Reconstructing the origins of our species requires many kinds of evidence: fossil and archaeological evidence like bones and artefacts, but also molecular evidence such as ancient DNA, and data on past climates and environments.

The pace of discovery has accelerated over the past few decades: the story has been extended further back in time, and has become increasingly complex with the discovery of new sites that hosted our ancient ancestors and new species to add to the human family tree.

Because the archaeological record is incomplete, it’s difficult to determine when and where something first appeared, and how long it lasted. The oldest known example of something may be a poor guide to when that thing actually emerged. Hence this timeline often gives wide ranges, and particularly uncertain dates are marked with a question mark.

85 million to 55 million years ago

Primates – the group that includes monkeys, apes and humans – emerge. The first primates are small and spend a lot of time in trees; they resemble modern tree shrews or squirrels.

It’s uncertain exactly when primates first evolve. It may be before or after the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 66 million years ago, when an asteroid strikes Earth and wipes out many species, including all dinosaurs apart from birds.

Genetic studies comparing DNA from different primates suggest they evolve . However, primates only show up in the fossil record afterwards – and it’s not always clear they are “true” primates. For instance, a little over , animals called Purgatorius live in North America. They are plesiadapiforms, closely related to primates.

By 55 million years ago, there are unambiguous primates. They include Archicebus, found in eastern China, and several species of Teilhardina, which live in the Americas and Eurasia.

It may be significant that Earth experiences a global heatwave called the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum around 55 million years ago. This enables tropical forests to spread widely, giving early primates a huge habitat.

30 million to 13 million years ago

The first apes evolve in Africa. Genetics suggests apes separated from monkeys as early as 30 million years ago, but again the fossil evidence comes along later.

Rukwapithecus is the earliest known ape or ape-like primate, living 25 million years ago in Tanzania. The 17-million-year-old Masripithecus, from Egypt, may be close to the last common ancestor of all extant apes.

Apes do well in Africa for several million years. Kenya is home to around 15 million years ago and Nyanzapithecus 13 million years ago. However, apes become increasingly rare on the continent – or at least, their fossils become sparse.

21 million to 16 million years ago

Grasses become common in East Africa and savannahs begin expanding in areas that were . This creates a new habitat – but it’s not clear how or when apes and hominins begin living in it.

17 million to 7 million years ago

Meanwhile, , some apes enter Eurasia. There they thrive. Eurasian apes develop more upright postures and curved, grasping fingers – traits we still see in great apes today.

Eurasian apes are a diverse bunch. Pierolapithecus lives in Spain around 12.5 million years ago: it has hands that are specialised for vertical climbing, so it probably can’t swing from tree branches. Its contemporary Dryopithecus has similarities to modern gorillas, while Hispanopithecus seems to have been ideally adapted for swinging. The 11.6-million-year-old Buronius may be the smallest ape, weighing just 10 kilograms.

12 million to 7 million years ago

Some Eurasian apes may start walking upright, or bipedally. This would mean that a key step in human evolution – the transition to bipedal walking – happened in Eurasia rather than Africa.

However, the evidence is disputed, largely because it relies on partial fossils. These include fossils from Danuvius, which lives in Germany 11.6 million years ago and has leg bones that show signs of upright walking. Likewise, the 10-million-year-old Rudapithecus from Hungary has a pelvis that may be adapted to allow a flexible lower back – a key ingredient for bipedal walking.

Even if some of these apes did walk bipedally, they are not necessarily our ancestors: bipedality may have independently evolved in multiple groups.

13 million to 5.5 million years ago

The last common ancestor (LCA) lives around this time. This unidentified animal is the most recent ancestor of both our closest living relatives – chimpanzees and bonobos – as well as humans and human-like hominins.

Some genetic evidence suggests the LCA lives at least 7 million years ago, but it may be earlier than that, 10 million years ago or more – or more recent, just 5.5 million years ago. The population split may be drawn-out rather than sudden.

It’s also not clear where the LCA lives. Because the earliest unambiguous hominins are known from Africa, many researchers have assumed an African LCA, but others argue for Eurasia. The fossil record is spotty in both places. Kenya’s 9.8-million-year-old may be quite close to the LCA – but unfortunately is only known from one jawbone and a handful of teeth.

7 million years ago

Sahelanthropus tchadensis, , lives in what is now Chad.

Our information about it is limited because we have only a few bones, representing , all from one small area. The remains include a skull known as Toumaï, fragments of lower jaw and some teeth, one thigh bone (femur) and two upper arm bones (ulnas).

