Ancient Beat

Ancient Beat

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🧐 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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🧐 Ancient Beat #160: Mysterious sculptures, glittering handprints, and me turning 40
Mysterious Unfired Clay Sculptures Found in Mexican Cave — In the sacred Cueva del Rey Kong‑Oy in Oaxaca’s Sierra Mixe region, archaeologists have…
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James Fleischmann
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July 2025

🧐 Ancient Beat #159: Folklore, bluestones, and Neanderthal foodies
Neanderthals living 50,000–60,000 years ago in two nearby caves in northern Israel—Amud and Kebara—exhibited distinct butchery styles, despite using the…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #158: Polish pyramids, Celtic oppida, and a really big feasts
Excavations at the Early Neolithic site of Asiab in Iran’s Zagros Mountains uncovered a large circular structure—about 66 ft across—containing the…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #157: Savvy Neanderthals, pyramid builders, and sloth bones shaking up the timeline again
At the Neumark-Nord 2 site in central Germany, Neanderthals around 125,000 years ago systematically processed bones to extract grease, marking the…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #156: A matrilineal Çatalhöyük, unexpected mounds, and hominins doing hominin things
At the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in present-day Turkey, recent ancient DNA evidence has revealed that households were matrilineal and passed down…
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James Fleischmann

June 2025

🧐 Ancient Beat #155: Boomerangs, lost cities, and standing stones
A previously unknown temple complex named Palaspata, located roughly 130 miles south of the main Tiwanaku site near Lake Titicaca, has been revealed…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #154: Denisovan faces, boat burials, and the pre-Clovis peopling of the Americas
A nearly complete skull unearthed in 1933 near Harbin, China, and hidden until 2018, dates to at least 146,000 years ago. Analysis of ancient proteins…
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James Fleischmann
🧐 Ancient Beat #153: Early seafaring, Neanderthal fingerprints, and the splitting of (interesting) hairs
At the Abrigo de San Lázaro site near Segovia, Spain, archaeologists uncovered a granite stone with a red ochre dot reinforcing the image of a human…
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James Fleischmann

April 2025

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