A general view of the oldest dated cave art in South America, with nearly 8,200 years old, at the Huenul 1 cave, in Neuquen, Argentina March 3, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Archaeologists have discovered the earliest dated cave paintings in South America in Argentine Patagonia, dating back 8,200 years.

The 895 paintings were found by Argentine and Chilean archaeologists in the Huenul 1 cave, a 630 square meter rock shelter located in the province of Neuquen, some 1,100 kilometers (684 miles) southwest of the capital Buenos Aires.

“We were able to date four black peniform patterns that were drawn in charcoal. These proved to be the earliest direct dating of cave paintings in South America,” said Dr. Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, author of the research published in the Science Advances journal.

The Argentinean archaeologist said the discovery indicates that the production of cave art began in the Huenul cave about 8,000 years ago and that the practice of painting the particular pattern seen in the cave was sustained for a period of at least 3,000 years.

The discovery provides evidence of the artistic ability and cultural transmission of the hunter-gatherer societies which inhabited the region during the middle Holocene, a period roughly from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, and reveals the socioecological resilience to climate, as well as serving as a means of communication between scattered populations.

“We believe these images in particular were part of a resilient response of the mobile hunter-gatherer groups that occupied this cave and the desert environments of northern Patagonia to the climatic challenge of a period of extreme dryness that occurred during the middle Holocene,” said Romero Villanueva, a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina.

Villanueva said there are other places in South America that could have older cave paintings, but which only have relative dating, like Argentina’s Cueva de las Manos, with cave paintings dating back 9,500 years.

This photo provided by researcher Roman Garba shows a heavily weathered flake artifact at the Korolevo I archaeological site in western Ukraine in August 2023. Stone tools found in the area are the earliest evidence of early human presence in Europe, dating back to 1.4 million years ago, according to research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, March 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A dating method based on cosmic rays has identified stone tools found in western Ukraine as the oldest-known evidence of human occupation in Europe – 1.4 million years ago – showing that the peopling of the continent occurred hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously known.

Researchers said on Wednesday the stone tools – the most primitive kind known – were initially unearthed in the 1970s near the town of Korolevo in the Carpathian foothills along the Tysa river, close to Ukraine’s borders with Hungary and Romania. But their age had remained unclear.

The new method determined the age of the sediment layer containing the stone tools, making this site critical for understanding how humans first spread into Europe during warm spells – called interglacial periods – that interrupted the Ice Age’s grip on the continent.

The researchers concluded that the maker of the tools likely was Homo erectus, an early human species that arose roughly 2 million years ago and spread across Africa, Asia and Europe before disappearing perhaps 110,000 years ago.

“No bones were found at Korolevo, only stone tools. But the age suggests that Homo erectus was the only possible human species at the time. We know very little about our earliest ancestors. They used stone tools for butchery and probably used fire,” said Czech Academy of Sciences archeologist Roman Garba, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

Homo erectus was the first member of our evolutionary lineage with body proportions similar to our species, Homo sapiens, though with a smaller brain.

The tools, made of volcanic rock, were fashioned in what is called the Oldowan style. While quite simple – flaked tools such as choppers, scrapers or basic cutting instruments – they represent the dawn of human technology.

Until now, the oldest-known evidence of humans in Europe was about 1.2-1.1 million years old from a site called Atapuerca in Spain.

The Korolevo findings provide insight into the route of the first human expansion into Europe. Homo erectus fossils from 1.8 million years ago are known from a Caucasus site in Georgia called Dmanisi. Coupled with Korolevo, this suggests Homo erectus entered Europe from the east or southeast, migrating along the Danube river, Garba said.

“Korolevo is the northernmost outpost found so far of what we presume to be Homo erectus and is testimony to the intrepidness of this ancestor,” Czech Academy of Sciences geoscientist and study co-author John Jansen added.

It has been notoriously difficult to determine the age of Paleolithic sites like Korolevo. The study dated the tools, left by their makers on a river bed, by determining when the layer bearing the artifacts was buried under overlaying sediment.

“Earth is constantly bombarded by galactic cosmic rays. When these rays – mainly protons and alpha particles – penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, they generate a secondary shower of particles – neutrons and muons – that, in turn, penetrates into the subsurface,” geoscientist and study co-author Mads Knudsen of Aarhus University in Denmark said.

These particles react with minerals in rocks to produce radioactive nuclides, a class of atoms. The sediment was dated based on the ratio of two nuclides, thanks to their differing pace of radioactive decay.

Europe was later colonized by other now-extinct human species including Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, arriving in significant numbers in Europe perhaps around 40,000-45,000 years ago.

The Homo erectus pioneers encountered a Europe inhabited by large mammals including mammoths, rhinos, hippos, hyenas and saber-toothed cats.

“Most likely they were scavengers, looking for carcasses left by hyenas or other predators, but what attracted them to Korolevo was a source of high-quality volcanic rock, very good for making stone tools,” Garba said.