Ever since Sahelanthropus was described in 2002, debate has raged about its nature. Some argue it walked bipedally, but others say the evidence doesn’t support that. In turn, some classify it as a hominin, while others contend it is more likely to be an ape.

6.05 million to 3 million years ago

Someone, or something, leaves a set of footprints on the tiny Mediterranean island of Trachilos. Some researchers argue the footprints are made by a bipedal hominin, in which case they are evidence that venture beyond Africa. However, there is no consensus over who makes them .

6 million years ago

Orrorin tugenensis lives in what is now Kenya. Their leg bones suggest they are bipedal hominins. Adults are 1.1 to 1.4 metres tall. They still have ape-like arms and curved fingers, ideal for climbing trees.

5.8 million to 4.4 million years ago

Hominins known as Ardipithecus live in East Africa. They walk fully upright, but also have grasping big toes like those of great apes, ideal for climbing trees. Their brains remain relatively small and their teeth suggest a varied diet.

Two species are known, from different time periods. The earlier species is Ardipithecus kadabba from 5.8 million years ago, which is known from only a handful of remains. It has large canine teeth like those of apes, but evolution causes these to shrink over the next few million years.

The second and better-known species is Ardipithecus ramidus, from 4.4 million years ago, represented by a female skeleton dubbed “Ardi”.

Ardi is the oldest near-complete hominin skeleton, offering some of our best evidence about the last common ancestor. Initial interpretations claim that Ardi is quite unlike chimpanzees, suggesting the LCA is also not like a chimp, but more recent analyses suggest Ardi’s hands are well adapted for swinging from branches like chimpanzees.

4.2 million to 1.9 million years ago

Hominins called Australopithecus live widely in Africa. They retain some ape-like traits, like relatively small brains and long, powerful arms suited for tree climbing. However, their skeletons strongly suggest that they habitually walk on two legs, and there is evidence that they make and use tools. Some Australopithecines may be the ancestors of our own genus, Homo.

Multiple species of Australopithecus coexist in Africa. The earliest known is Australopithecus anamensis, which lives in East Africa about 4 million years ago: it may be the ancestor of most or all of the later species.

Later, East Africa is home to Australopithecus afarensis. Many individuals of this species are known, the most famous being “Lucy” from the Afar region of Ethiopia. Lucy’s species rubs shoulders with another group called Australopithecus deyiremeda, who have more robust jaws – suggesting they eat tougher food.

Australopithecus are not confined to East Africa. In central Africa, in what is now Chad, lives Australopithecus bahrelghazali. Unlike the other Australopithecines, they seem to eat a fairly limited diet, mostly grass.

Further species live in southern Africa. One is , exemplified by the Taung Child skull. A famous fossil called “Little Foot” may be the same species but has sometimes been placed into its own species – Australopithecus prometheus. The other South African species is Australopithecus sediba. They live as recently as 1.98 million years ago, meaning they share the continent with some of the earliest Homo – but they retain their Australopithecine traits like long arms for tree climbing.

3.5 million to 3.2 million years ago

Kenyanthropus, one of the least understood hominins, lives in Kenya. They are known from a handful of fossils from a site called Lomekwi, including a cranium that is badly squashed. Their cheek bones are fairly pronounced and their teeth small, both of which are more human-like traits.

Because there are so few remains, not everyone is convinced that Kenyanthropus is really .

3.3 million years ago

The oldest known stone tools are used in Lomekwi, Kenya. The are crude, produced by bashing one stone down onto another and knocking flakes off. There are tentative claims of older stone tool use, in the form of apparent cut marks on animal bones.

It’s not clear which hominins make and use the Lomekwian tools, or how hominins invent tools; one suggestion is that they first use naturally sharp stones, then find ways to make new ones.

3 million years ago

Savannahs, which have been , finally reach all the way to southern Africa. Hominins now spend much of their time in mixed environments, with both trees and open grasslands.

2.8 million to 1.4 million years ago

Hominins called Paranthropus live in eastern and southern Africa. Given how late in the story they appear, they are remarkably ape-like, with smallish brains. They have dish-shaped faces due to huge chewing muscles and large teeth. Their teeth lead some to dub them “Nutcracker Man”, but the nickname is misleading as they probably don’t eat hard foods, but rather tough and chewy ones like grasses.

Three species are known. Paranthropus robustus lives in southern Africa, while Paranthropus aethiopicus and Paranthropus boisei live in the east. The relationships between the species are unclear. However, it does seem that Paranthropus is closely related to Homo.

