World's Oldest

Exactly when humans first set foot in North America remains a mystery, but archeologists have now uncovered the oldest unambiguous evidence. Human footprints have been found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, dated to about 22,000 years ago.

A new study published in the journal Nature is describing the extraction and sequencing of the oldest known sample of DNA. The sample comes from an ancient species of mammoth found in the Siberian permafrost and dates back nearly 1.2 million years.

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.

​For three years, an international team of scientists surveyed the floor of the Black Sea, off the coast of Bulgaria. Now, radiocarbon tests have confirmed that the remains of an ancient ship discovered last year date from 400BC, officially making it the world's oldest known intact shipwreck.

A crude but working calendar found in Warren Field, Scotland, is turning back time. Scientists believe the calendar was created by hunter gatherers around 8,000 BC, making it the world's oldest calendar discovered to date by a significant margin.