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POPSGerman 'Venus' may be oldest yet
The Venus of Hohle Fels was found in six fragments in September 2008. It is still missing its left arm and shoulder, but researchers are hopeful these will emerge in future excavations of the cave's sediments. The figurine does not have a head. Rather, it has a carefully carved ring located off-centre above its broad shoulders. The polished nature of the ring suggests the Venus was probably suspended as a pendant. The hands have precisely carved fingers, with five digits clearly visible on the left hand and four on the right hand. The pronounced breasts, buttocks and genitals familiar in later Venuses are usually interpreted to be expressions of fertility. The Venus shows no signs of having been covered with pigments. It is, though, marked by a series of cut lines. The artefact is presumed to have been made by modern humans (Homo sapiens) even though Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were still present in Europe at this time. "We find all kinds of things in our
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POPSScotland's First People Left Behind Big Game Toolkit "Secondly, it appears to represent a technological variant which has not been recognized anywhere else in Britain," he added, explaining that the style of the tools matches hunting implements from southern Denmark and northern Germany. It's now believed people from those regions made their way to Scotland via a large land bridge called Doggerland, which connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during the last ice age. The individuals in this case likely belonged to the Hamburg culture, known for its reindeer-hunting prowess. Early Scotland supported herds of reindeer, along with mammoths, rhinos, horses and other large animals. The climate "fluctuated wildly" at the end of the ice age, resulting in more moderate temperatures, but also icy cold snaps that caused the reappearance of glaciers in the highlands.
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POPSgermany's stone age cannibalism and it also mentions that endocannibalism-practiced within a community as a token of affection was probably not the motivation either due to the small size of the community
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POPS5,000 Year Old Canadian Calendar continues: "Genius existed on the prairies 5,000 years ago," says Freeman, the widely published former head of the university's physical and theoretical chemistry department. Freeman's fascination with prairie prehistory dates back to his Saskatchewan boyhood. He and his father would comb the short grasses of the plains in search of artifacts exposed by the scouring wind. That curiosity never left him and he returned to it as he prepared to retire from active teaching.
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POPSDoes Time Run Backward in Other Universes? Other researchers are working on related ideas, as more and more cosmologists are taking seriously the problem posed by the arrow of time. It is easy enough to observe the arrow—all you have to do is mix a little milk into your coffee. While sipping it, you can contemplate how that simple act can be traced all the way back to the beginning of our observable universe and perhaps beyond
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POPS"Climate change 'doomed ancient Argyll site' "
continues: But archaeologists have identified a period of almost 1,000 years in which no monuments were erected and the population virtually disappeared. Alison Sheridan, head of early prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, said: “Kilmartin Glen is one of the richest archaeological areas in Scotland, with a very high concentration of ritual sites.” She added that the earliest activity dated back to hunter-gatherers about 4500BC, who left behind nothing more than a few pits, charcoal and some flint. It was a sacred landscape from at least as early as 3700BC until as late as 1100BC. Dr Sheridan said: “It was a place for ceremony, for burying people, and observing the movements of the Sun and the Moon. We are not too certain what happened between 1100BC and 200BC. A hoard of swords has been found and a few artefacts buried as gifts to the gods in the late Bronze Age between 1000 and 750BC. But there are few structures and no settlements. When you start getting settlements again
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POPSThe World's Oldest Temple - 12,000 year-old Gobekli Tepe From Archaeology Magazine's November/December 2008 issue... The press here is fond of calling the site "the Turkish Stonehenge," but the comparison hardly does justice to this 25-acre arrangement of at least seven stone circles. The first structures at Göbekli Tepe were built as early as 10,000 B.C., predating their famous British counterpart by about 7,000 years.
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POPSEgalitarian revolution in the Pleistocene? In humans, a secondary transition from egalitarian societies to hierarchical states took place as the first civilizations were emerging. How can it be understood in terms of the model discussed? One can speculate that technological and cultural advances made the coalition size much less important in controlling the outcome of a conflict than the individuals' ability to directly control and use resources (e.g. weapons, information, food) that strongly influence the outcomes of conflicts.
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POPSArtifacts and Human History Yet many other unearthed "out-of-place artifacts" create obvious contradictions to the conservative picture of antiquity. They don't fit the established pattern of prehistory, pointing back instead to the existence of advanced civilizations before any of the known ancient cultures came into being.
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