Despite their ape-like bodies, there is growing evidence that Paranthropus make and use tools. Their hands are both strong and dexterous, and their remains have been found alongside Oldowan tools (see below).

2.8 million years ago?

The first members of the Homo genus appear in Africa. The earliest fossils are extremely limited: a lower jawbone and teeth from in Ethiopia.

2.6 million years ago

The earliest known Oldowan stone tools are used. Named for Olduvai/Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania, they are relatively simple, produced by chipping flakes off pebbles – but still require a degree of coordination, skill and forethought. Oldowan tools are widely and habitually used for over a million years.

Palaeoanthropologists have sometimes assumed that Oldowan tools were made only by members of Homo. However, the oldest known Oldowan tools are associated with Paranthropus fossils, suggesting Paranthropus may also use them.

2 million to 1.8 million years ago

Homo habilis lives in East Africa. While the species is one of the most famous, its fossil record is highly incomplete so it is not well understood. In particular, we have only partial skulls, and fossils have sometimes been assigned to H. habilis simply because they don’t fit anywhere else. What does seem clear is that H. habilis still has long arms, suggesting they spend a lot of time in trees.

H. habilis is often described as the first Homo species. It may have been around before 2 million years ago, but the purported older fossils are so partial that . The Ledi-Geraru jawbone from 2.8 million years ago and an upper jawbone dubbed from 2.3 million years ago seem to be Homo but don’t quite fit H. habilis.

2 million years ago

Earliest evidence of Homo erectus. This species goes on to be one of the most widespread hominin groups and survives for nearly 2 million years. The earliest fossils are found in the Ethiopian highlands and at . Later, they are also found in North Africa, notably at in Algeria .

Compared with earlier hominins, H. erectus have significantly larger brains. They have shorter arms and longer legs, making them more like modern humans and less like apes. They also seem to have longer childhoods than earlier hominins, as evidenced by the famous fossil “Nariokotome Boy”.

1.8 million years ago

For the first time, some hominins move out of Africa into Eurasia.

The earliest widely accepted example is H. erectus, who live in what is now Georgia 1.8 million years ago. Some H. erectus head east, reaching China by million or million years ago, and going all the way to the island of Java in Indonesia. The Javan population lasts longest, remaining until as recently as 108,000 years ago. Curiously, there is little evidence of H. erectus in western or central Europe, apart from some partial face bones from Sima del Elefante in northern Spain that cannot be confidently identified.

There are disputed claims of earlier migrations into Eurasia. Other animals do make the trip, so it may not be all that difficult.

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1.8 million to 1.4 million years ago

, from Wonderwerk cave in South Africa and  in . Similar traces appear at more recent sites in South Africa and the Levant. Some of these early fires may be created opportunistically from wildfires: the oldest hard evidence of hominins starting fires from scratch is from Britain around 400,000 years ago.

Hominins may use fires for cooking, which may help fuel the growth of their brains, as cooked food is more nutritious. There is also evidence of hominins using fire to modify stone tools as early as 300,000 years ago.

1.7 million years ago

The of Acheulean stone tools, which include hand axes shaped like teardrops and are harder to make than the Oldowan tools. H. erectus may be the first to use them.

1.3 million to 500,000 years ago?

Ancestor X – the last shared ancestor of our species (modern humans or Homo sapiens) and our other cousins, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and the Denisovans – lives at this time.

We do not know the identity of Ancestor X. Various species have been proposed, including Homo antecessor (see below) and Homo heidelbergensis (see below). But none quite fits the bill.

There is also uncertainty about the timing. Comparisons of the genomes of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans suggest Ancestor X lives 500,000 to 700,000 years ago. However, some fossils point to an earlier date. Hominins from Morocco from 773,000 years ago may be close relatives of Ancestor X: they share traits with modern humans and Neanderthals, but also the much earlier H. erectus. More dramatically, a skull from China called Yunxian 2 is between 940,000 and 1.1 million years old. It may be a Denisovan, implying Ancestor X predates this time.

949,000 to 772,000 years ago

lives in northern Spain, making it the first hominin known to live in western Europe. The species is , the cave of Gran Dolina. There is also a lower jawbone from the nearby Sima del Elefante, which is 1.1 million to 1.3 million years old, but it’s not clear if it’s H. antecessor or .

H. antecessor has several features seen in later species, including our own, such as flat faces – perhaps hinting that they are our ancestors.

