🧐 Ancient Beat #176: Pyrotechnology, protomathematics, and pleasure boats

Gosh, it’s cold these days. Let’s warm up with a steaming hot cup of omg-that’s-crazy-can-you-believe-our-ancestors-did-that?

While that’s on the burner, I’ll say this: Ancient Beat makes an awesome gift for the holidays. And you don’t even have wrap it.

Here’s how to send a subscription as a gift (you can even write a message and schedule it for a later date).

Alrighty. Here’s that cuppa. Careful not to burn your tongue. It’s hot. ☕️

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🗞 Ancient News: Top 5

• Neanderthals Learned To Command Fire 400,000 Years Ago — At a site in Suffolk, England, archaeologists found ~400,000-year-old evidence that ancient hominins weren’t just using natural fires, but making them. Heat-altered clay and flint suggest deliberate fire-making skills — a leap from opportunistic use of wildfires to intentional pyrotechnology. This ability implies planning, material knowledge, and likely enhanced social bonding around hearths well before previously confirmed evidence.

• Massive 4,000-Year-Old Pits Near Stonehenge Were Carved by Neolithic Humans, Archaeologists Say — A circle of enormous pits around the Stonehenge landscape in southern England has been confirmed as man-made, dating back over 4,000 years to the late Neolithic. These deep, large-diameter features were carved into chalk and are contemporary with the construction phases of Stonehenge itself. Their purpose is still debated, but their scale and arrangement suggest deliberate communal activity — potentially ceremonial, territorial, or astronomical in nature. The confirmation of their human origin helps clarify the wider ritual landscape of Neolithic Britain and shows that monumental planning extended beyond the stone circle.

• Ancient Egyptian Pleasure Boat Found by Archaeologists Off Alexandria Coast — Off the submerged island of Antirhodos near Alexandria (Egypt), archaeologists located a 35 m (115 ft) long and 7 m (~23 ft) wide pleasure vessel from the first century CE. Its flat bottom and broad frame suggest it held a central pavilion for gatherings. Greek graffiti on the timbers ties it to Mediterranean cultural exchange. The boat likely sank around the mid-1st century CE, possibly during an earthquake and tidal event tied to destruction of nearby temple structures. Its preservation opens a window into luxury and ritual navigation on Egypt’s waterways.

  

  Image credit: Christoph Gerigk ©Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation

• Archaic Humans Were Strategic and Picky Hunters — At the Nesher Ramla site in the Levant, archaeologists studied butchered remains of wild aurochs dated to around 120,000 years ago and found evidence that archaic humans selectively hunted prime-aged female animals rather than engaging in mass kills. The pattern of bone breaks and distribution suggests isolated, opportunistic hunts by small groups, implying careful planning and choice rather than indiscriminate hunting. This challenges assumptions about early human hunting behavior, indicating strategic selectivity and decision-making in prey choice long before modern human cooperative mass-hunting practices emerged.

• Earliest Botanical Art Hints at Prehistoric Mathematical Thinking — Painted pottery from 29 sites of the Halafian culture in northern Mesopotamia, dating to about 6200–5500 BCE, bears some of the oldest systematic vegetal motifs ever found. These images of flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees aren’t random decoration: many feature geometric arrangements of petals and elements in sequences like 4, 8, 16, 32 and 64. These patterned motifs suggest early agricultural communities were using complex spatial, numerical, and geometric thinking in artistic expression long before formal writing or mathematics emerged, illuminating cognitive developments tied to village life and plant symbolism.

That’s it for the free Top 5! If you’re a free subscriber, sign up for the paid plan for another 28 discoveries and 5 recommended pieces of content covering databases, shell trumpets, and rites of passage.

Until next time, thanks for joining me!

-James
Twitter: @jamesofthedrum

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🗞 Ancient News: Deep Dive