by Alessandra de Nardis Not long ago, it was still taught that Homo Sapiens, then nicknamed Cro-Magnon[1], had arrived in Europe about 40.000 years ago and that he had gradually replaced Neanderthal man, who finally became extinct 35.000-30.000 years ago. We were still firmly attached to the idea that we, Sapiens,…
See moreby Alessandra de Nardis and Elvira Visciola In 2020, a short article was published on the pages of Preistoria in Italia, "A necklace of deer teeth from 16.000 years ago", on a particular object found in a burial discovered in 1934 in southern France. western, in Saint-Germain-La-Rivière, dated to the Middle Magdalenian,…
See moreby Francesca Principi The large knotted rings are one of the most characteristic symbols of the Piceno culture even though they remain, to this day, finds whose true meaning remains mostly obscure. To understand the cultural context in which these objects were created, it is of fundamental importance to make a premise on identity…
See moreAutochthonous civilizations lit up along the coasts of the Danube, with strong signals of equal and community culture. A tribute to Marija Gimbutas, visionary archaeologist. by Harald Haarmann and Mariagrazia Pelaia Discovering Ancient Europe. In the preface to her fundamental work entitled The Civilization of the Goddess (1991; transl. It .: La civilization…
See moreby Giulia Goggi The condition of Etruscan women seems to have been freer than that of contemporary women. It has been hypothesized that they knew how to write and read and the inscriptions on some mirrors could be related to this, explaining the scenes represented. In the Etruscan inscriptions the…
See moreby Elvira Visciola Marija Gimbutas spoke of ancient Europe for the Neolithic, including a vast territory in which populations moved bringing with them their own customs and traditions which they transferred to the populations they met. In reality, although the traces are more fleeting and distant even by several thousand…
See moreby Barbara Crescimanno At the Salinas Archaeological Museum in Palermo are preserved two "lozenge" idols in dark clay, about 10 cm high, dating back to the Middle Eneolithic (mid-XNUMXrd millennium BC) and found in a tomb found in front of the Park gate of the Regia Favorita, in Piazza Leoni, in the plain that…
See moreby Alessandra De Nardis An article by the French journalist Manon Meyer appeared on National Geographic on January 3, 2023 entitled: "Why did prehistoric men and women paint in caves?"; the text is an interview with Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, prehistoric archaeologist, anthropologist and director emeritus of research at the CNRS who of…
See moreby Arianna Carta That Marija Gimbutas was a genius and that she revolutionized Neolithic archeology is a fact that is clearly evident from her university career, publications and direction of international excavations at a time when women archaeologists had to stay locked up in their rooms. Little known…
See moreby Alessandra de Nardis André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986), considered one of the world's greatest specialists in prehistory, hypothesized that animals were part of a symbolic system of the living world maintained with small variations throughout the duration of Paleolithic art. This symbolic system implied a distribution of animal species in two…
See more