Culture

Testing of ancient DNA largely rules out Asia Minor, according to researchers, who suggest the focus should be on the Black Sea region.

“The engraved stones are firmly domestic art – this may have been important as people moved back into northern Europe towards the end of the last Ice Age.”

The importance of the so-called “Horse Butchery Site” in England, inhabited by humans nearly 500,000 years ago, is explained by archaeologist Matt Pope.

The team worked with a reconstruction artist to bring the site and its social complexity to life.

Archaeologists traced the remaining outlines of leather straps attached to the metal harness components, providing insights into how the harness was employed.

Whatever one’s discipline or its tutelary giants, rereading Xenophon of Athens, the celebrated horseman from classical antiquity, always repays the effort.

Researchers describe the Mongolia saddle as completely preserved.

“The horse would have originally appeared gold-like and the recesses probably once contained bright red, blue or yellow enamel. It would have been a spectacular sight on someone’s robe.”

Ancient mountain pass was a veritable horse highway.

“The surgical operation is the most complex I have ever seen in my 40 years of working with anthropological materials.”

“Archaeology is showing us more about how our ancestors survived in this desperately cold and hostile environment at the climax of the last ice age.”