In 2023, archaeologists found evidence of architecture and art beginning earlier than we thought, and uncovered data that rewrites our ideas of how much power women had in ancient societies
By Michael Marshall
13 December 2023
Stone age paintings in Chauvet cave in France
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
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At this point it’s a truism that the story of human evolution is being rethought. Discoveries in recent years have forced us to rethink many crucial points, such as how old our species is – about 300,000 years old as opposed to 200,000 – and what extinct hominins like the Neanderthals were really like.
2023 was equally dizzying: discoveries continued to come thick and fast. But because there are so many species and eras involved, it’s hard to discern the common threads linking them – at least, beyond “we found out some more stuff”.
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However, I do think it’s possible to draw out some overall messages from the blizzard of archaeological finds. Two things stand out to me. One is the growing evidence that many supposedly “advanced” behaviours, such as architecture and art, can be traced much further back in time than we thought, often to hominins that existed before modern humans. And the other is that we have badly misunderstood gender roles in prehistoric societies, imposing patriarchal values onto cultures that had very different ideas about how women should behave.
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Ancient achievements
Let’s start with architecture. At Kalambo Falls in Zambia, researchers found buried logs that had been shaped with stone tools so that they interlocked. They seem to have once been part of a larger structure, perhaps a building. Which would be unsurprising if they weren’t 476,000 years old. That’s almost 200,000 years before our species, Homo sapiens, evolved.