Excavation at the Neumark-Nord 2 in central Germany.
Photo: Professor Wil Roebroeks, Leiden University
125,000-year-old Neanderthal ‘fat factory’ discovered in Germany - Leiden University
More evidence has emerged that Neanderthals were far from the slow-witted, lumbering brutes of popular myth. In fact, they were highly organised, culturally sophisticated, and capable of processing food on what can only be described as an industrial scale.
This latest insight comes from a team of archaeologists led by researchers from MONREPOS (Leibniz Centre for Archaeology, Germany) and Leiden University (The Netherlands), in collaboration with the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (Germany). Their findings were recently published in Science Advances.
At a site known as Neumark-Nord 2 in central Germany, dating back 125,000 years, the researchers have discovered compelling evidence of a bone-processing ‘factory’. Here, Neanderthals systematically broke up the massive bones of straight-tusked elephants and other large mammals—including deer, horses, and aurochs—to extract fat from the marrow by steeping the fragments in hot water. The straight-tusked elephant, which could weigh up to 13 tonnes, would have yielded enough meat to feed 2,000 adult humans their daily caloric needs.
This site predates the arrival of modern humans in Europe by tens of thousands of years, placing it firmly within the Neanderthal era. At the time, Europe was enjoying an interglacial period with a climate comparable to today's.
A recent paper in Nature marks a landmark advance in historical linguistics and ancient human migration studies.
Properly understood, the paper devastates Bible literalist dogmas. In solving what had been something of a mystery for linguistics and anthropology, it utterly refutes basic Bible narratives such as a global genocidal flood and a resetting of the human population of Earth some 4,300 years ago, followed by a repopulation from a focal point in the Middle East.
By sequencing and analysing 180 previously unstudied ancient Siberian genomes and integrating them with over 1,300 global ancient DNA datasets spanning 11,000 years, the study robustly traces the prehistoric roots of the Uralic language family—including Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian—to Central Siberia nearly 4,500 years ago [1, 2]. In doing so, it offers scientific clarity on how languages—and by extension cultures—spread via human migrations over millennia. This extends far beyond simplistic literal interpretations of Bible genealogies, emphasising the deep time, continuous migrations and cultural dynamics that falsify any notion of sudden, static origination of peoples as posited in young‑earth creation narratives.
Likewise, the Harvard Gazette article contextualises these genetic findings for a broader audience, highlighting how interdisciplinary scholarship — particularly the work led by recent graduates under guidance from ancient DNA expert David Reich — identifies a distinct genetic signature (“Yakutia\_LNBA”) strongly associated with speakers of Uralic languages who migrated from Eastern Siberia westward over thousands of years [2]. The piece explicitly notes that language transmission is not genetically deterministic, and warns against over‑simplified correlations. By underscoring the necessity of large data, critical caution, and peer‑reviewed methodology, the article reinforces the fundamentally scientific (not scriptural) basis for understanding human prehistory.
From a Bible‑literalist creationist perspective—which often assumes humanity’s origins in specific, recent Middle Eastern events described in scripture—these studies are significant because they offer:
Robust empirical timelines: ancient DNA data covering up to 11,000 years, demonstrating population movements and admixture across Eurasia.
Clear geographic origins far from the traditional Biblical settings, with linguistic groups emerging from Central Siberian ancestries—not from post‑Flood dispersion from Babel.
Methodological transparency: ancient genomes, radiocarbon dating, linguistic phylogenies, and cultural archaeology collectively underpin conclusions, in stark contrast to dogmatic, text‑based literalism.
What is known of the Yamnaya, their migration and their impact on European society?
The Yamnaya (or Yamna) culture was a highly influential Bronze Age population that emerged on the Pontic–Caspian steppe (modern-day Ukraine and southern Russia) around 3300–2600 BCE. They are best known for their role in a major migratory event that reshaped the genetic, cultural, and linguistic landscape of Europe and parts of Asia.
Key Features of the Yamnaya Culture
Pastoralist Lifestyle: The Yamnaya were semi-nomadic herders, primarily of cattle, sheep, and horses.
Kurgan Burials: They are associated with the construction of kurgans — large burial mounds containing individual or family graves, often with grave goods, indicating social stratification.
Use of Wagons and Domesticated Horses: The Yamnaya are among the earliest groups to use wheeled transport and to domesticate horses for riding and traction, dramatically improving mobility across the steppe.
Patriarchal and Warrior-Oriented Society: Burial practices and grave goods suggest a male-dominated society with an emphasis on warfare and prestige.
Migration and Expansion
From around 3000 BCE, the Yamnaya expanded both westward into Europe and eastward into Central Asia:
Westward Migration (into Europe)
The Yamnaya migrated into Central and Northern Europe, mixing with local Neolithic farming populations.
This movement is thought to correspond with the Corded Ware culture (~2900–2300 BCE), which displays strong Yamnaya ancestry and cultural influences.
