Using ground-penetrating radar, the researchers found that the monumental stone circles of Avebury, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Stonehenge, were centred on an early Neolithic habitation, with the concentric stone circles and large earthen embankment being built around it probably centuries later.
They say the Neolithic house at Avebury was built sometime after 3700 B.C. - but centuries before the creation of the larger rings of stone at Avebury and the megalithic monument at Stonehenge, which research shows were built after 3000 B.C."
[Read The Full Story]
[The area around Salisbury plain which contains the Avebury and Stonehenge complexes was obviously used for many millennia more than has previously been acknowledged. Now the use of ground-penetrating radar is showing much more usage of the area in prehistoric times than was expected. It will be well worth watching developments. Do read the full story - Ed.]
The discovery has implications for ideas about early hominin evolution and dispersal from Africa.
Homo sapiens is the only living species of a diverse group called hominins (members of the human family tree who are more closely related to each other than they are to chimpanzees and bonobos).
Most extinct hominin species are not our direct ancestors, but instead are close relatives with evolutionary histories that took a slightly different path from ours.
This newly identified species was found in the Philippines and named Homo luzonensis after Luzon, the island where bones and teeth from individuals of this species were excavated from Callao Cave.
Specimens of H. luzonensis were dated to minimum ages of 50,000 and 67,000 years old, which suggests that the species was alive at the same time as several other hominins belonging to the genus Homo, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo floresiensis."
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[What an amazing new discovery! It seems another precious paradigm needs to be urgently reviewed, and it makes you wonder how many others are waiting to be discovered.
"Marawah Island Uncovers Abu Dhabi History With New Findings" UrduPoint (Pakistan)
"The latest archaeological excavations on Marawah Island, carried out by specialist teams from the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi, have shed new light on Abu Dhabi's earliest known settlement, which dates back 8,000 years.
The most recent excavations, which took place over a period of five weeks in February and March, have uncovered stunning new evidence on the architecture, art and technology of Abu Dhabi's Neolithic inhabitants.
Marawah lies around 100km to the west of the city of Abu Dhabi, and approximately 25km northwest of the port of Mirfa.
The dig site is situated on top of a rocky limestone plateau located just to the west of Ghubba village in the southwestern part of the island.
First discovered in 1992 during an archaeological survey of the island, the site consists of at least seven mounds that appear to be the remains of collapsed Neolithic stone structures."
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[It's good to have an update on thr excellent work that's been going on for many years in the Persian Gulf region. Evidence of urban remains dated 8,000 years ago is significant, especially in that region.
Not too far away in NW India urban remains the site of Manhattan Island were found just offsore in shallow waters of the Gulf of Khambat (Cambay) in 2001, and the discoverers suggested they stretched out towards the Persian Gulf and Arabia and possibly right up to southern Iraq. Sadly, a lack of funding and closed archaeological minds stifled further investigations.
There's a great picture of the remains and it's well worth reading the full story - Ed.]
"The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project" Cardiff/Athens Universites (Cymru/Greece)
[In October 1900, Captain Dimitrious Kondos was leading a team of sponge divers near the the island of Antikythera off the coast of Greece. They noticed a shipwreck about 180 feet below the surface and began to investigate. Amongst the artifacts that they brought up was a coral-encrusted piece of metal that later archaeologists found was some sort of gear wheel.
The rest of the artifacts, along with the shape of the boat, suggested a date around 2000 years ago, which made the find one of the most anomalous that had ever been recovered from the Greek seas. It became known as The Antikythera Mechanism.
In 2006 the journal "Nature" published a letter, and another paper about the mechanism was published in 2008, detailing the findings of Prof. Mike G. Edmunds of Cardiff University. Using high-resolution X-ray tomography to study the fragments of the anomalous Antikythera Mechanism, they found that it was in fact a bronze mechanical analog computer that could be used to calculate the astronomical positions and various cycles of the Moon - as seen from the Earth: - Ed]
