Ancestors

But the numbers and proportions of bones found in the tombs suggest that some purposeful movement of certain elements was going on. And some arrangements seem very deliberate – such as the finger bones stuck into the nasal aperture of the skull from Belas Knap in Wiltshire, or the careful arrangement of skulls around the edge of a chamber at Lanhil

But against that background picture of health and disease was unequivocal evidence of violent injury around the time of death. Skulls had been smashed in with blunt weapons – probably adzes; legs had been hacked at, fracturing fibulae and tibiae. That focus on the legs suggests the attackers were not only interested in dealing fatal blows to their

both Schöneck-Kilianstädten and Asparn/Schletz appear to have been communities of around thirty to forty people, suggesting that, in each case, a whole hamlet was wiped out by a vicious, lethal attack. The scale of the violence at these places must surely have left deep psychological scars. Professor Rick Schulting of Oxford University has spent ma

One of the most obvious and undeniable signs of interpersonal violence, ancient or modern, is a weapon or projectile lodged in a body. Today we’d look for a bullet tearing through flesh. In the Stone Age, we look for stone arrowheads and spearheads lodged in ancient bones. The earliest examples in Europe come from two sites in Italy, around 13,000

Archaeology can provide many clues, showing us that goods were being exchanged between hunters and farmers, for instance. North of the farmed Danube Valley, we can see that hunter-gatherers were acquiring pottery, antler axes and bone combs from their new neighbours in the south. They may have traded fur and amber in return. But it’s difficult to k

The British Neolithic starts around 6,000 years ago. The beginning of this era in prehistory marks a change in subsistence that I believe was the most profound revolution that human societies have ever experienced, when our ancestors started farming.

‘We now have clear proof of cannibalism in this site.’ Signs of butchery were everywhere – not just on the odd bone. Almost two thirds of bones from post-cranial parts of the skeleton (any bone other than the skull and mandible) bore cut-marks. And in many places, the cuts were grouped, in parallel, at key sites of muscle and ligament attachment. T

The way that all the different bodies had been butchered was consistent, and very similar to the way that other large mammal remains from the cave had been cut up. But there was something unusual about the way the human remains had been treated – when it came to the head. ‘We had three skulls which were perfectly preserved,’ Silvia told me. ‘So the

‘We think that it was to produce a container,’ she said. ‘It was a cup.’ This was deeply strange. I wanted to question it, to doubt it. But there was the evidence in front of me, and I couldn’t think of any other explanation for the way this skull had been carved, sculpted. It certainly didn’t seem to be purely functional – it wasn’t just about ext