774,000 to 129,000 years ago

This is the Middle Pleistocene or Chibanian period, which is sometimes referred to as the “Muddle in the Middle” because the hominin fossil record is so confusing. Many fossil remains, from both Africa and Eurasia, are difficult to categorise.

This is exemplified by H. heidelbergensis, first identified from a lower jawbone from Mauer, Germany. Various fossils in Europe, Asia and Africa have been suggested to be H. heidelbergensis, but all these claims are disputed and it may be that H. heidelbergensis is solely European.

500,000 years ago

Earliest evidence of hominins using pigments, especially the red-orange minerals known as “ochre”. They may first use the pigments to paint their own bodies. Around this time, someone – perhaps a H. erectus – scratches a zigzag pattern into a clam shell on Java, creating the earliest known decoration.

Hominins may also be starting to make and wear simple clothes. Key evidence comes from hide scrapers: stone tools used to clean animal hides, a necessary step in making clothing from fur.

476,000 years ago

The oldest preserved wooden artefacts: a set of interlocking logs that may have formed part of a large structure such as a building, from Kalambo Falls in Zambia. The oldest known wooden tool, a shaped stick found in Greece, is about 430,000 years old.

It’s likely that hominins make and use wooden artefacts long before this, but these have not been preserved, because wood is perishable.

430,000 to 40,000 years ago

The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) live in Eurasia. They make an array of tools and artefacts, including jewellery. They may be the first hominins to make long-term homes. Neanderthals show many signs of human-level intelligence and ingenuity – even making a stone circle deep in Bruniquel cave, France, 175,000 years ago.

The oldest known Neanderthal remains are from Sima de los Huesos in northern Spain and are 430,000 years old.

Genetics indicates that Neanderthals sometimes interbreed with other hominins, including modern humans (H. sapiens) and the Denisovans of East Asia. While some of the hybrids may struggle with genetic mismatches, enough survive to leave traces in the genomes of all three groups. Many people today have some Neanderthal DNA.

The last reliably dated Neanderthal remains are about 40,000 years old, suggesting the species disappears around this time. Many factors may contribute to the extinction, including climate change, the Neanderthals’ small and isolated populations, and the arrival of H. sapiens in Europe. The last Neanderthals live in southern Europe.

350,000 years ago?

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerge in Africa. The oldest known fossils are from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and are between 250,000 and 350,000 years old. A skull from Florisbad in South Africa may also be early H. sapiens and is . Later, there are from Omo Kibish and from Herto, both in Ethiopia. Already, our species is widespread and diverse.

335,000 to 236,000 years ago?

Homo naledi lives in what is now South Africa. They are known from only one site: the Rising Star cave.

For such a recent species, H. naledi have small brains. Nevertheless, there is evidence that they use fire to cook and make etchings on cave walls. Most controversially, they may bury their dead in the cave, indicating that even small-brained hominins feel the need to commemorate death through ritual.

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250,000 to 32,000 years ago?

Denisovans live in eastern Asia. They are a sister group to Neanderthals, named for Denisova cave in Siberia where the first fragmentary fossils were found. Denisovans are the first hominins to be identified primarily through ancient DNA.

They appear to be large-bodied, with big teeth and thick skulls. However, we still have only limited fossils and few stone tools and artefacts, so our understanding of their bodies and behaviour is limited. It’s also unclear how long they were around and what happened to them: we have only a partial reconstruction of their .

What is clear is that Denisovans are widespread and diverse. They interbreed with H. sapiens, so today many Asian populations carry some Denisovan DNA.

190,000 to 50,000 years ago?

Homo floresiensis, diminutive hominins often known as hobbits, live on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Remains excavated from a cave called Liang Bua show that the hobbits stand barely 1 metre tall and have correspondingly small, but advanced, brains.

It’s unclear how and when H. floresiensis evolve. The earliest stone artefacts linked to them are . The hobbits may be descendants of H. erectus who evolve smaller bodies as an adaptation to island life. A second site on Flores called Mata Menge also has small hominin remains, this time from 700,000 years ago. These may be the ancestors of hobbits.

The last traces of the hobbits are from 50,000 years ago, so the species may go extinct around that time. A drying climate and the arrival of H. sapiens may contribute.

134,000 to 50,000 years ago?

Homo luzonensis lives on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Only a few bones and teeth have been found, in Callao cave, so little is known. There is an ongoing debate over their age: as young as 50,000 years old on some measures, on others.

