Cave

More than 400 footprints across a diverse range of species have been identified in incredible detail for the first time, with researchers enlisting a trio of expert indigenous trackers to help solve the mystery of these 5,000-year-old records.

Scientists have discovered evidence of what may be the world’s oldest known human burial. The 300,000 year-old Homo naledi remains show signs of having been intentionally buried in a chamber marked with symbols. But other scientists aren’t so sure.

Mandrake and henbane are almost synonymous with secret rituals. In fact, after analyzing hair samples from a secret cache in a Menorcan cave, new evidence indicates that plants like these were ingested during burial ceremonies about 3,000 years ago.

Exploring an unmapped cave system is a daunting enough prospect on its own, but think how risky it would be to do so on another planet such as Mars. That's why a new system is in the works, which would use "breadcrumb"-dropping rovers to do the job.

The Moon isn’t the most hospitable place, but that’s not stopping NASA from sending humans back there soon. Thankfully, an orbiter has now found a region of the Moon with year-round jeans-and-jacket weather – underground caves.

Archaeologists have discovered what they claim to be the oldest example of figurative art made by human hands. An ochre painting of pigs, found on a cave wall in Indonesia, has been dated to be at least 45,500 years old.

It’s generally believed that the Clovis people were the first humans to inhabit the Americas, as long as 15,000 years ago. But now archaeologists have found evidence in a cave in Mexico that suggests humans visited as early as 30,000 years ago.

A new species of human has been discovered in a cave in the Philippines. Named Homo luzonensis after the island of Luzon where it was found, the hominin appears to have lived over 50,000 years ago, painting a more complete picture of human evolution.

Early hominins were known to have cross-bred when they crossed paths, and now the most direct evidence of those meetings has been found. By sequencing the genome of a hominin bone from a Siberian cave, anthropologists have discovered the direct descendant of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan.

The International Chronostratigraphic Chart has officially been revised. That means our current point in Earth’s geological timeline has been updated so that we’re now living in the Meghalayan age, which began 4,200 years ago with a two-century drought that destroyed several civilizations.

To prepare for space exploration, the ESA has been testing techniques and training astronauts in cave systems on Earth. The group's latest tool is a crash-proof drone that could one day help Martian settlers explore lava tubes on the Red Planet by mapping out tight spots humans can't reach.

"It's an interesting thing with passive solar design," muses Lionel Buckett, "that a cave facing north is probably the first passive solar building that humans ever lived in." And that's what this master builder has created, on a spectacular 600-acre property in Australia's Blue Mountains.