Questions tagged [prehistory]
Prehistory is the span of time of before written history. It often refers to the period of human existence, but in broader terms also includes all time preceding this.
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What is the oldest wooden bowl ever found?
I read this article:
Archaeologists find 2,000-Year-old wooden bowl in Northern Scotland.
The Iron Age artifact was sealed in a subterranean chamber of the
Cairns Broch, a tower-like stone structure. ...
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What is the likelihood that significant unearthed prehistoric settlements exist beneath cities with continuous habitation? [closed]
Considering the comparatively rapid accumulation of soil layers over time, which has led to the burial of structures such as the Easter Island statues and Harappan sites, what is the likelihood(based ...
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How would our ancestors have judged which days were solstices or equinoxes?
I have no idea if there is any evidence or even informed speculation about this, so I thought I'd ask the community most likely to know.
Megalithic and other prehistoric structures are widely ...
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Is it correct to say that primary sources only exist in 'historical times', not in 'pre-history'?
I am a secondary history teacher. I teach about a region that first was occupied by indigenous groups that lacked any written records, then later was taken over by European conquests. Some education ...
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How is robustness measured in history and archaeology? [closed]
In physics and medicine there is quite a consensus of various levels of evidence. For example, physics has a scale of fifteen levels of scientific evidence (DOI:Opera Magistris pg 50) and medicine has ...
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Is there Susa art with two mountains and two suns? Or two mountains surrounded by the primordial ocean?
I've read that
The bowl dates from the Amratian period, mid-fourth millennium B.C.
Giedion sees this as portraying in abstract form the
course of the sun from east to west, the enclosing primeval ...
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What infectious diseases were Native Americans exposed to before Columbus?
More specifically, what infectious diseases were Native Americans exposed to that were not a result of endemic spread in wild animals in the Americas? This would be a list of diseases that were ...
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Why is there so much prehistoric art found in Spain and France?
I was reading a book about prehistoric art, and a map with dots indicating locations of caves and deposits shown a lot of concentration around the norther area of Spain and also southern region of ...
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Is this a Stone Age artefact? [closed]
Found these in my garden some time ago. It looks like it may have been worked but also just happens to fit into my hand. Could this be a Stone Age tool of some sort?
The second example looks more ...
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Help understanding exactly the phases of stone tool development during the stone age?
I have been studying how the stone tools evolved for the past few days, and think I am close to understanding roughly what the model is, but after reading a few recent papers, it seems there's a lot ...
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How do we know the gender distribution of cave art painters?
I recently visited an exhibition about climate, nature and culture during the last glacial period.
One interactive exhibit about cave paintings sported a plaque saying:
"...Jetzt wissen wir, dass ...
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How to coordinate the relationship between Corded Ware(Fatyanovo-Abashevo), Sanskrit and Graeco-Aryan? [closed]
The latest research shows that the R1a-Z93 of Sintashta and Andronovo originated from the Corded Ware culture (Middle Dnieper-Fatyanovo-Abashevo). If so, Sanskrit would be unified with Germanic and ...
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What is known of the religion/mythology/legends of the Polynesians who migrated into Oceania?
I've been listening to a couple of Patrick Wyman's Tides of History podcast episodes about the archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence on migration across Oceania by Austronesian speaking ...
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Why did some regions end their prehistory much before others?
I would like to know why some places developed writing and thus started to have documented history much later than others, and why did some regions developed civilization way before others. For ...
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Is this cairn/mound-like structure in Germany real or imagined?
EDIT: I have found the answer - it was Waldviertel Pyramid. I have provided details in the answer.
The thing is that I have either read about or seen on a TV documentary about a certain cairn-like ...
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