The researchers suspect evidence of European human occupation even older than Korolevo will turn up.

“The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ we will find a site of similar or older age somewhere else in Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria or Serbia,” Garba said.

A section of a limestone statue of Ramses II unearthed by an Egyptian-U.S. archaeological mission in El Ashmunein, south of the Egyptian city of Minya, Egypt in this handout image released on March 4, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A joint Egyptian-U.S. archaeological mission has uncovered the upper part of a huge statue of King Ramses II during excavations south of the Egyptian city of Minya, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities ministry said on Monday.

The limestone block is about 3.8 metres (12.5 feet) high and depicts a seated Ramses wearing a double crown and a headdress topped with a royal cobra, Bassem Jihad, head of the mission’s Egyptian team, said in a statement.

The upper part of the statue’s back column shows hieroglyphic writings that glorify the king, one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs, he said.

Also known as Ramses the Great, he was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and ruled from 1,279 to 1,213 BCE.

The size of the statue when combined with its lower section, which was unearthed decades ago, would reach about 7 metres.

The city of El Ashmunein, on the west bank of the River Nile, was known in ancient Egypt as Khemnu and in the Greco-Roman era was the regional capital of Hermopolis Magna.

Studies have confirmed that the upper part of the statue is a match for the lower section discovered by German archaeologist Gunther Roeder in 1930, said Mustafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The mission has begun cleaning and preparing the block ahead of modelling what the statue would look like when the two sections are combined, Waziri said.

Researchers uncover wooden artefacts on the banks of the Kalambo River in Zambia, near where the oldest-known use of wood in construction was found, in this handout image taken in July 2019.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Along the banks of the Kalambo River in Zambia near Africa’s second-highest waterfall, archaeologists have excavated two logs of the large-fruited bushwillow tree that were notched, shaped and joined nearly half a million years ago.

These artifacts, researchers said on Wednesday, represent the oldest-known example of humans – in this case a species that preceded our own – building wooden structures, a milestone in technological achievement that indicates that our forerunners displayed more ingenuity than previously thought.

The logs, modified using stone tools, appear to have been part of a framework for a structure, a conclusion that contradicts the notion humans at that time simply roamed the landscape hunting and gathering resources.

“The framework could have supported a walkway or platform raised above the seasonally wet surroundings. A platform could have multiple purposes including storage of firewood, tools, food and as a foundation on which to place a hut,” said archaeologist Larry Barham of the University of Liverpool in England, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

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“Not only did the working of trees require considerable skill, the right tools and planning, the effort involved suggests that the makers were staying in the location for extended periods whereas we have always had a model of Stone Age people as nomadic,” Barham added.

The rarity of wood preservation at early archaeological sites – it is perishable over time – means scientists have little understanding of how early humans used it.

“While the vast majority of archaeological sites of this age preserve only the stone tools, Kalambo Falls provides us a unique insight into the wooden objects that these tools were being used to create, allowing us a much richer and more complete picture of the lives of these people,” said geographer and study co-author Geoff Duller of Aberystwyth University in Wales.

“Wood can be shaped into a variety of forms making it an excellent construction material that is strong and durable,” Barham added.

The earliest-known Homo sapiens fossils date from roughly 300,000 years ago in Morocco. The Kalambo Falls logs were determined to be from about 476,000 years ago.

No human remains were found there, but Barham suspects the artifacts were fashioned by a species called Homo heidelbergensis known from about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago. Homo heidelbergensis possessed a large browridge and a bigger braincase and flatter face than earlier hominins – species on the human evolutionary lineage.

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The overlying log at Kalambo Falls is about 4-1/2 feet (1.4 meters) long, with tapering ends. About 5 feet (1.5 meters) of the underlying log was excavated.

“The structure involves the intentional shaping of two trees to create a framework of two interlocking supports. A notch was cut into the overlying log and the underlying tree was shaped to fit through the notch. This arrangement prevents the overlying log from moving side to side, giving stability to the structure,” Barham said.

The wood, found in a waterlogged condition, was preserved by a permanent high-water table at the site. Clay sediments surrounding it provided an oxygen-free environment preventing decay.

The earliest-known wood artifact is a plank fragment from Israel, about 780,000 years old. Wooden tools for foraging and hunting are known from about 400,000 years ago. A wedge-shaped wooden tool about as old as the logs was found at Kalambo Falls.

The site, about a quarter mile (400 meters) upriver from a spectacular 770-foot (235-meter) high waterfall, was discovered in 1953, but its age remained unclear. The new study used a method called luminescence dating, measuring the amount of energy an object has trapped since it was buried.

“The finds from Kalambo Falls indicate that these hominins, like Homo sapiens, had the capacity to alter their surroundings, creating a built environment,” Barham said. “Use of wood in this way suggests the cognitive ability to these early humans was greater than we have believed based on stone tools alone.”