Enlarge / Three female skeletons found in a Neolithic storage pit in France show signs of ritualistic human sacrifice. (credit: . Beeching/Ludes et al., 2024)

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of two women in a Neolithic tomb in France, with the positioning of the bodies suggesting they may have been ritualistically murdered by asphyxia or self-strangulation, according to a recent paper published in the journal Science Advances.

(WARNING: graphic descriptions below.)

France's Rhône Valley is home to several archaeological sites dating to the end of the Middle Neolithic period (between 4250 and 3600/3500 BCE in the region); the sites include various storage silos, broken grindstones, imported ceramics, animal remains (both from communal meals and sacrifices), and human remains deposited in sepulchral pits. Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux is one such site.

Enlarge / Wooden mallet and esparto sandals from Cueva de los Murciélagos in Spain dated to the Neolithic period, 6,200 years ago. (credit: MUTERMUR project)

In the 19th century, miners in southern Spain unearthed a prehistoric burial site in a cave containing some 22 pairs of ancient sandals woven out of esparto (a type of grass). The latest radiocarbon dating revealed that those sandals could be 6,200 years old—centuries older than similar footwear found elsewhere around the world, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. The interdisciplinary team analyzed 76 artifacts made of wood, reeds, and esparto, including basketry, cords, mats, and a wooden mallet. Some of the basketry turned out to be even older than the sandals, providing the first direct evidence of basketry weaving among the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of the region.

Organic plant-based materials rarely survive the passage of thousands of years, but when they do, archaeologists can learn quite a bit about the culture in which they were produced. For example, last year we reported on the world's oldest known pants, produced in China around 3,000 years ago. With the help of an expert weaver—who created a replica of the pants—archaeologists unraveled the design secrets behind the 3,000-year-old wool trousers that were part of the burial outfit of a warrior now called Turfan Man, who died between 1000 and 1200 BCE in Western China. To make them, ancient weavers combined four techniques to create a garment specially engineered for fighting on horseback, with flexibility in some places and sturdiness in others.

A local landowner discovered Cueva de los Murciélagos ("Cave of the bats") in 1831, and made good use of all that bat guano in the main chamber to fertilize his land. At some point it was also used to house goats, but then the discovery of galena turned the site into a mining operation. As the miners removed blocks to access the vein, they opened up a gallery containing several partially mummified corpses, along with an array of baskets, wooden tools, and other artifacts. Most of the plant-based artifacts were either burned or given to the local villagers.

Enlarge / Stonehenge as viewed from the northeast, showing the post-and-lintel construction of the Sarsen Circle. (credit: Timothy Darvill)

Stonehenge was an important place for thousands of years before people placed the first stones, according to a recent study. Archaeologists used the microscopic remains of insects, pollen, fungal spores, and ancient DNA preserved in the soil to reconstruct the ancient environment of southwest England’s Salisbury Plain. Six-thousand years ago, the plain was a mosaic of open grassland and woods, where archaeological evidence shows that people once hunted herds of extinct cattle called aurochs.

Samuel Hudson, an environmental scientist at the University of Southampton, and his colleagues say their findings suggest that many of the ceremonial sites and routes left behind by Britain’s earliest farmers—the builders of Stonehenge—may date back thousands of years to land used by the first occupiers of Britain after the end of the last Ice Age.

What happens when worlds collide?

About a mile away from Stonehenge lies an older, less famous archaeological site called Blick Mead. Here, the Salisbury Plain meets the floodplain of the River Avon. Stone tools (more than 100,000 of them), butchered animal bones, and charred fish bones show that people came to this place repeatedly for thousands of years during the Mesolithic period.