Modern pyrotechnology has been traced to a cave in South Africa thanks to scientists barbecuing rocks in an experiment worthy of a CSI episode. Archaeologists were puzzled by stone arrowheads found in a coastal cave near Mossel Bay. How did early hunter-gatherers make such fine hunting gear? History’s detectives tried to re-enact the scene and make blades and bifacial tools themselves, but it proved trickier than anticipated. Finally, they worked out that to fashion the tools early modern humans must have mastered pyrotechnology the controlled use of fire 45,000 years earlier than thought. And in Africa, rather than Europe. It’s…
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Exciting times in Botswana. Giant hand axes are among a stash of Stone Age tools discovered there that could tell us more about how the ancestors of modern humans hunted, coped with climate change and migrated through Africa. Oxford University researchers have uncovered an incredible collection of artefacts including four hand axes, thought to be the worlds largest stone tools in the dry basin of Lake Makgadikgadi in the Kalahari Desert. Their latest finds throw light on how early humans adapted to climate change during the Middle and Late Stone Age, that is, 150,000 to 10,000 years ago. Researchers say…
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As any true seeker of ancient wisdom knows, it ain’t found in a Dan Brown novel. This is despite the bold claim in the preface to his latest epic, The Lost Symbol: “FACT: In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase ‘It’s buried out there somewhere.’ “All organizations in this novel exist, including the Freemasons, the Invisible College, the Office of Security, the SMSC, and the Institute…