Ancestors

The earliest bones from Killuragh Cave seem to have been deposited on the small platform just outside the entranceway. This rite continued into Neolithic times and probably has something to do with the process of excarnation in which flesh is removed, or is allowed to be removed (usually by carrion crows), from the bones, eventually leaving a clean

In this panorama, the Goat’s Hole stood out for humans as somewhere special: the Aldhouse-Green project has also confirmed that the quantity of artefacts found in the cave far exceeds that discovered at any other site in Britain or neighbouring parts of Europe from the Early Upper Palaeolithic, the first 20,000 years in which our species is known t

Ancient boundaries within landscapes were subtle and were not always marked in ways that can be identified by archaeology – even with its modern, sophisticated geophysical techniques. Certain trees, for example, could have been marked for special attention; piles of brushwood and bonfires could have been lit at certain times of the year. Such bound

The same project revealed much about the environment in which the depictions were made. Around 20,000 BC a new Ice Age began, rendering the land mass which became Britain too cold for human habitation for over five thousand years.