100,000 to 50,000 years ago

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) migrate out of Africa and spread around the world. It’s unclear why they do so now; previous migrations may have been unsuccessful as they have left no genetic traces in modern populations. Arabia may be a key crossing point.

In Eurasia, modern humans replace the Neanderthals and Denisovans (after some interbreeding). Some get all the way to Australia by perhaps 65,000 years ago – a journey that requires multiple sea crossings.

Reaching the Americas takes longer, because it requires settling in the far north-east of Russia and crossing an ice bridge into Alaska. People do this between 33,000 and 14,000 years ago. From there they spread out, some going all the way into South America and the Amazon rainforest.

73,000 years ago and onwards?

H. sapiens, and probably other hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans, create rock art such as cave paintings. Rock art has been found on every inhabited continent.

At time of writing, the oldest known cave art is at least 68,000 years old: it is a hand stencil on a cave wall on Sulawesi, Indonesia. The oldest known narrative art, a painting of a pig surrounded by humans, is at least 51,200 years old and is also from a cave on Sulawesi. The oldest known drawing of any kind is a set of red lines daubed onto a loose stone using ochre. The stone was found in sediments in Blombos cave, South Africa, and seems to be 73,000 years old.

40,000 to 10,000 years ago?

Around the world, many of the same symbols are repeatedly engraved or painted onto cave walls. The symbols may be a code, intended to convey important information. They are not writing, because they are too limited, but may be a precursor to it: “proto-writing”.

40,000 to 14,000 years ago?

Some Eurasian wolves become domesticated, becoming dogs: the first domestic animals. Their bodies become smaller and their canine teeth shrink, among other changes. By about 14,000 years ago, these “incipient dogs” have become modern dogs and there is evidence that humans care for them.

Around the same time, some animals begin living alongside humans and getting benefits from doing so, such as food – but they remain wild. These synanthropic animals include foxes, pigeons and gulls.

Many other domestications follow, including wheat, chickens and cats (although cats are only sort of domesticated) – but millennia later, after people begin farming.

12,000 to 4000 years ago

The Neolithic. Multiple societies begin relying heavily on farming for food, instead of hunting and gathering. This happens in the Fertile Crescent in western Asia, parts of Africa, the Americas, East Asia and Papua New Guinea, within a few thousand years. Some societies start living in dense villages and towns – some of which develop into powerful, hierarchical states. The first true writing systems emerge around 5300 years ago.

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DNA samples collected from Inca mummies have confirmed the presence of a strain of smallpox that first emerged in Europe.

“We interpreted this as the first direct molecular evidence of smallpox introduction into the Americas through European colonisation,” says at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Smallpox was the scourge of humanity for centuries until its eradication in the 1980s, through vaccination, from all but a few high-security medical laboratories. Severe strains of the virus had a mortality rate of up to a third and left survivors with scars from the blisters and scabs that cover the skin and fill with pus.

The disease was particularly brutal in parts of the world colonised by Europeans, such as and the Americas, where Indigenous populations had no natural immunity, resulting in millions of deaths.

In the Americas, historical reports record that smallpox began devastating Indigenous communities in the early 16th century, after the arrival of European colonists.

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at the University of Dundee in the UK, who wasn’t involved in the new research, says the waves of epidemics, including smallpox, that spread across the Americas were some of the most important events in history. “These diseases killed perhaps 95 per cent of the Indigenous population of the Americas and allowed for European colonisation,” he says.

Nakagome and his colleagues studied samples of bone from mummies found at an archaeological site known as Camarones 9 in northern Chile, discovered in 1957. Over subsequent decades, 41 mummified bodies wrapped in blankets and buried with grave goods were recovered from the site.

“While the original aim was to study the human DNA, we also searched for DNA from ancient pathogens,” says Nakagome. “That is when we discovered fragments matching the smallpox virus in two individuals.”

The first was a woman who was 30 to 35 years old at the time of death, and the second, an 18-to-20-year-old man, was revealed by carbon dating to have died between 1492 and 1631.

By reconstructing the virus’s genomes and comparing them with other ancient and modern smallpox viruses, the team found that they belonged to a lineage of smallpox that includes early medieval and early modern European strains.

The discovery adds weight to the possibility that small skin lesions on the trunks of the mummies, previously attributed to chronic arsenic exposure, may in fact have been the distinctive pustules that scar the skin of smallpox victims.

“This finding allowed us to identify a small group of people impacted by the virus for which no historical record exists,” says team member at the University of Chile in Santiago. Before the new research, the pathogen was known only from historical accounts of large-scale outbreaks, she says.