Genetic studies indicate that Yamnaya-related ancestry accounts for a significant portion (up to 75%) of the ancestry in many modern northern and central Europeans.
Eastward Expansion (into Asia)
Yamnaya groups moved into the Altai region and Central Asia, laying foundations for cultures such as the Afanasievo culture.
This eastward movement has implications for the spread of Indo-European languages deep into Asia, including links to the Tocharian branch.
Impact on European Society
The Yamnaya migration was transformative:
Genetic Legacy
Ancient DNA studies (notably by David Reich and colleagues) have shown that Yamnaya-related ancestry replaced or substantially mixed with earlier Neolithic farming populations across Europe.
Their arrival is associated with a massive genetic turnover, particularly in northern Europe.
Linguistic Impact
The Yamnaya are widely considered prime candidates for the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed ancestral language of most modern European and many Asian languages.
Their migrations likely spread PIE or its early offshoots into Europe and Asia.
Technological and Cultural Influence
They introduced or accelerated the adoption of:
Horse riding and chariotry.
Wheeled vehicles and carts.
New burial customs and metallurgy.
These innovations had a cascading effect on social organisation, warfare, and mobility.
Social Structures
Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests the formation of patrilineal kin-based chiefdoms, with dominant Y-chromosome lineages spreading rapidly, reflecting elite male dominance in expanding societies.
Significance in Refuting Creationism
The Yamnaya's role in shaping European prehistory is incompatible with young-Earth or Biblical-literalist timelines:
Their migrations and cultural influence spanned thousands of years, beginning well before any supposed Biblical Flood (~2400 BCE) or the Tower of Babel.
The evidence for their existence and movements comes from radiocarbon dating, stratigraphy, and genomics — methods rejected or undermined by creationist models.
The Yamnaya language dispersal supports evolutionary linguistics, not the sudden emergence of multiple languages as described in Genesis 11.
In Summary
The Yamnaya were a Bronze Age steppe people whose vast migrations and cultural innovations played a pivotal role in shaping the genetics, languages, and social systems of much of Europe and Asia. Their legacy stands as a powerful testament to deep-time human history, migration, and cultural change—firmly grounded in empirical evidence and thoroughly incompatible with literalist interpretations of the Bible.
Together, the Nature paper and Harvard Gazette explanation represent not only a breakthrough in our scientific understanding of language family origins, but also a powerful rebuttal to any worldview that insists on a literal‑historical reading of Genesis to explain the diversity and dispersal of peoples.
Ancient DNA solves mystery of Hungarian, Finnish language family’s originsParent emerged over 4,000 years ago in Siberia, farther east than many thought, then rapidly spread west
Where did Europe’s distinct Uralic family of languages — which includes Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian — come from? New research puts their origins a lot farther east than many thought.
The analysis, led by a pair of recent graduates with oversight from ancient DNA expert David Reich, integrated genetic data on 180 newly sequenced Siberians with more than 1,000 existing samples covering many continents and about 11,000 years of human history. The results, published this month in the journal Nature, identify the prehistoric progenitors of two important language families, including Uralic, spoken today by more than 25 million people.
The study finds the ancestors of present-day Uralic speakers living about 4,500 years ago in northeastern Siberia, within an area now known as Yakutia.
Geographically, it’s closer to Alaska or Japan than to Finland.
Alexander Mee-Woong Kim, co-lead author.
Department of Genetics
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Linguists and archaeologists have been split on the origins of Uralic languages. The mainstream school of thought put their homeland in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains, a range running north to south about 860 miles due east of Moscow. A minority view, noting convergences with Turkic and Mongolic languages, theorized a more easterly emergence.
Our paper helps show that the latter scenario is more likely. We can see this genetic pulse coming from the east just as Uralic languages were expanding.
Dr. Tian Chen Zeng, co-lead author
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
The discovery was made possible by Kim’s long-term effort to gather ancient DNA data from some of Siberia’s under-sampled regions. As he helped establish, many modern-day Uralic-speaking populations carry the same genetic signature that first appeared, in unmixed form, in the 4,500-year-old samples from Yakutia. People from all other ethnolinguistic groups were found, by and large, to lack this distinct ancestry.
Genetic ties to Yakutia also show up in sets of hyper-mobile forager hunter-gatherers believed to have spread Uralic languages to northern Scandinavia’s indigenous Sámi people and as far south as Hungary, now a linguistic island surrounded by German, Slovak, and other Indo-European languages.
Proto-Uralic speakers overlapped in time with the Yamnaya, the culture of horseback herders credited with transmitting Indo-European across Eurasia’s grasslands. A pair of recent papers, led by Reich and others in his Harvard-based lab, zeroed in on the Yamnaya homeland, showing it was mostly likely within the current borders of Ukraine just over 5,000 years ago.
