The Curious Engineer

All blogs / History

Don's Maps

donsmaps.com

Resources for the study of Palaeolithic European, Russian, Ukrainian and Australian Archaeology

HistoryScience

’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
47 from 8 Jun 2021 to 26 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (14 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog

2026 14

  1. Recent additions, changes and updates to Don's Maps
  2. Ancient Egyptian culture from its beginnings through the dynasties to the Ptolemaic period and its eventual decline as a Roman Province, told through reference to its mummies, statues, burial practices and artefacts. Although my first love is the stone age, mostly before 10 000 BP, I have also becom
  3. I have reorganised and added to the page on tools, to include sections specifically on the development of the ancient Acheulean hand axe by Homo erectus and the various types of this important tool, and the mastery of its creation by Homo neanderthalensis, who not only made it in the classic fashion
  4. John Darvill has made many discoveries of what appear to be objects made by prehistoric humans in various parts of the UK which are very similar to ice age objects from Continental Europe. Because John Darvill is not a university teacher or researcher, these are not available for publication in scie
  5. The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. It was part of a grand walled processional way leading into the city. The walls were finished in glazed bricks mostly in blue, with a
  6. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10 000 BC. It has been identified as having inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, and the developmen
  7. Babylon was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia. It functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-speaking region of Babylonia. Its rulers established two important empires in antiquity, the 19th–16th century BC Old Babylonian Empire, a
  8. This sitemap link provides access to all the pages on my site. Most searches for subjects covered in Don's Maps can be accomplished by searching on this page for the subject you are after, using your browser's search bar.
  9. Egyptologists have discovered the first tomb of a pharaoh since Tutankhamun's was uncovered over a century ago. King Thutmose II's tomb was the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty. More artefacts from the time of Thutmose II have been included.
  10. The history of the Earth from the beginning of the earth to the end of the dinosaurs, and a selection of the animals and plants from the Precambrian to the Cretaceous. The page includes maps of the continents of the earth as they travelled back and forth across the globe. Especially interesting are
  11. Ancient Egyptians used corundum, often in the form of emery (a rock rich in corundum) as a high-hardness abrasive to work granite and other hard stones such as andesite and basalt by grinding rather than cutting. Because corundum (hardness 9 on the Mohs scale) is significantly harder than the quartz
  12. The Mladečské Caves are a cave complex in the municipality of Mladeč in the Czech Republic, about 80 km north east of Brno. The site is a valuable resource for artefacts from the Old and Middle Palaeolithic.
  13. Giant Wallaroo Gallery, near Magnificent Gallery. Several more images with descriptive text have been added.
  14. Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (around 9600-8200 BC), a significant discovery showing that these early people did not just settle agricultural communities, but were capable of complex monumental architecture for social and ritual purposes. Archaeolog

2025 3

  1. Avdeevo - a Palaeolithic site with strong links to Kostenki. The Avdeevo venus figures are quite variable, but most depict mature women in various stages of the reproductive cycle. The famous double venus was found there. Avdeevo is located on the Sejm River near the city of Kursk, Russia. Two oval
  2. Inconsistencies in the EC books. Amy McDonald has found an inconsistency between the fifth and sixth books concerning Matigan, apprentice to Jondalar.
  3. Photoshop for beginners - I am not an expert, I am a beginner myself (though I have spent many years trying to understand a small part of this encyclopaedia for image manipulation), but this text and images may be of use to someone just starting out on the Photoshop journey. At the moment it covers

2024 9

  1. Birdstones are small, abstract stone carvings that resemble a bird and are thought to have been used as a weight for an atlatl. They are generally three to four inches long and less than two inches tall. They are found at archaic sites in midwestern and eastern North America, including the Great Lak
  2. La Madeleine is a rock shelter located in the Vézère valley, in the Dordogne, France. In 1926 the skeleton of a three year old child was discovered, with exquisite shell jewellery, dating from the end of the Magdalenian period. It is a treasure house of art and knowledge about the people of the Magd
  3. Accessing the collection of rock art photographs by Heinrich Wendel, who documented many of the rock art sites in the Franco-Cantabrian region between 1964 and 1970 - the Neanderthal Museum has kindly made available to the general public the collection of superb photographs from the Wendel Collectio
  4. Pasiega Cave in Spain was of mostly academic interest until the discovery that some of the art in the cave may have been put there by Neanderthals. This result has now been discredited. Here is the background to that story, with many drawings of the art of the cave from the old master himself, Breui
  5. In 1940 at Baume-Latrone, or Latrone Cave, drawings from the Upper Palaeolithic were discovered in a deep network 240 metres from the entrance. They have a unique style, and have been assigned to the Aurignacian. They have been dated to 37 464 BP (cal).
  6. Altamira Cave is 270 metres long and consists of a series of twisting passages and chambers, and is decorated with ice age paintings. The artists used charcoal and ochre or haematite to create the images. They also exploited the natural contours in the cave walls to give their subjects a three-dimen
  7. An account of the Battle of Megiddo (fought in the 15th century BC) between Egyptian forces under the command of Pharaoh Thutmose III and a large rebellious coalition of Canaanite vassal states led by the king of Kadesh. It is the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively
  8. Nubia and the Kingdom of Kush covered an area larger than that of Egypt, and as old, stretching from the 1st cataract of the Nile to the junction of the Blue and White Nile at Khartoum. At one time, during the 25th Dynasty, all of Egypt and Nubia was ruled by the Nubians, who invaded Egypt and attem
  9. Magical amber animals - many of the Mesolithic period’s artistic masterpieces have been found in Denmark. Among them are bears, a bird and an elk of amber. The figures are elegant and shaped in a way that is true to nature. The people who made them must have had a good knowledge of how a real bear,

