HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-25T07:46:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: When did humans first reach the Americas? Scientists are still battling over the truth
items: 40,000 years ago, our ancestors left these strange symbols behind. What do they really mean?
items: For decades, this prehistoric grave was a mystery. Have its dark secrets now been revealed?
items: 4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?
items: Toilets through time: prehistoric toilets
items: Think men were always the hunters? Stone Age women took down mammoths too – and that's not all
items: A Bronze Age Brexit: why did these Britons mysteriously cut themselves off from Europe?
items: The Beaker People: everything you wanted to know
items: The Assyrians: everything you wanted to know
items: Ancient Mesopotamia: everything you wanted to know

When did humans first reach the Americas? Scientists are still battling over the truth
type: item
date: 2026-04-25T07:45:48.000Z
creator: Roland Hughes
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Research into when, how and why humans migrated into the American continents many thousands of years ago is challenging and contentious – and a recent study might have added to the complexity
encoded: For decades, the story of the arrival of the first humans in the Americas – and the uncertainty around it – has been tied to one small site in the mountains of Chile: Monte Verde. Before the discovery of Monte Verde 50 years ago, it had long been believed that the first humans reached the American continents from the far north, then travelled south through the Americas, about 13,000 years ago. Remains found at Monte Verde overturned that conclusion. Radiocarbon dating concluded that the evidence of human settlement there – wooden hut foundations, footprints and tools – were about 14,500 years old. This upended the previous narrative, suggesting humans had arrived into the Americas much earlier than had been thought. Now, a new development has twisted that narrative once more, adding to the mythology, and confusion, around Monte Verde – and the deep human past of the Americas. A controversial study published in the journal Science has concluded the remains were not, in fact, as old as had been thought – lending credence to the original theories all over again. In many ways, the findings leave us less certain than before, and beg a fundamental question: why do we still not know for certain when humans first arrived in the Americas? Human migration into the Americas When looking back at the story of how humanity spread across the world, a few things are relatively certain. Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa, and seem to have successfully left the continent in significant numbers about 60,000 years ago. They migrated first to Asia and Oceania, and then Europe. The question of when – and indeed how – our ancestors first made landfall in the Americas has always been much more open, however, despite the migration being much more recent. Huge leaps forward in our understanding were made with discoveries in two locations in New Mexico in the early part of the last century. First, almost 100 years ago, excavations near the village of Folsom found the fluted tip of a spear w…

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40,000 years ago, our ancestors left these strange symbols behind. What do they really mean?
type: item
date: 2026-04-17T13:13:28.000Z
creator: Colin Barras
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Research has unveiled a 43,000-year-old system of symbols – but is it evidence of a forerunner of writing systems, or something altogether different?
encoded: Writing is a tool for documenting ideas and events, and its invention transformed human history. It’s widely accepted that this world-changing technology was invented independently in at least four places: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. Of these four great centres of innovation, it was in Mesopotamia and Egypt that the technology first emerged. Both ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform are roughly 5,200 years old. Thanks to archaeology, it’s also possible to trace the technological innovations that preceded writing, eventually evolving into it. In Mesopotamia, about 9,500 years ago, traders were using small lumps of clay as numerical tokens to help calculate the value of goods. They soon began encapsulating these tokens in hollow clay balls, perhaps to signify trade transactions that were considered settled and permanent. These clay balls were opaque, so administrators made impressions on the outer surface to represent the tokens held inside. An important third step occurred roughly 5,500 years ago, when traders dispensed entirely with the tokens and flattened out the clay balls. These were still marked with impressions representing the now-abandoned tokens, producing the first clay tablets bearing symbols – a clear forerunner of cuneiform: the world's oldest writing system, marked onto clay tablets. All the steps in this technological journey took place within the past 10,000 years. But in early 2026, one team of researchers made a striking claim. According to them, there is evidence that humans associated with the Aurignacian culture (which existed in Palaeolithic Europe between around 43,000 and 26,000 years ago) developed a system of signs and markings that shared features in common with a forerunner of cuneiform writing. The announcement was interpreted by some as proof that the roots of writing are far older than had been thought – by an order of tens of thousands of years. A Stone Age script? Archaeologists have known for a cent…