We can see these waves going back and forth — and interacting — as these two major language families expanded. Just as we see Yakutia ancestry moving east to west, our genetic data show Indo-Europeans spreading west to east.
Professor David Reich, co-corresponding author.
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
But Uralic’s influence was largely anchored in the north.
We’re talking about the taiga — the large expanse of boreal forest that goes from Scandinavia almost to the Bering Strait. This isn’t territory you can simply ride a horse through.
Alexander Mee-Woong Kim
Kim... concentrated in organismic and evolutionary biology at the College and studied archaeology at the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Archaeologists have long connected Uralic’s spread with what is called the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, or the sudden appearance around 4,000 years ago of technologically advanced bronze-casting methods across northern Eurasia.
The resulting artifacts, primarily weapons and other displays of power, have also been tied to an era of global climate changes that could have advantaged the small-scale cultures that spoke Uralic languages during and after the Seima-Turbino phenomenon.
Bronze often had a transformative effect on the cultures that used it. Bronze really catalyzed long-distance trade. To start using it, societies really needed to develop new social connections and institutions. [the need to source raw materials — largely copper and tin — from select locations.]
Dr. Tian Chen Zeng.
A picture of the genetically diverse communities who practiced Seima-Turbino techniques became clear with the advent of ancient DNA science.
Some of them had genetic ancestry from Yakutia, some of them were Iranic, some of them were Baltic hunter-gatherers from Europe. They’re all buried together at the same sites.
Professor David Reich.
The newest genetic samples, assembled by Kim with the help of other archaeologists, including third co-lead author Leonid Vyazov at Czechia’s University of Ostrava, revealed strong currents of Yakutia ancestry at a succession of ancient burial sites stretching gradually to the west, with each bearing rich reserves of Seima-Turbino objects.
This is a story about the will, the agency of populations who were not numerically dominant in any way but were able to have continental-scale effects on language and culture.
Alexander Mee-Woong Kim
Previous studies established that Finns, Estonians, and other Uralic-speaking populations today share an Eastern Eurasian genetic signature. Ancient DNA researchers ruled out the region’s best-known archaeological cultures from contributing to the Uralic expansion
That just meant we needed more data on obscure cultures, or obscure time periods where it was unclear what was happening
Dr. Tian Chen Zeng.
Today, he found, Uralic-speaking cultures vary in how much Yakutia ancestry they carry.
Estonians retain about 2 percent, Finns about 10. At the eastern end of the distribution, the Nganasan people — clustered at the northernmost tip of Russia — have close to 100 percent Yakutia ancestry. At the other extreme, modern-day Hungarians have lost nearly all of theirs.
But we know, based on ancient DNA work from the medieval conquerors of Hungary, that the people who brought the language there did carry this ancestry.
Dr. Tian Chen Zeng.
A separate finding concerns another group of Siberian-spawned languages, once widely spoken across the region. The Yeniseian language family may be contracting today, with the last survivor being central Siberia’s critically endangered Ket, now spoken by just a handful of the culture’s elders. But Yeniseian’s influence was long evident to linguists and archaeologists alike.
Just like ‘Mississippi’ and ‘Missouri’ are from Algonquian, there are Yeniseian toponyms in regions that today speak Mongolic or Turkic languages. When you consider this trace on the landscape, its influence extends far beyond where Yeniseian languages are spoken.
Alexander Mee-Woong Kim
The study locates the first speakers of the Yeniseian family some 5,400 years ago near the deep waters of Lake Baikal, its southern shores just a few hours by car from the current border with Mongolia.
The genetic findings also provide the first genetic signal — albeit a tentative one — for Western Washington University linguist Edward Vajda’s Dene-Yeniseian hypothesis, which proposed genealogical connections between Yeniseian and the Na-Dene family of North American Indigenous languages.
Abstract
The North Eurasian forest and forest-steppe zones have sustained millennia of sociocultural connections among northern peoples, but much of their history is poorly understood. In particular, the genomic formation of populations that speak Uralic and Yeniseian languages today is unknown. Here, by generating genome-wide data for 180 ancient individuals spanning this region, we show that the Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers harboured a continuous gradient of ancestry from fully European-related in the Baltic, to fully East Asian-related in the Transbaikal. Contemporaneous groups in Northeast Siberia were off-gradient and descended from a population that was the primary source for Native Americans, which then mixed with populations of Inland East Asia and the Amur River Basin to produce two populations whose expansion coincided with the collapse of pre-Bronze Age population structure. Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is associated with Yeniseian-speaking groups and those that admixed with them, and ancestry from the second, Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is associated with migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers. We show that Yakutia_LNBA first dispersed westwards from the Lena River Basin around 4,000 years ago into the Altai-Sayan region and into West Siberian communities associated with Seima-Turbino metallurgy—a suite of advanced bronze casting techniques that expanded explosively from the Altai1. The 16 Seima-Turbino period individuals were diverse in their ancestry, also harbouring DNA from Indo-Iranian-associated pastoralists and from a range of hunter-gatherer groups. Thus, both cultural transmission and migration were key to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, which was involved in the initial spread of early Uralic-speaking communities.
