A stalagmite in Belize’s Yok Balum Cave has yielded a 2,000-year-long record of rainfall patterns. Douglas Kennett of Penn State University and his colleagues compared the information they extracted from the stalagmite with historical records kept by the Classic Maya. They found that the Classic Maya civilization rose during a rainy period, and declined with […]

Tiny stone blades discovered in South Africa’s Pinnacle Point Cave could indicate that early Homo sapiens had “modern minds” and created a complex technology more than 70,000 years ago. The 27 microliths were found in different layers of sand and soil of the cave spanning 11,000 years, further suggesting that the complex process of producing the […]