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For decades, this prehistoric grave was a mystery. Have its dark secrets now been revealed?
type: item
date: 2026-03-20T11:15:27.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Devastating illness wiped out a community in Iron Age Serbia – or so it was thought. New research suggests the real story behind a large prehistoric burial site might be much darker
encoded: As Europe progressed into the early Iron Age, it marked the beginning of a new chapter in prehistory. The Iron Age in Europe began roughly around 900 BC, when iron tools and weapons began to replace those made from bronze. The transition brought technological change, accompanied by major shifts in social organisation. Clan-based communities that had long relied on mixed economies of farming, herding and seasonal mobility began to organise themselves into static chiefdoms organised around powerful leaders. Settlements grew larger, and trade networks expanded across the continent, opening up new opportunities for cultural and economic exchange. It was a change that created new ways of living – and new ways of dying, too. Read more | A brief guide to the British Iron Age Across central and south-eastern Europe, landscapes appear to have been increasingly contested as communities vied for access to new trade routes and fertile land, clashing over opposing ideas, beliefs, territorial needs and resources. In some cases, these disputes descended into violent conflict. Archaeological evidence from this period includes fortified hilltop settlements, weapon deposits and graves showing signs of trauma, all suggesting that warfare and organised violence were becoming more common in parts of Iron Age Europe. The Carpathian Basin of south-eastern Europe – the vast region spanning parts of modern Hungary, Serbia, Croatia and Romania – forms a natural crossroads between central Europe, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, making it an important corridor for trade, migration and cultural exchange during the prehistoric period. It was one of these dangerous zones of violent change. It was in this region, in 1954, that archaeologists first uncovered a site called Gomolava along the banks of the Sava River in northern Serbia, which dates to the earliest years of the Iron Age, around 2,800 years ago. Gomolava is a large archaeological mound known as a tell – a mound formed by cent…

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4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?
type: item
date: 2026-02-17T16:03:54.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Archaeological evidence from one of the High Arctic’s most dangerous marine environments reveals that the region’s earliest inhabitants were expert seafarers who undertook perilous open-ocean journeys
encoded: Archaeologists have repeatedly underestimated the seafaring abilities of prehistoric peoples. From the maritime traditions of Polynesia to the first crossings into the landmass known as Sahul – the prehistoric continent that once connected Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania – over 60,000 years ago, claims of early ocean travel have often been met with raised eyebrows. After all, it can be difficult to imagine how these humans crossed vast spans of dangerous water with such limited technology. The prehistoric people who inhabited the Arctic have been no exception to this scepticism. Archaeologists refer to these early Arctic inhabitants as Early Paleo-Inuit: small and mobile hunting communities who lived across northern Greenland and Arctic Canada between roughly 4,500 and 2,800 years ago. For much of the 20th century, archaeologists assumed these communities were a land-based people, edging into frozen landscapes as ice sheets retreated, opening up new inland routes, rather than venturing across open water. This view was shaped in part by the scarcity of evidence for boats and marine hunting technology, because organic materials such as boats, paddles and skins rarely survive in the archaeological record. This lack of preservation is still a problem faced by archaeologists today. As a result, the true extent of prehistoric maritime activity in the Arctic – and across the globe – has long remained uncertain. But a new discovery from northern Greenland is now challenging this long-standing view, providing the strongest evidence yet for something some Arctic specialists have long suspected. How the Early Paleo-Inuit reached northern Greenland In the far north of Greenland, beyond the limits of permanent modern settlement, sits a small archipelago called Kitsissut. More than 700 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, this cluster of islands sits at a similar latitude to Norway’s Svalbard; one of the coldest and most ice-bound places on Earth. Reaching these islands by …

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Toilets through time: prehistoric toilets
type: item
date: 2025-11-19T10:51:53.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Toilets through time podcast series
description: Dr Sue Greaney explains to David Musgrove what we know about loos from the Neolithic through to the Iron Age
encoded: In episode six of Toilets Through Time, David Musgrove and Dr Sue Greaney look back at what we can learn about studying people's toilet habits from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. How and where did prehistoric people to go to the toilet, and what can we learn from studying their toilet habits? Dr Sue Greaney explains to David Musgrove what we know about loos from the Neolithic through to the Iron Age.