From around 3000 BCE, the Yamnaya began expanding westward into Europe and eastward into Central Asia. In Europe, they merged with existing Neolithic farming populations, giving rise to new archaeological cultures like the Corded Ware culture. Genetic studies show that modern Europeans, particularly in the north and centre, carry a significant proportion of Yamnaya ancestry. This migration also likely played a major role in spreading Proto-Indo-European languages, the ancestor of most modern European and many South and Central Asian languages.
The Yamnaya legacy is deeply embedded in Europe’s genetic and cultural fabric, but it also offers a direct challenge to Bible-literalist creationism. Their existence, migrations, and influence are dated to thousands of years before the supposed Biblical Flood or the Tower of Babel. Their story is reconstructed using ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating, and comparative linguistics—scientific disciplines that directly contradict young-Earth timelines. Far from originating from a single post-Flood population a few thousand years ago, European ancestry is shown to be the result of complex, prehistoric population movements over tens of thousands of years.
In short, the Yamnaya are a vivid example of how real human history, grounded in empirical evidence, diverges sharply from mythological accounts. Their migrations demonstrate the power of science to uncover the dynamic, interconnected, and ancient nature of human societies—undermining any literal reading of Genesis as a factual account of our origins.
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Reconstituted scenario of Monte Clérigo tracksite, generated by AI tools following the guidance, and final artworks of J.M. Galán (ChatGPT-4 was used to select the prompts, at https://openai.com/index/gpt-4/; Image Generator Pro to generate various versions, at https://imagegeneratorpro.com; DALL-E3 for the nuances and quality of the image, at https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3/; Photoshop 26.4.1 (www.adobe.com) and digital pencil of Procreate for iPad version 5.3.14, at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/procreate/id425073498, for drawing over the selected image version).
The discovery of 78,000-year-old Neanderthal footprints on a Portuguese beach is yet another blow to creationist pseudoscience. Preserved in the ancient sands of Monte Clérigo, the tracks of an adult male, a child, and a toddler walking together paint a vivid picture of Neanderthal life — not as brutish subhumans, but as highly social beings living in complex family groups, navigating diverse coastal environments long before modern humans entered Europe. Such findings are not only consistent with the evolutionary timeline but utterly irreconcilable with young-Earth creationist beliefs.
According to mainstream geological dating techniques, these footprints were made tens of thousands of years before the supposed biblical date of creation (around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, depending on interpretation). For creationists who insist that all of Earth’s history must be crammed into a few millennia, these kinds of discoveries are profoundly inconvenient. Worse still, the clarity of the evidence — physical impressions in sediment, dated using well-established methods like optically stimulated luminescence — makes them difficult to hand-wave away.
Faced with such a challenge, creationists will likely fall back on a familiar toolkit of denial strategies. Some will try to cast doubt on the dating methods, resorting to pseudoscientific critiques of OSL or claiming unknown “contamination” skewed the results. Others may assert that the footprints were made after Noah’s Flood — an idea that stretches credulity beyond breaking point given the age and geological context. And, of course, some will simply ignore the evidence altogether, pretending it doesn’t exist or insisting that Neanderthals were just humans who lived in “post-Babel dispersion” times, despite the overwhelming fossil, genetic, and archaeological data to the contrary.
Samples of ancient boar teeth unearthed at the archaeological site of Asiab in the Zagros Mountains.
Credit: Nic Vevers/ANU
Regional 87Sr/86Sr ratios were estimated using data from the Georoc database37 and measurements of modern plants from Ali Kosh29 and interpolated to the wider region using the underlying lithology (following Barakat et al.87).
A thousand years before Earth was supposedly created—according to the Bronze Age myths that creationists regard as literal history—people were already feasting in the Zagros Mountains, at a site now known as Asiab in modern-day Iran. Then, in what must have been a strangely selective miracle, around 4,300 years ago—when, according to the same myths, a global flood wiped out all life on Earth—the remains of these ancient feasts remained completely untouched. Like countless other archaeological sites, Asiab shows no trace of the thick silt layer that such a cataclysmic flood would inevitably have left behind.
Long before the advent of agriculture, when humans still lived in scattered bands of hunter-gatherers, people gathered at Asiab for a communal feast. The exact reason—whether religious ceremony, marriage, funeral, or some form of tribal leadership event—can only be guessed at. But what is clear is that guests travelled long distances over mountainous terrain, bringing with them the carcasses of wild boar. These animals, dangerous to hunt and not commonly pursued by hunter-gatherers in the region, appear to have held special significance. Their presence suggests that hunting and transporting them was a display of prowess or status, perhaps reserved for prestigious guests.
