Until now, though, the oldest firm evidence for people living in African rainforests dated to around 18,000 years ago. Our newly published study pushes that date way back.

Stone tools found on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, are of a style that flourished 12,000 years ago, when the Earth was plunged into a brief period of extreme cooling called the Younger Dryas, after ...

When these tools can be dated, they are consistently from 12,900 to 11,700 years ago, closely matching the timing of the Younger Dryas. This is a period where the world cooled dramatically, before ...