The work was particularly sensitive because of the disturbance of the original remains and the loss of material during analysis, both considered extremely controversial subjects to Indigenous people and the scientific community. “We never forget that behind every DNA extraction is a person, not a data point,” says de la Fuente Castro.

Ward welcomed the new research. “Understanding exactly what was killing native peoples and why they were so susceptible to epidemic disease is a vitally important issue,” he says.

Historians are now trying to understand how Europeans deliberately or inadvertently fuelled the spread of epidemics like smallpox, he says. “Without these epidemics, colonisation of the Americas would have been very different.”

The discovery of layers of grass ash stretching back 25,000 years suggests that a cave in south-eastern Australia was home to elaborate rituals for over 1000 generations of Indigenous inhabitants.

Cloggs cave is in the homeland of the GunaiKurnai people in south-eastern Victoria. In 2024, archaeologists and traditional owners announced the discovery of ancient artefacts inside the cave, providing evidence for the extraordinary possibility that a ritual had survived for 12,000 years through to modern times.

Now, at Monash University in Melbourne, along with , a GunaiKurnai elder, and their colleagues have uncovered evidence that more than doubles the amount of time that cultural practices took place in the cave. The purposes of these rituals are thought to have included magic, healing and cursing.

The team found thousands of microscopic, silt-sized preserved cells called phytoliths that form when plants absorb soluble silica from the soil and deposit it within their structures. Grasses were the dominant vegetation type, making up 97 per cent of the burnt phytoliths found in the cave.

David thinks this is because grasses immediately turn to ash, rather than charcoal, when burnt, and the ash was considered important for rituals.

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These phytolith fossils indicate that people had brought whole grasses, including their roots, into the cave and burnt them to repeatedly make thin layers of ash, he says.

The researchers were then able to link this practice of burning ashes with cultural practices described by the Alfred Howitt. In the 1880s, in other parts of GunaiKurnai country Howitt recorded the rituals of powerful medicine men and women that he described as “wizards”. His accounts show that ash was an important part of GunaiKurnai rituals in the 19th century.

“Such burning of grass goes back to 25,000 years ago inside the cave, but between 4400 and 1600 years ago, the burning of ash layers became more frequent and more widespread across the floor of the cave,” says David.

Around 2000 years ago, a standing stone was erected in the cave and over the next 400 years, grass was burnt all around it.

Unlike pollen, which can be transported by wind, phytoliths are usually deposited immediately beside the plants from which they originate. The team also ruled out the possibility that the fossils were washed in by a flood.

The cave also contained phytoliths deposited in the scats of common brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula), but these were unburnt, distinguishing them from the phytoliths created by human activities.

The ashes weren’t always associated with the same kinds of archaeological remains, suggesting they were created by a range of practices in the cave, says David.

“The common theme here is that people repeatedly piled grasses and burnt them,” he says. “Prior to 4400 years ago, the bringing and burning of grass into the cave was more sporadic and less frequent, not resulting in the repeated dense ashy layers that we see after 4400 years ago, although other kinds of ritual activities involving stalactites and miniature fires with single fat-smeared sticks were performed during those earlier times.”

at the Australian National University in Canberra says archaeobotanical research has been underrepresented in Australian archaeology, which has meant that a “large portion of past life has been understudied”.

“This is a great study, weaving careful scientific analysis of phytoliths with GunaiKurnai cultural knowledge to show that grasses were specially collected and burnt at Cloggs cave to support ritual practices over many millennia,” says Florin.

Hunter-gatherers transported brown trout into the mountains of Norway at least 7000 years ago so they could be harvested during summer foraging trips into the highlands.

That is the only possible explanation for how fish could have populated isolated mountain lakes that had been covered by a kilometres-thick ice sheet for tens of thousands of years, says at the University of Oslo, Norway.

“This is the oldest documented example of human-mediated translocation of fish in the world,” says Mjærum.

Until around 8400 years ago, Lake Tesse, at an elevation of around 850 metres, was covered by the Fennoscandian ice sheet, leaving an ecological blank canvas once it retreated.

Yet before it was transformed for hydropower storage in the 1940s, Lake Tesse was regarded as one of the richest brown trout waterways in Norway, yielding 9 tonnes of the fish annually.

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While it has long been suspected that humans had a hand in establishing the brown trout population in Lake Tesse, we had no idea how long ago this happened.

