In-depth chemical analysis of three key 12th century medieval bronze doors by Barisanus of Trani uncovers which is the oldest and reveals how they were made

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology have identified the economic and political borders separating El Argar, considered to be the first state-society in the Iberian Peninsula, from its La Mancha and Valencia Bronze Age neighbours some 4,000 years ago. These communities, with less centralised social structures, maintained complex relations with the Argaric culture. The study, based on an innovative analysis of pottery production and circulation, opens the door to identifying similar border dynamics in other European societies contemporary to El Argar, and understand how the first states were formed in prehistory.

The first-ever published research on Tinshemet Cave reveals that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the mid-Middle Paleolithic Levant not only coexisted but actively interacted, sharing technology, lifestyles, and burial customs. These interactions fostered cultural exchange, social complexity, and behavioral innovations, such as formal burial practices and the symbolic use of ochre for decoration. The findings suggest that human connections, rather than isolation, were key drivers of technological and cultural advancements, highlighting the Levant as a crucial crossroads in early human history.

Bone tool production 1.5 million years ago was patterned and systematic. This is the main conclusion of the discovery made by a team led by CSIC- Spanish National Research Council at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), renowned as the Cradle of Humankind. The study, published in Nature, is a milestone in the archaeology of human origins, for prior to the discovery of this bone tool assemblage it was thought that bone technology was barely known among our earlier ancestors.

The oldest collection of mass-produced prehistoric bone tools reveal that human ancestors were likely capable of more advanced abstract reasoning one million years earlier than thought, finds a new study involving researchers at UCL and CSIC- Spanish National Research Council.