They began by analyzing the strain of farmed wheat that goes into our food and extracting its DNA. They did the same to several varieties of wild wheat. Then they compared their genetic makeup . And w...
On one side of the hill, archeologists discovered an area that had been used as a quarry . This is where the huge pillars that dominated Gobekli Tepe were cut from the limestone bedrock . Here's a pil...
Then around ten years ago, German archeologists began excavating here. What they found astonished them, because under their feet were colossal structures-- stone circles built from huge T-shaped megal...
Here, for the first time, we've got a theory, which seems to solve many of the puzzles that've mystified experts in the past. It's a theory based not just on an investigation of the cave art itself, b...
Dominic, this is a new experience for me. How my eyes closed but I was seeing things? Tell me why. There are parts of the visual brain that seem to code or represent the types of grid patterns and lat...
All our brains work the same way regardless of who we are or where we are from. Physically, our brains haven't changed since humans first evolved. This means that if our brains are stimulated, say, pu...
Now, an ambitious new idea began to take hold in Lewis Williams' mind because he was aware that there were other rock paintings which were very similar to those painted by the San. These were many tho...
But, how could this help to solve the mystery of the haunting rock paintings created by their ancestors? Having read the Blake papers and found out about altered state of consciousness or trance on th...
In reading the Blake manuscripts, it came very clear that their religion was built around a notion of traveling to a spirit world. It seemed the San believe that while you are still alive, your spirit...
And when you say these are pictures of daily life, that just doesn't fit. And when I began to notice all these strange points about the paintings, I thought we've got to find some way of cracking the...
Now if you can't understand what a picture is unless you've seen one before. How on earth do you come up with the idea of creating one in the first place? So how did our ancient ancestors come to real...
They are made up of dots and lines or abstract shapes and patterns. Nothing in the natural world of the prehistoric artist would have looked like this, or this. And, very often, these patterns are rep...
Henri Breuil was a French priest, but he was also the foremost expert on cave art for much of the 20th century. He believed, perhaps not surprisingly, that the paintings were about hunting. Prehistori...
And then came an even more exciting find, in a cave called Lascaux, a gallery of pictures of breathtaking beauty. As more and more paintings came to light, they revealed prehistoric artists had painte...
Now de Sautuola had come to the cave to excavate the floor, to poke around for prehistoric relics, such as bones and tools, it was Maria who made the discovery for which Altamira became famous. "Papa,...