This conclusion comes from a team of palaeontologists who examined the microscopic wear and isotopic signatures on the teeth of wild boar recovered from the site. (For more on how this technique works, see the AI information side panel.)
The international team, led by Dr Petra Vaiglova of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University (ANU), has just published their findings open access in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
More embarrassment for creationists comes in the form of new evidence that Neanderthals were butchering and cooking meat in two caves in what is now Israel. Not only did this occur some 40,000 to 50,000 years before creationists believe the Earth was created, but it also shows that Neanderthal culture had diversified into distinct culinary traditions—even among populations inhabiting neighbouring areas.
The most damning evidence against creationist claims is, of course, the very existence of such archaeological remains. According to the biblical narrative of a global, genocidal flood just a few thousand years ago, this evidence simply should not exist. Such a cataclysm would have erased any trace of it—or at best buried it beneath thick layers of chaotic silt, jumbled together with fossils of plants and animals from distant land masses in no coherent stratigraphic order.
The evidence for Neanderthal cultural diversity comes from researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who studied remains in the nearby caves of Amud and Kebara, located just 70 km apart.
What they found was a marked difference in how the two Neanderthal groups butchered their prey, including whether they processed the carcasses at the kill site or transported them back to their caves for preparation. There also appear to be differences in how the meat was cooked.
Around the time creationists claim Earth was undergoing a global flood — a mass genocide by drowning, supposedly enacted by a deity - a belief based solely on the origin myths of a Bronze Age Middle Eastern pastoralist tribe — people in the Pyrenees were engaged in violent conflict, using bows and arrows.
Unlike biblical mythology, this insight is grounded in tangible evidence: a human rib bone with a flint arrowhead still embedded in it. Remarkably, the injury had healed before the individual died, suggesting they survived the attack for some time. The rib was found in a mass grave at Roc de les Orenetes (Queralbs, Girona), alongside the remains of several others, many of whom showed signs of trauma from blunt or sharp weapons, particularly to the head and upper body.
The timing of this violence — dated to between 4,100 and 4,500 years ago — is problematic for biblical literalists. If the Genesis flood had truly occurred as described, these remains should either have been destroyed or buried beneath a thick layer of flood-deposited silt, mixed with the remains of animals and plants not native to the region. Alternatively, one must believe that just a few years after a supposed global reset that reduced humanity to eight survivors, their descendants had multiplied sufficiently to form warring groups in the mountains of what is now northern Spain.
And yet, these individuals show no sign of having heard of Noah, his family, or the god who allegedly saved them. There’s no indication of the monotheistic religion supposedly preserved aboard the ark. If the flood story were true, the moral lesson it was intended to deliver seems to have been forgotten almost immediately, everywhere except among a small group in the Canaanite hills.
This discovery joins a growing list of archaeological findings that contradict the flood narrative. Far from showing a global cataclysm, the archaeological record reveals continuous human habitation before, during, and after the time the flood is supposed to have occurred—with no signs of interruption, no replacement by a Near Eastern culture, and no characteristic flood-deposited sediment layer.
It’s almost as if the global flood never happened. Not only is there no geological or archaeological evidence supporting it, but what evidence we do have consistently contradicts it. This find from the Pyrenees is yet another example.
The picture of modern human (Homo sapiens) interactions with Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) has just become significantly richer. New evidence reveals not just a single episode of contact within the last 50,000 years, but several waves of interaction spanning much of our species’ 200,000-year history.
It was previously believed that after our last common ancestor with Neanderthals and Denisovans split into separate populations around 600,000 years ago, one lineage remained in Africa and eventually evolved into H. sapiens by about 200,000 years ago. The other migrated into Eurasia and gradually diverged into Neanderthals in the west and Denisovans in the east, with limited contact between them. According to this model, modern humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago, encountered Neanderthals in Eurasia, and interbred with them shortly afterwards—about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.
However, a new genomic analysis provides evidence for at least three distinct episodes of interbreeding. One occurred around 200,000 to 250,000 years ago—very early in the history of H. sapiens. Another took place about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago, long before the final major migration out of Africa, and the last around 40,000 years ago, as previously believed.
These findings suggest that there may have been multiple early migrations of H. sapiens into Eurasia, followed in some cases by return migrations back into Africa, before the final, successful dispersal around 60,000 years ago.
Some of the team’s evidence comes from detecting H. sapiens DNA in the Neanderthal genome, so these ingressions could have come from earlier migrations that then failed, leaving only their DNA in the Neanderthal population.
There are still unresolve questions about which species migrated out of Africa, when, and whether some, such as H. rhodesiensis, had a wide distribution across African and Eurasia with regional variants, so it is entirely possible that the earliest interactions with Neanderthals could have been between, say H. rhodesiensis which brought Neanderthal genes back into Africa and then interbred with diverging H. sapiens.
See the right-hand panel for an explanation of this so-called 'muddle in the middle'.
