Evidence for the brutal massacre of a hunter-gatherer group is shattering long-held beliefs that pre-farming societies were essentially peaceful. The remains of more than 27 individuals uncovered at Nataruk, 30km west of Lake Turkana in Kenya, include at least eight women – one in the final stages of pregnancy – and six young children. Radiocarbon […]
Category: Kenya
Chinese coin in Kenya
Excavations on Manda, an island off the coast of Kenya, have revealed a 600-year-old Chinese coin linked to the expedition of Admiral Zheng He, the celebrated Ming Dynasty explorer. Found in a midden by researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago, and the University of Illinois, the small copper and silver disc has a square […]
Facing the past
A fossilised face and two lower jaws excavated in Kenya may confirm that Homo erectus, our direct ancestor, coexisted with multiple species of early humans 2 million years ago. Palaeoanthropologists agree that both Homo erectus and Homo habilis inhabited East Africa during the Pleistocene epoch, but these new discoveries, published in Nature, could settle a […]
Lake Turkana: the world’s oldest advanced tools
Handaxes and flakes recovered from the shores of Lake Turkana, in the remote north- western part of Kenya, are being hailed as the oldest ‘advanced’ stone tools yet discovered in the world. The mudstone sediment in which the tools were found has been dated to 1.76 million years ago, some 360,000 years older than the […]