations and as roadways for ….
Historians have long suspected that there was a 1200-year cycle in the rise and fall of cultures around the world. Although this blog has focused mainly on the Middle East and Europe, the 1200-year cycle has been noted in the ….
8,000 years ago (Circa. 6,000 BCE) one or more groups of farmers left Asia Minor and colonized what is now Greece. We don’t yet know how they arrived there or why they left their homes but they probably walked across ….
Archaeologists working in Orkney have uncovered a large complex of structures (buildings and walls) that they believe represent a religious center for a widespread community or culture dating to the period of roughly 3300 BCE to 2300 BCE. The length ….