Human Prehistory (3.3 million years BC – 3500 BC)

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Ancient humans mastered fire-making 400,000 years ago, study shows
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ancient-h ... years.html
by Mustakim Hasnath

Scientists in Britain say ancient humans may have learned to make fire far earlier than previously believed, after uncovering evidence that deliberate fire-setting took place in what is now eastern England around 400,000 years ago.

The findings, described in the journal Nature, push back the earliest known date for controlled fire-making by roughly 350,000 years. Until now, the oldest confirmed evidence had come from Neanderthal sites in what is now northern France dating to about 50,000 years ago.

The discovery was made at Barnham, a Paleolithic site in Suffolk that has been excavated for decades. A team led by the British Museum identified a patch of baked clay, flint hand axes fractured by intense heat and two fragments of iron pyrite, a mineral that produces sparks when struck against flint.

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Ancient undersea wall dating to 5,800 BC discovered off French coast

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ancient-u ... ng-bc.html
Divers have discovered a long-submerged wall some 7,000 years old under the sea off western France, scientists said Thursday.

Some 120 meters long, it was found off the Ile de Sein in Brittany along with a dozen smaller manmade structures from the same period.

"This is a very interesting discovery that opens up new prospects for underwater archaeology, helping us better understand how coastal societies were organized," Yvan Pailler, professor of archaeology at the University of Western Brittany, told AFP.

He co-authored a study on the find, published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

5,800 bc is 7,800 years ago. That has got to be pushing it in that part of europe. I'd understand if it was turkey or syria.

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Severe drought linked to the decline of the hobbits 61,000 years ago
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-severe-dr ... bbits.html
by University of Wollongong

An international team of scientists, including the University of Wollongong (UOW), has found compelling evidence that a changing climate played a role in the extinction of the early human species Homo floresiensis, also known as "hobbits." Their research, published in Communications Earth & Environment, reveals the hobbits abandoned Liang Bua—a cave they had occupied for around 140,000 years—during a drought that lasted for thousands of years.

The team combined chemical records from cave stalagmites with isotopic data from fossil teeth from a pygmy elephant species (Stegodon florensis insularis) that hobbits hunted. The results reveal an extensive drying trend beginning around 76,000 years ago, culminating in severe drought between 61,000 and 55,000 years ago, around the time the hobbits disappeared. Prolonged drought and competition for resources may have driven their departure from Liang Bua and, ultimately, their extinction.

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Evidence of upright walking found in 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus fossils

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-evidence- ... ropus.html

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Most complete Homo habilis skeleton ever found dates to more than 2 million years ago and retains 'Lucy'-like features

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology ... e-features

[wjfox]

Oldest cave painting of red claw hand could rewrite human creativity timeline

53 minutes ago

A stencilled outline of a hand found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is the world's oldest known cave painting, researchers say.

It shows a red outline of a hand whose fingers were reworked, researchers say, to create a claw-like motif which indicates an early leap in symbolic imagination.

The painting has been dated to at least 67,800 years ago – around 1,100 years before the previous record, a controversial hand stencil in Spain.

The find also strengthens the argument that our species, Homo sapiens, had reached the wider Australia–New Guinea landmass, known as Sahul, by around 15,000 years earlier than some researchers argue.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czx1pnlzer5o



Source: Maxime Aubert

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More on that by The Debrief:

https://thedebrief.org/early-humans-in- ... sumptions/

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[wjfox]

Dogs became man's best friend far earlier than thought, scientists find

3 hours ago

A fragment of a jawbone found deep underground in a cave in Somerset has rewritten the story of when and how dogs became our best friends.

DNA analysis shows the jaw belonged to one of the earliest known domesticated dogs and that people lived closely with them in Britain 15,000 years ago, thousands of years before farm animals were domesticated or cats padded into our homes.

The discovery pushes back the time that the first dogs evolved from their wolf ancestors by around 5,000 years.

It also suggests that the friendship between the very first dogs and stone age humans was there almost from the very start, according to Dr William Marsh of the Natural History Museum.

"It shows that by 15,000 years ago dogs and humans already had an incredibly tight, close relationship – and this tiny jawbone, which seems like such a small thing, has helped to unlock the whole human story of how that partnership began."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0ky1n791go



Credit: Image source, Lars Larsson.

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