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Think men were always the hunters? Stone Age women took down mammoths too – and that's not all
type: item
date: 2025-10-11T10:30:01.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General prehistory
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: What were the lives of women like throughout the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods? Modern archaeology is only just beginning to provide a clear picture
encoded: Across the wide plains of central Europe some 20,000 years ago, small bands of people began their days preparing for work. Men and women alike readied their tools: some for hunting, some for gathering up roots and seeds, and others for crafting hides into winter clothing. But the material evidence on which we base our knowledge of the Stone Age is fragmentary. “If we think about the Stone Age, we think about stone tools. Stone tools are what we can find in archaeological digs: they have survived, but so much of our past is perishable,” says Dr Victoria Bateman, author of Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. That fragility matters. If many activities, especially those often carried out by women, left no lasting trace, the archaeological evidence for life in prehistory is bound to be skewed. Yet, Bateman stresses, a patchy record doesn’t mean we know nothing – and what we do now know paints a picture of a nuanced, varied and active life for women of the Stone Age. Life on the Palaeolithic steppe In Ice Age Europe, bands of hunter-gatherers followed herds across a cold steppe dotted with patches of woodland. Their camps were often temporary: circles of hide tents, or hearths dug into the ground. Excavations at sites such as Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic or Mezhirich in Ukraine reveal the ingenuity of these communities. At Mezhirich, dwellings were built from mammoth bones, their interiors scattered with flint tools, ochre pigments and fragments of woven fibres. Read more | 8 little-known prehistoric sites in Britain Life was harsh, and women were certainly not confined to passive roles. They crafted clothing from hides and sinew, stitched with bone needles, and their handiwork was essential to life in freezing conditions. They gathered plants, berries, roots and nuts – knowledge that required expert ecological awareness. And, as recent research shows, many also took part in the hunt. The invisible work of…

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A Bronze Age Brexit: why did these Britons mysteriously cut themselves off from Europe?
type: item
date: 2025-06-13T10:56:02.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General prehistory
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Cutting ties with continental Europe in around 3000 BC, ancient Britons abandoned innovation and shunned trade. Why did they choose this dramatic self-isolation? Archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggests one answer to the mystery
encoded: Around 3000 BC, while continental Europe embraced technological breakthroughs such as metallurgy and wheeled vehicles, the people of the British Isles – the Neolithic farming communities who would build some of the islands’ most iconic monuments, including Stonehenge – turned their back on the rest of the world. Isolating themselves off from continental Europe, these Britons wanted to be left alone. “For reasons that we're just beginning to glean, Britain cut itself off from the continent,” says archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. It was, he argues, “an absolutely ridiculous thing to have done.” Why did they do it? And was it a Bronze Age Brexit? The end of the Neolithic period This was the tail end of the Neolithic period, an era characterised by settled farming, communal living, and the construction of some of the world’s most famous – and mysterious – architectural achievements. On the continent, new ideas and materials were moving quickly through a complex network of trade and migration. The earliest signs of the Bronze Age – defined by the use of metal tools and weapons made by combining copper and tin – were already emerging. Read more | 8 little-known prehistoric sites in Britain But in Britain, the Neolithic peoples – descendants of early farming migrants who had arrived around 4000 BC – stopped engaging with that continental momentum. “They were not plugged into the exchange networks of the whole of Europe,” Parker Pearson explains. “Given that metallurgy was available, given that knowledge of the wheel was also there on the continent, they were just blocking off all these potential innovations.” An early split from Europe The archaeological record bears this out. Pottery styles, burial practices and architectural forms all diverge sharply from those seen across the channel. “We can also see that there’s absolutely no traded material going either way across the channel,” he adds. “The traditions that developed in Britain…

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The Beaker People: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2025-05-18T07:00:21.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Mike Parker-Pearson answers listener questions on the prehistoric people famed for their brilliant metal ornaments – and credited with transforming Britain 4,500 years ago
encoded: Who were the Beaker People? What was their contribution to the building of Stonehenge? And did their arrival in Britain really lead to the obliteration of the indigenous population? Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Mike Parker-Pearson answers the most pressing questions on the prehistoric culture that changed Britain for good.

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The Assyrians: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2025-03-02T07:00:19.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Paul Collins answers listener questions on the ancient people who forged what was arguably the world's first true empire
encoded: Why were Assyrian armies so powerful? Did the Assyrians produce the ancient world's greatest cultural treasure? And what should we make of claims that they forged the world's first empire? In conversation with Spencer Mizen, Paul Collins, curator at the British Museum, answers listener questions on this ancient civilisation. Paul Collins is the author of The Assyrians: Lost Civilizations (Reaktion, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon

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Ancient Mesopotamia: everything you wanted to know
type: item
date: 2025-01-19T08:00:33.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
description: Moudhy Al-Rashid answers listener questions on ancient Mesopotamia, which encompassed multiple remarkable civilisations and saw numerous revolutionary innovations
encoded: Do you know your Sumerians from your Babylonians and your Akkadians? All these civilisations formed part of the story of ancient Mesopotamia, where city states were formed, writing flourished, the wheel was possibly invented, mathematics was practiced, and dogs were gods, pets and warriors. Speaking to David Musgrove for today's 'everything you wanted to know' episode, Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid answers listener questions on the ancient region. Moudhy Al-Rashid is the author of Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History (Hodder & Stoughton, 2025). Buy it now from Waterstones

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