Archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed two obsidian blades used as bronze age surgical tools and skulls showing evidence of scarring.

What makes you think they were used for surgery?

We have found traces of cuts on skulls in a nearby graveyard. Out of around 700 skulls, 14 have these marks. They could only have been cut with a very sharp tool. At this time, 4000 years ago or more, it could only have been an obsidian blade. The cut marks show that a blade was used to make a rectangular opening all the way through the skull. We know that patients lived at least two to three years after the surgery, because the skull has tried to close the wound.

Have you uncovered any clues to why this surgery was performed?

There seem to be three main reasons. The first is to relieve the pressure of a brain haemorrhage; we found traces of blood on the inside of some of the skulls. The second is to treat patients with brain cancer, as we can see pressure traces from the cancer inside some of the skulls. And the final reason was to treat head injuries, which seem to have been quite common. The people of Ikiztepe got their copper from mines in the local mountains, and we think they had to fight other local people for access to it.

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Flint tools dating back to the Ice Age have been found during road repairs in Nottinghamshite, England.

The Highways Agency said the finds included ancient flint tools and flint knapping debris dating back to about 11,000 BC – around the end of the last Ice Age when Stone Age hunter-gathers returned as the climate began to warm up.

A46 Highways Agency project manager Geoff Bethel said: ”As the A46 follows the route of the old Roman road, we expected to uncover a number of artefacts from Roman Britain and we were not disappointed.

”But to uncover such rare flint tools dating back to the end of the Ice Age was very exciting.”
Evidence of such early people had been found in caves, but the pieces of flint found at Farndon appeared to show these people were making things out in the open, possibly in a temporary campsite, the Highways Agency said.

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Evidence has been found that early humans were using stone tools to cut meat from animals 3.4 million years ago.

That pushes back the earliest known tool use and meat-eating in such hominins by more than 800,000 years.

Bones found in Ethiopia show cuts from stone and indications that the bones were forcibly broken to remove marrow.

The research, in the journal Nature, challenges several notions about our ancestors’ behaviour.

Previously the oldest-known use of stone tools came from the nearby Gona region of Ethiopia, dating back to about 2.5 million years ago. That suggests that it was our more direct ancestors, members of our own genus Homo, that were the first to use tools.

But the marked bones were found in the Dikika region, with their age determined by dating the nearby volcanic rock – to between 3.2 million and 3.4 million years ago.

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A pre-Aztec civilization used human bones to make various tools and utensils.

The discovery comes from a new analysis of 5,000 bone fragments found in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, a large archaeological site about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City (see map).

Femurs (thigh bones), tibias (shinbones), and human skulls were transformed into household items shortly after death, noted team leader Abigail Meza Peñaloza of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

“The Teotihuacanos used different stones as knives to finely remove the flesh and muscles from the bones,” Meza Peñaloza said. The bodies had to be as fresh as possible, she added, because after a person dies, his or her bone quickly becomes too fragile to sculpt.

Rebecca Storey, a Teotihuacan expert at the University of Houston, said that making utensils out of human bone fits with the ancient culture.

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A collection of weapons belonging to Iberian warriors have been found at La Bastida de les Alcusses in Valencia.

Excavations have recovered over 60 iron objects in a small area of the western entrance to the village of La Bastida, including weapons, rods and nails belonging to the jamb of a door, the experts explained.

Archaeological excavations in the Iberian settlement of La Bastida de les Alcusses of Moixent have been indertaken this year in the West Gate. This entry to the town had already been excavated in 1998 but the evidence of the existence of an older entry at this point has led to the excavation this year.

In this set, stand out outfits – set of weapons and tools – for warriors located in the village. There are, Helena Bonet said, five sets of weapons, belonging to as many Iberian warriors from 2,400 years ago, which are the “most spectacular” find and enable to document “a unique ritual in Iberian Archaeology consisting of the intentional deposition of five complete sets of iron weapons, food offerings and ceramic vases, all burned together with wood and iron structures of the door and sealed under a layer of earth.”

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