The study, led by researchers at Harvard University and Princeton University under the direction of Professor Joshua Akey of Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, also supports the view that Neanderthals did not simply go extinct. Instead, their dwindling populations were gradually absorbed into expanding populations of modern humans.
300,000 years before the Bronze Age pastoralists who later shaped the origin myths found in the Bible set their tales, South African hunter-gatherers were undertaking long journeys to a valley in what is now Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in search of the right colour of stone for their tools.
This is the conclusion of a study led by Dr Gregor D. Bader from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The stones they collected included red jasper, green chalcedony, and black chert. Researchers examined artefacts from four sites: Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe, and Nkambeni.
Their findings have just been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
What information do you have on the geology of the Mgwayiza Valley, Eswatini?
Here’s what current geological and environmental research indicates about the Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini:
Ancient Cratonic Bedrock
The valley lies within the Barberton Greenstone Belt, part of the Kaapvaal Craton - one of Earth’s oldest, stable geological units, dating back 3.6–2.5 billion years (1).
Bedrock comprises metamorphosed sedimentary volcanic sequences (Onverwacht, Fig Tree, Moodies series) alongside ancient granites such as the Lochiel Granite (~3 billion years old) (2).
Landscape & Relief Formation
Differential erosion of ironstones, quartzites, soapstones, and dolerite dykes has sculpted the region’s rugged scenery, forming commanding ridges (e.g. Ngwenya, Silotfwane) and valleys like Mgwayiza (2).
The southern escarpment serves as a critical hydrological catchment, feeding multiple rivers (Motjane, Ngwenya, Nkomati), with ongoing open-pit mining risks to water quality and downstream systems (3).
Green Chert Resources & Mining
Green chert, a cryptocrystalline quartz variant, is abundant and actively mined at the head of the valley. Michael Lee Enterprises holds a controversial mining licence, while environmental assessments have downplayed both ecological and geological significance (4).
Local EIA objections critique inadequate geological data—reports lack independent surveys verifying chert deposit size and longevity, with some geologists suggesting only a 7‑year mine life instead of the claimed 173 years (5).
Archaeological & Scientific Value
Geological uniqueness goes hand‑in‑hand with archaeological significance—evidence of Middle and Later Stone Age human activity exists, underscoring the valley’s cultural and lithic importance (6).
Scientists view the region as ideal for examining early Earth crust, sedimentary processes, and early life—factors that make its preservation scientifically vital (7).
Conservation & Risk Analysis
As part of the Malolotja Nature Reserve (incl. Mgwayiza Range), this area is a global biodiversity hotspot. It supports rainforest gorges, abundant endemic flora and fauna, and serves as an ecological transition zone (3).
Critics argue mining may degrade unique microhabitats, disrupt water systems, and potentially degrade the site’s eligibility for UNESCO World Heritage listing (4).
Summary
Mgwayiza Valley showcases a rare combination of ancient Archean geological formations, specific mined resources (green chert), and rich ecological and archaeological overlays. This makes it both scientifically precious and environmentally sensitive. While mining continues, environmental and geological assessments are contested, with concerns over incomplete data and potential irreversible damage.
Where did Stone Age hunter-gatherers get the raw material for their tools?International research team from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Nature Research Society finds early humans in southern Africa traveled long distances to get the right stone color
A new study has shown that as early as the Stone Age, people in Africa traveled long distances to procure colorful stone, forming the raw material for the manufacture of tools. The study was led by Dr. Gregor D. Bader from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The researchers investigated worked stone tools from sites up to 40,000 years old and natural rock deposits in what is now the Kingdom of Eswatini on the borders of South Africa and Mozambique, formerly Swaziland. They found that thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers traveled between 30 and a hundred kilometers to collect certain rock materials with striking colors, such as red jasper, green chalcedony and black chert. The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
In order to reconstruct the movements and migrations of early humans, it helps to look at entire landscapes, so the international research team included several sites with tools and potential sources of raw materials in its study. "Eswatini, with the collections of the National Museum in Lobamba, provided good conditions for this. Artifacts from numerous archaeological sites are kept there," Gregor Bader says. In their study, the researchers examined stone artifacts from the four sites of Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni.
By working closely with Dr. Brandi MacDonald from the research reactor in Missouri, USA, Bader's team used neutron activation analysis to determine the origin of the stones. In this process, the stone samples are irradiated with neutrons, resulting in an interaction between the atomic nuclei in the sample and the neutrons. In this process, the resulting products and the radiation released reveal the quantitative composition of the stone sample, the elements it contains and their isotopes, which are similar atoms of different masses. The specific pattern – in research this is also referred to as a geochemical fingerprint – is characteristic of stone materials of different types and their respective places of origin. “Although the method is destructive, only tiny sample quantities are required and the results are excellent,” Bader explains. “By comparing the analysis patterns of the stone used and the rocks found in the region, we can pinpoint the origin of the raw stone.”