Alternative ideas have included transportation by birds or natural migration of fish and eggs upstream. But most Norwegian mountain lakes, including Lake Tesse, only had brown trout until recently, and geographical features such as large waterfalls make natural dispersal upstream impossible.

Mjærum and his colleagues studied the partially buried remains of elaborate wooden fish traps, discovered in 2022 when the lake level was lowered.

Radiocarbon dating showed that the oldest trap dated from around 4950 BC. By correlating the recovered wood with the pine tree ring chronology available for the central Scandinavian mountains, the team was also able to precisely date some of the posts that were part of the younger traps.

One came from a tree felled between spring 2669 BC and winter 2669-2668 BC, and another 12 years later during the winter of 2657-2656 BC, demonstrating that the traps must have been maintained to keep them in good working order.

“Therefore, it is possible that this form of trap fishing was ongoing in Tesse during much of the period between 5000 and 2650 BC,” says Mjærum.

The transport of fish into the lakes is an early example of people managing the environment to provide food, centuries before the advent of farming in Scandinavia. There is evidence that fish farming began even earlier in other parts of the world,

How people transported the fish is unknown, but they may have used waterskins. People probably stayed in the mountains for part of the summer season, hunting reindeer and fishing, but spent the winters in the valleys or along the coast where the climate was milder, says Mjærum.

“A good and predictable food supply also made longer stays possible, not only for hunters aiming for big game, but for whole family groups,” he says.

Ancient Egyptian princesses were probably trained in using bows and daggers and put themselves at risk of serious injury. Rediscovering mummies from about 3800 years ago has revealed that some of these women had enlarged bones in their arms and bowing of the bones in their palms, which suggests they were active users of the weapons they were often buried with.

“They carried their bows and daggers into the afterlife not just as ornaments, but as testaments to the active, resilient and powerful lives they led,” says at Beni-Suef University in Egypt.

Weapons have been found throughout history. But there has been much debate about whether this was symbolic or meant the women used them.

Now, Hashesh and her colleagues have studied six royal mummies – five female – found at the Dahshur complex of pyramids and tombs from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom between about 1850 and 1700 BC. The mummies, some of which were found with bows and arrows alongside them, were excavated in the 1890s, and were rediscovered in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo during a curation project in 2020.  

The team has analysed the bones to learn about the lives of these royal individuals, four of whom are thought to be daughters of the pharaoh Amenemhat II.

A key finding was that Princess Ita – who had an elaborate gold and lapis lazuli dagger in her burial assemblage and was aged between 28 and 34 when she died – would have had very strong connections between the bones in her forearm and strong hand muscles. This implies the habitual gripping of weapons like daggers or maces, says Hashesh.

Princesses Noub-Hotep (aged between 40 and 44) and Itaweret (aged 20 to 34) both showed enlargement of the radius bone in the forearm, which could be an adaptation to . The former princess, who was buried alongside arrows, also had bowing of the second right metacarpal bone in the palm and strengthened attachments of finger muscles. These hint at the sustained mechanical load required to hold a bow and are indicative of “archer’s grip”.

“I imagine the lives of princesses like Noub-Hotep and Ita were far from the sedentary, purely decorative existence we often associate with ancient royalty,” says Hashesh. “To develop the archer’s grip and the structural bowing of the hand bones observed in Noub-Hotep, they must have begun training in archery and martial arts from a young age.”

at Griffith University in Australia says this study gives us real insight into these princesses’ lives. “Royal women were not simply sitting around a palace or following their menfolk around, but living active and skilled lives. They were trained in very practical martial and hunting arts, just as we imagine their fathers and brothers were,” she says.

The bones also revealed that injuries were common. For example, Princess Itaweret survived broken ribs and foot fractures, which Hashesh says were probably caused by accidents or hard blows.

“This tells us that they were out in the world, perhaps engaged in high-impact activities where falls and blows were a real danger,” she says. When injured, their status gave them access to surgeons capable of setting bones so well that they healed without infection or misalignment, she says.

But at the University of Southampton, UK, says that other activities could result in similar alterations to arm and hand bones, such as frequent juggling or using a scythe. “If we were to find a tennis player buried with a club, we cannot simply argue that this [similar] bony change was a result of clubbing people,” she says.

An ancient Maya astronomer-mathematician has been identified for the first time along with his complex calculations made around 1200 years ago, predicting the orbital cycles of Mars and Venus.

“This is the first direct mention of an ancestral Maya astronomer-mathematician by personal name,” says at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It is also the oldest recorded name of an astronomer-mathematician ever known from anywhere in the Americas, he says.

