Unique, prehistoric rock art drawings have been discovered in the Andriamamelo Cave in western Madagascar.

I was part of a team that discovered and described these ancient treasures. They’re the first truly pictorial art, depicting images of nature with human-like and animal-like figures, to be seen on the island. Until recently, rock art in Madagascar had only yielded a few sites with basic symbols.

The dramatic discoveries contained several surprises, including hints at some remarkable cultural connections.

One of the hottest debates in archaeology is how and when humans first arrived in North America. Archaeologists have traditionally argued that people walked through an ice-free corridor that briefly opened between ice sheets an estimated 13,000 years ago.

But a growing number of archaeological and genetic finds—including human footprints in New Mexico dated to around 23,000 years old—suggests that people made their way onto the continent much earlier. These early Americans likely traveled along the Pacific coastline from Beringia, the land bridge between Asia and North America that emerged during the last glacial maximum when ice sheets bound up large amounts of water causing sea levels to fall.

Archaeologists in Germany have discovered a rolled-up piece of lead that they think could be a medieval "curse tablet" that invokes "Beelzebub," or Satan.

Upon first glance, the researchers thought the "inconspicuous piece of metal" was simply scrap, since it was found at the bottom of a latrine at a construction site in Rostock, a city in northern Germany, according to a translated statement.

However, once they unfurled it, archaeologists realized that the 15th-century artifact contained a cryptic message etched in Gothic minuscule that was barely visible to the naked eye. It read, "sathanas taleke belzebuk hinrik berith." Researchers deciphered the text as a curse that was directed toward a woman named Taleke and a man named Hinrik (Heinrich) and summoned Beelzebub (another name for Satan) and Berith (a demonic spirit).

Archaeologists in Spain have discovered evidence that ancient people defleshed and dismembered corpses around 6,000 years ago. But these aren't clues to an ancient murder: Instead, the bone injuries are more likely related to funerary practices that occurred just after death.

Decades ago, archaeologists unearthed two large Neolithic stone tombs in northern Spain dating to the fourth millennium B.C. that contained the remains of more than two dozen men, women and children, in addition to flint arrowheads, bone awls, stone tools and pottery fragments. Now, a new analysis of the people's bones has revealed that a huge number of them were fractured and fragmented perimortem — around or just after the time of death.

Researchers described the new findings from the tombs at Los Zumacales and La Cabaña in a study published Dec. 1 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study from Aarhus University confirms that climate cannot be the explanation.

About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north.

Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built weapons, they perfected the art of killing even the most dangerous mammals.

But unfortunately, the great success of our ancestors came at the expense of the other large mammals.

It is well-known that numerous large species went extinct during the time of worldwide colonization by modern humans. Now, new research from Aarhus University reveals that those large mammals that survived also experienced a dramatic decline.

In 1934, workers in Germany discovered the double burial of a woman placed in a seated position with an infant between her legs. Because of the overabundance of grave goods surrounding the pair, archaeologists concluded that she was likely a shaman who died about 9,000 years ago, during the Mesolithic period. However, her true identity and relationship with the child have remained a mystery.

Now, new genetic research has revealed a new clue: The shaman buried in Bad Dürrenberg, a town in eastern Germany, wasn't the mother of the infant but rather a fourth- or fifth-degree relative to the boy who may have been buried decades earlier than him, according to an article published as a chapter in the conference proceedings "Propylaeum."

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Until recently, archaeologists have mostly relied on what they can see at the sites of ancient ruins to unlock the secrets of the past. But lately, new methods have started to allow researchers to use other senses to explore these sites in different ways.

One such method is "psychoacoustics," which studies how sounds are perceived by humans. In a study published in the journal Open Archaeology, Pamela Jordan from the University of Amsterdam used this technique to gain greater insight into how an ancient Greek sanctuary may have been used by ancient visitors.

A metal detectorist in Poland has found five Bronze Age axes buried in a forest. Archaeologists suggest that the artifacts may have been used to either chop wood or for cult purposes.

Denis Konkol was exploring a heavily wooded area in Kociewie, a region in northern Poland, when his metal detector started beeping. After digging about 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 centimeters) into the soil, he unearthed the metal tools, according to the Miami Herald.

Archaeologists in Iraq have unearthed twin temples built on top of each other. The newer, Hellenistic temple dates to the fourth century B.C. and may have a link to Alexander the Great.

The temple contained a fired brick with an Aramaic and Greek inscription that references "the giver of two brothers" — a possible reference to the Macedonian king, who conquered much of the known world during his 13-year-reign from 336 B.C. to 323 B.C.

Archaeologists from the British Museum in London discovered the older temple while conducting excavations at Girsu, a Sumerian city now known as Tello in southeastern Iraq. The excavations are part of an ongoing venture conducted by the museum known as The Girsu Project that focuses on learning more about the city’s storied history.

In a groundbreaking archaeological discovery, an international team led by archaeologists from Freie Universität Berlin has uncovered fortified prehistoric settlements in a remote region of Siberia. The results of their research reveal that hunter–gatherers in Siberia constructed complex defense structures around their settlements 8,000 years ago.

This finding reshapes our understanding of early human societies, challenging the idea that only with the advent of agriculture would people have started to build permanent settlements with monumental architecture and developed complex social structures.

A multidisciplinary study has reconstructed the genomic history of the Balkan Peninsula during the first millennium of the common era, a time and place of profound demographic, cultural and linguistic change.

The team has recovered and analyzed whole genome data from 146 ancient people excavated primarily from Serbia and Croatia—more than a third of which came from the Roman military frontier at the massive archaeological site of Viminacium in Serbia—which they co-analyzed with data from the rest of the Balkans and nearby regions.

The work, published in the journal Cell, highlights the cosmopolitanism of the Roman frontier and the long-term consequences of migrations that accompanied the breakdown of Roman control, including the arrival of people speaking Slavic languages. Archaeological DNA reveals that despite nation-state boundaries that divide them, populations in the Balkans have been shaped by shared demographic processes.

Baboons sacred to the ancient Egyptians were glorified as mummies after their death, but they suffered from poor conditions when they were alive, a new study suggests.

The researchers examined bones from dozens of mummified baboons from ancient Egypt between the ninth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. and found evidence that many had suffered from poor diets as well as bone disorders often caused by lack of sunlight.

Of the remains of 36 baboons found at a necropolis for sacred animals at Gabbanat el-Qurud in southern Egypt, just four appeared to be in good health. "All the others showed deficiencies in the skeleton," said Wim Van Neer, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and lead author of the study, published today (Dec. 6) in the journal PLOS One.