Preference shifts to red jasper
Natural outcrop of red jasper in the Mgwayiza Valley, Eswatini
Man-made tools made of green chalcedony and red jasper from the sites had the same geochemical fingerprint as corresponding rock deposits in the Mgwayjza Valley, 20 to a hundred kilometers away. "We have calculated whether the stones used may have been transported via the local Komati and Mbuluzi rivers. However, this could only have happened as far as Hlalakahle, and the other three sites of Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni are a long way from there. Even if we assume that the hunter-gatherers took the shortest routes, we still find considerable distances between the rock deposits and the places where the stones were used. In addition, an exchange of materials with other early human groups is conceivable," says Bader. The stones were transported over long distances. "Colorful and shiny materials seemed attractive to early humans; they often used them for their tools. We can only speculate as to whether the colors had a symbolic meaning."
What is particularly interesting is the finding that color preferences shifted over time, says Bader. While black and white chert and green chalcedony were frequently used in the Middle Stone Age in Africa 40,000 to 28,000 years ago, red jasper was particularly popular in the later Stone Age around 30,000 to 2,000 years ago. “Both colors occurred close together in the same valley and in the same river deposits, so we can assume a deliberate selection of different materials at different times,” says Bader.
Publication:
Gregor D. Bader, Christian Sommer, Jörg Linstädter, Dineo P. Masia, Matthias A. Blessing, Bob Forrester, Brandi L. MacDonald: Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini. Journal of Archaeological Science, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106302
Highlights
We successfully traced MSA and LSA chert stone tools to their source in Eswatini using Neutron Activation Analysis.
Green and red chert varieties were transported by hunter gatherers between 20 and up to 100 km distance.
We observed different preferences for raw materials during the LSA compared to the MSA.
Abstract
Reconstructing past movement and mobility patterns requires a landscape-scale approach with knowledge of potential raw material sources and, ideally, multiple archaeological sites. Building on legacy collections in the Lobamba Museum in Eswatini and the identification of primary lithic raw material outcrops through landscape survey, we can provide scenarios of raw material provisioning for hunter-gatherers in Eswatini over the past 40 000 years. We used Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to refine the terminology as the three ‘chert’ varieties from the archaeological sites Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni are more precisely described as red jasper, green chalcedony and black chert. We were able to identify the primary outcrops for both red jasper and the green chalcedony. Using a least cost path (LCP) analysis together with hydrological and geomorphometric estimates of clast transport in relevant rivers, we reconstructed potential transportation routes of raw material and infer likely provisioning scenarios. During the final Middle Stone Age (MSA), red jasper occurs rarely or is absent in archaeological assemblages, while green chalcedony and other chert variants are frequently observed. This is despite the source of red jasper occurring near the green chalcedony outcrop. During the Later Stone Age (LSA), the red jasper, and a red chert variant of unknown provenance appear more frequently, indicating different raw material provisioning choices.
1. Introduction
Reconstructing hunter-gatherer mobility is crucial to understanding human behavior, their relation and interaction with the landscape, and selective choices regarding natural resources. As stated by Close (Close, 2000, p. 50) “The act of moving is an ephemeral thing, which may or may not leave any material trace in the archaeological record. Usually, it does not“. Understanding where people obtained different types of raw materials for the production of tools or pigments, and over which distances they were transported, offers the opportunity to find these rare traces of past movements or social networks. In southern Africa, several attempts have been made using mineralogical and geochemical characterization of lithic raw materials such as silcrete (Nash et al., 2013, 2022) and earth mineral pigments (ochre) (Dayet et al., 2016; McGrath et al., 2022.1), mostly related to the Middle Stone Age (MSA ∼300 000–28 000) (e.g. Bader et al., 2022.2a, Bader et al., 2022.3b, Bader et al., 2022.4c; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000.1; Wadley, 2015). Recently, Mackay and colleagues (2021) provided a coherent macroscopic study of the Still Bay technocomplex in the Doring River catchment area, where they demonstrated that bifacial Still Bay points (∼77–70ka) from varying raw materials were regularly transported over fairly long distances between 30 and 60 km. Other than the work of Mackay et al., most studies on raw material provenance are site-specific and thus offer only a narrow window towards an understanding of human mobility, migration, and potential networks of exchange. In terms of lithic provenance studies in South Africa, there has been an almost exclusive focus on silcrete, which limits the geographic range of such studies to the Cape coastal belt where this material naturally occurs. Masia (2022.5) is an exception, offering a comprehensive analysis of different raw material varieties from Olieboomspoort Rock Shelter and Mwulu's Cave in Limpopo based on a combination of macroscopic and microscopic characterizations coupled with X-ray fluorescence, thin section petrography, and Inductive Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry.
