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Few sites in the world preserve a continuous archaeological record spanning millions of years. Wonderwerk Cave, located in South Africa s Kalahari Desert, is one of those rare sites. Meaning miracle in Afrikaans, Wonderwerk Cave has been identified as potentially the earliest cave occupation in the world and the site of some of the earliest indications of fire use and tool making among prehistoric humans.
New research, published in
Quaternary Science Reviews, led by a team of geologists and archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) and the University of Toronto, confirms the record-breaking date of this spectacular site. We can now say with confidence that our human ancestors were making simple Oldowan stone tools inside the Wonderwerk Cave 1.8 million years ago. Wonderwerk is unique among ancient Oldowan sites, a tool-type first found 2.6 million years ago in East Africa, precisely because it is a cave and not an open-air occurrence, explained
Israeli, Canadian Researchers Uncover Oldest Home in Human History
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We ve been at it a long time
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Think 2020 was bad? Historians say 536 was worst year ever to be alive
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A partial solar eclipse is viewed from Europe on March 20, 2015, via the European Space Agency s sun-watching Proba-2 satellite. File Photo courtesy European Space Agency
April 12 You wake up to a dark, dreary, glum-feeling, Monday-type of morning. For the 547th consecutive day. Just 18 months prior, you were a hard-working farmer gearing up for another bountiful crop season.
But then the skies went dark. From early 536 to 537, they stayed dark.
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Across much of eastern Europe and throughout Asia, spring turned into summer and fall gave way to winter without a day of sunshine. Like a blackout curtain over the sun, millions of people across the world s most populated countries squinted through dim conditions, breathing in chokingly thick air and losing nearly every crop they were relying on to harvest.
The Zealandia Switch : Missing Link in Big Natural Climate Shifts?
The Southern Hemisphere may be the missing link in answering longstanding questions about how ice ages wax and wane, according to a new study. There, say researchers, complex interactions among the westerly wind system, the Southern Ocean and the tropical Pacific can trigger rapid global changes in atmospheric temperature. The mechanism, dubbed the Zealandia Switch, relates to the position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly wind belt the strongest wind system on Earth and the continental masses of the southwest Pacific Ocean around New Zealand. The researchers suggest it could again play a role, though not necessarily a predictable one, as humans push the planet into a warmer state.