Ancient Beat

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🧐 Ancient Beat #171: Ritual landscapes, missing lineages, and shifts in the timeline
In central Jordan’s Murayghat region, archaeologists have uncovered a vast Early Bronze Age ritual landscape dating to roughly 3500–3000 BCE. Spread…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #170: Scorpion mound observatories, tool making, and two sets of hunting megastructures worlds apart
An airborne laser survey on the Karst Plateau (Adriatic hinterland) uncovered four monumental dry-stone architectures (K01–K04) over ~870 km² (~336 sq…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #169: Lost languages, psychedelic cohesion, and walking moai statues
Teotihuacan, the vast metropolis that dominated central Mexico from around 100 BCE to 600 CE, has long remained one of Mesoamerica’s great enigmas. Its…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #168: An unexpected statue at Göbeklitepe, early usage of iron, and a skull that bridges lineages
A fossil skull, Yunxian 2, found in Hubei Province, China, and digitally reconstructed, has now been dated to ~1 million years ago. And it bridges key…
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James Fleischmann

September 2025

🧐 Ancient Beat #167: Solstice sanctuaries, standing stones, and colossal statues
A 2,500-year-old sanctuary has been uncovered at El Fontanar near Jódar in Jaén, Spain, where architecture and astronomy merged into ritual performance…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #166: Impact hypotheses, Neanderthal hunting feats, and very early mummification
To proponents of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, this may be old news, but this paper is hot off the press. And if true, it’s a big deal. So, here…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #166: Heidelbergensis family outtings, new structures near Göbeklitepe, and the oldest burial (maybe)
At Sayburç, in southeastern Turkey’s Taş Tepeler region near Göbeklitepe, more than 50 Neolithic buildings dating to ~12,600 years ago have been found…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #165: Gene pools, early plant processing, and hominins in Britain
At Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia’s Caucasus foothills, researchers identified traces of indigotin, a blue dye compound derived from woad (Isatis tinctoria…
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James Fleischmann

August 2025

🧐 Ancient Beat #164: Lydian palaces, Denisovan mucus, and cows at Stonehenge
A Neolithic cow’s molar, buried near Stonehenge’s southern entrance, dates to around 2995–2900 BCE, aligning with the monument’s early construction…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #163: Domestication, the earliest bows and arrows, and a Celtic payday
Excavations at the Iron Age oppidum of Manching in Bavaria uncovered over 40,000 artifacts, including a 3-inch-tall (7.5 cm), 2-ounce (55 g) bronze…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #162: Unexpected ancestry, early cranial modification, and a lukewarm cup of coffee
A prehistoric skull (dubbed AC12) from Arene Candide Cave in northwest Italy reveals Europe’s earliest known case of intentional head shaping—dating to…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #161: The Shroud of Turin, psychoactive nuts, and simian dance moves
Analysis of dental plaque from a 4,000‑year‑old burial at Nong Ratchawat in central Thailand provided the first direct biochemical evidence of betel nut…
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James Fleischmann
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