The Maya civilisation flourished in Central America between roughly 2000 BC and AD 1697. They had advanced knowledge of mathematics and astronomy, but much of it was lost after the mass burning of their books by Spanish missionaries.

Since 2010, excavations at the site of Xultun, Guatemala, have revealed astronomical and mathematical inscriptions inside a small masonry building.

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On the east and north-east walls of the building are around 50 texts that scientists believe are “rough drafts” made by Maya mathematicians as they charted and predicted the cycles of celestial objects relative to Earth and to one another.

Rossi and his colleagues have painstakingly deciphered one of these murals, named Text 19. At the bottom of the mural is the name of Sak Tahn Waax, which translates to White-chested Fox, who is believed to be the author of the formula.

Text 19 consists of 11 hieroglyphs, which had to be scanned, photographed and magnified under different illumination angles, and compared with other, later, astronomical-mathematical writings, before their meaning could be deduced.

While similar mathematical and astronomical expertise is found across Maya cities, the mention of Sak Tahn Waax, who the researchers believe was probably male, is unique.

“Whether this is an instance of the scribe himself signing his own calculation or attributing the intellectual work to another, we have a formula and the name of its creator, which serves to demonstrate the importance of this kind of intellectual contribution for Classic Maya people,” says Rossi.

The calendar system on display in Text 19 uses maths in relation to time periods, he says. These time periods were drawn from a 260-day calendar, a 365-day solar calendar, a 584-day approximation of Venus’s synodic cycle (when the planet returns to the same position relative to both Earth and the sun) and a 780-day approximation of Mars’s synodic cycle. The total length of the formula is five Venus synodic cycles or 2920 days, and the date that Text 19 most likely refers to is 7 November of AD 781 in the Julian calendar.

Exactly how this formula would have been applied is unknown, says Rossi, as it “isn’t incorporated into any larger body of work”.

“We think it is meant to concisely and meaningfully show the relationship between these two planets and human counts of time in ways that could then be applied to political ceremony, predictive astronomy and understandings of seasonality,” he says.

Such meticulous mathematical legwork would have been critical to structuring life in a world before computers, smartphones and weather apps, says Rossi.

“You don’t acquire Homer; Homer acquires you.” So writes Adam Nicolson in , his paean to that indispensable pair of ancient epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Christopher Nolan’s of the latter makes Nicolson’s book essential reading now for anyone interested in the story’s greater significance.

Nicolson’s work follows three trains of thought. In the first, he waxes philosophical about what Homer – always referred to in the singular, but acknowledged to have been multiple people, spanning generations – has to say about the meaning of life and the clash between civilisation and depravity. He delves into the fascination literary giants have had with Homer, including John Keats, whose poem Endymion gives the book its title, and Alexander Pope, whose translations leave much to be desired.

The other two strands are more rooted in the tangible world. Nicolson digs into the text of the Iliad and the Odyssey and parses out variations in the Greek, tracing the language’s structure back to the Linear B of the Mycenaean era and beyond, and uses this linguistic examination to attempt to pin down exactly when the poems were first composed – much earlier than we’d previously thought, he argues. The standardised, written Homer that we know came down from a much older oral tradition, says Nicolson, as far back as even 2000-1800 BC.

Finally, he finds traces of Homer’s writing in archaeological treasures from around the ancient Mediterranean, from a papyrus found at the Hawara site in Egypt to a pottery shard discovered in a tomb on the island of Ischia, one of the oldest surviving examples of written Greek. The papyrus dates to about AD 150; the pottery, to the 8th century BC. Much attention is also paid to the shaft graves of Mycenae, and what they can tell us about the world before the Bronze Age collapse.

Nicolson isn’t interested in the historicity of the poems themselves – they are myths, after all – as much as he is in the world that produced them. He draws a compelling portrait of a complex ancient realm, and of people for whom these stories provided a link to their nomadic, warrior-centred past.

Rereading The Mighty Dead, with its focus on relics and remnants, reminded me of my honeymoon to Crete. My husband and I visited the archaeological museum in Heraklion and saw a boar-tusk helmet on display; in book 10 of the Iliad, you will find Odysseus described wearing one, too. It is a reminder, as Nicolson’s book impressively contends, that the world of Homer is still very much all around us, if we know where to look.

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Around 3000 years ago, several empires and kingdoms in the Mediterranean collapsed, with a group of sea-faring warriors implicated as the culprit. But new evidence shows that many of our ideas about this turbulent time need completely rethinking

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