The most common lithic raw materials used by prehistoric knappers for stone tool production during the MSA and the Later Stone Age (LSA ∼30 – 2ka) of southernmost Africa are silcrete, quartzite, quartz, dolerite, rhyolite and hornfels, depending on the region. Other materials such as opalines, chalcedony or jasper are often grouped under the umbrella terms chert or crypto-crystalline silicates, although the latter requires microscopic investigations. Those materials naturally occur in diverse waxy lustres, colors ranging from red, orange, and grey to black, yellow and green. These variations are driven by distinct formation processes, post depositional alterations and specific elemental concentrations. It is surprising, therefore, that these materials have not yet been the subject of geochemical provenance studies in southern Africa.
1.1. Eswatini study area
Archaeological research in Eswatini started in the 1950s with Johnny Masson conducting intensive surveys and some small-scale excavations at sites like Nyonyane Rock Shelter (Bader et al., 2021.1). Peter Beaumont conducted multiple excavations in the late 1960s, the most famous revealing the oldest ochre mine in the world, Lion Cavern (Boshier and Beaumont, 1972; Dart and Beaumont, 1969). All the material from his excavations is currently stored in the McGregor Museum in Kimberley (Northern Cape, South Africa), but the repatriation process has recently started. Between the late 1970s and 1989, David Price Williams undertook a large-scale archaeological investigation of Eswatini. He founded the Swaziland Archaeological Research Association (SARA) and conducted excavations at important sites such as Sibebe (Bader et al., 2022.2a; Price Williams, 1981), Siphiso (Barham, 1989a) and Nyonyane (Barham, 1989a, 1989.1b), as well as on multiple open-air sites (Price Williams et al., 1982). Since 2016, new archaeological investigations have been undertaken in the country by our joint research team consisting of Swazi, European, South African, Canadian, and American researchers, and SARA has been resurrected. The major achievements of this new episode of research have been the scientific curation of the Price Williams collection in the Eswatini National Museum (Lobamba) supported by the German Archaeological Institute, a re-investigation of the MSA assemblages from Sibebe in the highveld (Bader et al., 2022.2a), a large-scale ochre provenance study based on Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), and the redating of Lion Cavern using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) (MacDonald et al., 2024). As a direct consequence of the curatorial work in the National Museum, we have access to the assemblages from every site excavated in the country under David Price Williams.
With permission from the Eswatini National Trust Commission (ENTC), we undertook a 10-day expedition to the Mgwayiza Valley within the Malolotja Nature Reserve at the western border of Eswatini to South Africa in 2021. Following the advice of local informants, we went there to find a green chert mine representing a potential source for macroscopically similar material found in several assemblages of the Price Williams Collection, e.g. Hlalakahle or Sibebe. We found the green chert mine on the first day of the expedition, high up at the northernmost extension of the Mgwyiza Valley (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). On the third day, we found several outcrops of a red chert variety up on the cliffs of the western mountain ridge (Fig. 3). Finally, we also surveyed the Mgwayiza stream and located secondary deposits of a black chert variety in the form of big river pebbles. Based on the geomorphology of the area, the primary outcropping of this black chert can only originate from upstream. The green and red chert varieties are macroscopically distinct, and, based on our observation of the Price Williams collection, we were convinced that these materials were used at different times by prehistoric knappers. We took multiple samples from various sections on each of the chert outcrops and recorded GPS coordinates. These archaeological investigations took place at just the right time and represented the last opportunity before permission for green chert mining was granted to a commercial mining company in 2023. Today, the green chert mine has been irretrievably destroyed.
Fig. 1. Map of Eswatini and the locations of archaeological sites and lithic sources mentioned in the text.
Fig. 2. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b, c) Green chalcedony outcrop. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
Fig. 3. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b) detail of red jasper outcrop with white quartz veins; (c) knapped materials. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
Findings like these present a serious challenge to creationist narratives, particularly the belief that humans were created in their present form only a few thousand years ago. The archaeological evidence from the Mgwayiza Valley—showing that Stone Age hunter-gatherers in southern Africa were selectively sourcing coloured stone for tool-making around 40,000 years ago—demonstrates that Homo sapiens were behaving in symbolically rich, cognitively sophisticated ways long before the biblical timeline would allow for human existence at all.
This kind of long-distance transport and selective use of materials reflects advanced planning, deep environmental knowledge, and cultural traditions. Such behaviours are the product of gradual cognitive evolution, not sudden appearance or divine design.
In addition, the ancient geology of the region—formed billions of years ago as part of the Kaapvaal Craton—further undermines any notion of a young Earth. These formations, and the archaeological layers associated with them, simply cannot be reconciled with claims of a global flood just a few thousand years ago or with any literal reading of Genesis.
As always, the evidence supports a world that is deep in time, shaped by natural processes, and inhabited by humans who have evolved, adapted, and innovated for tens of thousands of years. It is a story not of sudden creation, but of deep history—painstakingly uncovered, layer by layer.
