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Neil Rusch, University of the Witwatersrand Alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. But where was the first alcoholic beverage brewed and consumed? The answer isn’t clear because traces of alcohol don’t preserve well in the archaeological record. Containers like skin bags and wooden vessels that were likely used to hold […]

François-Xavier Ricaut, Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and Nicolas Brucato, Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier At the dawn of the second millennium, before the Europeans came to East Africa, the Banjar people from southeast Borneo sailed 7,000 kilometres across the Indian Ocean and colonised the Comoros and Madagascar. They joined voyages

Julio Mercader Florin, University of Calgary The ability to adapt to changing environments has deep roots. In a technology-driven world, people tend to conflate adaptability with technological change, especially when it comes to navigating adverse climates and places. But not every technological revolution is a result of environmental change. Sometimes existing tool kits – containing,

Tim Forssman, University of Pretoria About 50km outside South Africa’s biggest city, Johannesburg, lies one of the most important sites in human prehistory: the Cradle of Humankind. Here, at sites like the Sterkfontein Caves, Swartkrans, Drimolen and Kromdraai, researchers have unearthed amazing fossil evidence from the Plio-Pleistocene (the last five million years). It is especially

Matthew Skinner, University of Kent According to the textbooks, all humans living today descended from a population that lived in east Africa around 200,000 years ago. This is based on reliable evidence, including genetic analyses of people from around the globe and fossil finds from Ethiopia of human-like skeletal remains from 195,000–165,000 years ago. Now

Alice Roberts, University of Birmingham I was in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2008 and lucky enough to examine the bones of one of the most controversial hominin species that has ever been discovered. The skeletal remains belonged to an ancient people with tiny brains, and so short that they have been nicknamed “hobbits”. These important fossils,

Ruby-Anne Birin, University of Oxford; Alex Schoeman, University of the Witwatersrand, and Mary Evans, University of the Witwatersrand If you go for a walk in the green hills of Mpumalanga in the north east of South Africa, you may stumble across some stone walls. Either stubbing your toe or appearing through the grass at about

Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Hampshire College As a Ghanaian archaeologist, I have been conducting research at Christiansborg Castle in Accra, Ghana. A UNESCO World Heritage site, the castle is a former seventeenth century trading post, colonial Danish and British seat of government, and Office of the President of the Republic of Ghana. Today, it’s known

Jessica Thompson, Yale University; David K. Wright, University of Oslo, and Sarah Ivory, Penn State Fields of rust-colored soil, spindly cassava, small farms and villages dot the landscape. Dust and smoke blur the mountains visible beyond massive Lake Malawi. Here in tropical Africa, you can’t escape the signs of human presence. How far back in

Rosalia Gallotti, Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III More than 1.5 million years ago, a new era dawned for our human ancestors, Homo erectus: the Acheulean culture. This period was marked by the ability to produce large cutting tools, mainly handaxes, manufactured using different kinds of rocks and used for a variety of activities. These