Home sweet bone

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY archaeologists are joining Czech colleagues to study the world’s oldest-known houses, some of them built from mammoth bones. . .

The houses lie beneath the vineyards of southern Moravia, along with early evidence of such craft activities as modelling in clay and weaving, all carried out around a central hearth.

Between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago, Moravia was a more hostile place than now, its climate dipping to very low temperatures. Archaeological evidence suggests that its inhabitants sheltered themselves and gathered around the hearth to share food, make small models of themselves and their animal prey, and probably tell stories about it all. Their descendants followed the mammoth and reindeer north into yet more hostile worlds, eventually into Siberia and across the Bering Strait to become the first Americans, the investigators believe.

Posted by David on August 28, 2005 6:59 PM