Cut and smashed animal bones discovered in Ethiopia are could indicate tool use by Australopithecus afarensis, according to research team member Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences. “For 30 years, no one has been able to put stone tools in their hands, and we’ve done that for the first time,” he said. The findings would push back the use of tools by 800,000 years, and could also be the earliest evidence for meat eating among hominins. Other scientists are not convinced. “An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. The evidence is very thin here, and very ambiguous,” commented Tim White of the University of California.

Bones found in a Spanish cave suggest that Homo antecessor individuals butchered and ate each other, in addition to mammoths, buffalo, and cats. “This practice, accepted and included in their social system, is the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date,” concluded the study published in Current Anthropology.  

John Boardman of the University of Oxford thinks that the Phoenician port city of Auza was probably closer to Egypt and Phoenicia than scholars have assumed. “This is simply a matter of making a suggestion of where the place is actually to be located on a map. Too many people have wanted to put it much too far away,” he explained.  

Modern humans have long throats and small mouths suitable for talking. “The first time we see human skulls – fossils – that have everything in place is about 50,000 years ago where the neck is long enough, the mouth is short enough, that they could have had a vocal tract like us,” said Philip Lieberman of Brown University.  

Europe’s massive prehistoric tombs seem to have been built during a few hundred years around 4000 B.C., according to Chris Scarre of Durham University. “It trivializes the tombs to call it a fad, but building such structures seems to have become a fashion where great numbers were built and then there was a cessation for centuries,” he said.  

A gold coin was unearthed in Israel, at the site of Tel Kedesh. The coin was minted by the Egyptian Ptolemies, and is the heaviest ever found in Israel.  

Parks Canada archaeologists continue to search for the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition, HMS Erebus, and HMS Terror. “Basically what we’re working on in nineteenth century Inuit testimony, Inuit accounts, as to where they saw one of these ships come to rest. Those stories were collected by search expeditions that were looking for the Franklin expedition,” said senior marine archaeologist Ryan Harris.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, August 12, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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