From ochre and ornaments to footprints, drowned coasts, and ancient genomes: examine the traces, the dates, and the questions they still leave open.
Writing marks a change in the surviving record, not the beginning of human thought, skill, or collective life.
Fossils, genomes, mobility, and population contact.
02Tools, vessels, pigments, ornaments, and learned craft.
03Hearths, shelters, burials, construction, and gathering.
04Marks, figures, compositions, and uncertain meanings.
05Coasts, climates, submerged ground, and preservation.
06Documented accounts and careful tests against other evidence.
Kenya · Objects & techniques
Excavations in Kenya's Olorgesailie Basin document prepared stone cores and points, worked iron-rich red pigment, and raw material transported at least 25–50 km. The investigated Middle Stone Age sites are placed around 320–295 ka by argon-argon and uranium-series…
Examine the recordUnited States · Places & collective life
Human trackways occur on former lake and wetland surfaces at White Sands National Park, New Mexico. The footprints themselves are physical evidence of people walking across those surfaces. The key question is their age, rather than whether a stone-tool type has…
Examine the recordChile · Places & collective life
The original investigations reported worked wood, stakes, organic remains, stone artifacts, and plant and marine material in a waterlogged setting. A study of nine marine-algae species from hearths and other features reported direct radiocarbon dates for algae of…
Examine the recordExplore proposed connections alongside dates, alternatives, and counterexamples. We preserve earlier reasoning when new evidence changes the picture.
Examine the hypotheses →