2023 8

  1. Le Moustier is the type site for the Mousterian suite of tools and artefacts, and is a Neanderthal site. It is of interest primarily to those specialising in le Moustier and the lithic industry of the Mousterian. Several tools from Le Moustier have been added to this page.
  2. On the banks of the Bengawan Solo River in Java, Indonesia, 19th-century physician Eugène Dubois uncovered an astounding fossil find: the bones of what appeared to be an ancient human, surrounded by animal remains and shells. Excavated in the 1890s, the site gained fame as the home of 'Java Man', be
  3. El Pendo Cave, Camargo, province of Santander, is famous for the venus figure found there. More photographs of the cave, the artwork on the walls, and portable art found there have been added.
  4. Lalinde/Gonnersdorf figurines and engravings are strictly stylised, overtly female forms with over-sized buttocks, long trunks, small or missing breasts, and no heads. More information and images as well as plans and cross sections of the Gare de Couze and the Grotte de la Roche near the town of Lal
  5. La Grande Grotte de Saint-Front is a little over a kilometre upstream from Domme, on the left bank of the Dordogne. Also known as La Grotte du Mammouth, it contains a number of engravings and sculptures, including a superb Mammoth on a high ceiling.
  6. Gobustan on the Caspian Sea is a site dated to around 5 000 - 8 000 years BP, where there are paintings or etchings (petroglyphs) of what appear to be long boats in the style of the Viking ships of more recent times, as well as many other types, including human outlines, horses, and aurochs. More ph
  7. The oldest cave paintings in Central Europe, estimated at between 23 000 and 35 000 BP, were discovered by a team of Romanian speleologists at the Coliboaia Cave, Romania. More photographs and text have been added.
  8. Dots and lines are the most ubiquitous abstract symbols in Palaeolithic art, whether on the walls of caves or on suitable pieces of bone and ivory. Many researchers have noted the occurrence of these symbols, and their occurrence particularly in relation to representations of animals. Here I have pu

2022 8

  1. During the Upper Palaeolithic, ice age hunters used the slopes of the Danube valley repeatedly. Willendorf is one such site, and although justly famous for the Venus of Willendorf, it is also an important Gravettian and Aurignacian site for the other artefacts found there.
  2. The Gudenushöhle cave is situated 20 km northwest of the city of Krems, in the valley of the Little Krems, not far from Willendorf, in Lower Austria. The site is close to the River Danube, and has yielded both Neanderthal and Magdalenian artefacts, including many tools, as well as an engraved reinde
  3. The small cave of Les Eyzies or la Grotte Richard opens above the village of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, on the right shore of the Beune. Its prehistoric occupation is established in the Upper Magdalenian. It has been largely forgotten, but is an important site.
  4. La Quina is a Neanderthal site located in the Charente region of south-western France. The artisans of the La Quina Mousterian industry type (thick asymmetric tools transformed many times) had a particular way of life: they were hunters specialising in the hunt for Reindeer or Bison, and they moved
  5. The swamp ape Oreopithecus bambolii was 120 cm tall and weighed 30 kg, with a brain capacity of up to 200 cm3 lived in swampy areas of what is now Italy, 10 to 8 million years ago. The long forelimbs are indicative of tree-dwelling. The ape went extinct after a land bridge connected their island to
  6. Achenheim is an important site from the Middle Palaeolithic (75 000 to 35 000 years ago) and bears witness to the presence of Neanderthal man in Alsace: Achenheim was an animal butchering area. The site includes the bones of several large animals (rhinoceros, horse, mammoth, bison, Megaloceros) butc
  7. Micoque tools - La Micoque is a Neanderthal site in the Dordogne dating from circa 400 000 BP to 130 000 BP. A number of tools have been added to the page.
  8. Fontalès is a rock shelter and prehistoric site of the Magdalenian, which is in the commune of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val , in Tarn-et-Garonne. It was excavated in 1865 by Victor Brun, then from 1936 to 1960 by Paul Darasse. The site has yielded a stratigraphic sequence comprising several levels of occ

2021 5

  1. Of all the ancient peoples that have been studied by scientists, none has set puzzles quite so profound as those left behind by the Denisovans. However game changing DNA research and techniques now mean that we can trace which hominins and animals used a particular site. No longer do we need actual
  2. In Morocco, archaeologists have discovered what they claim to be the oldest jewellery ever found in the world. They are perforated shells that are up to 150 000 years old. The shells, which were believed to have been made into necklaces and bracelets, were found in the Bizmoune Cave near the coastal
  3. In the Pacific Northwest Coast mythology, Raven is the powerful figure who transforms the world. Stories tell how Raven created the land, released the people from a cockle shell, and brought them fire. Raven stole the light and brought it out to light up the world. Yet Raven is a trickster—often sel
  4. Another Palaeolithic Venus has been discovered in Renancourt, Amiens. The statuette is in good condition, carved in limestone/chalk, and is 40 mm high. It is estimated to be 23 000 years old, and is from the Gravettian. The breasts, buttocks and thighs are all of exaggerated volume, as is normal in
  5. The sites generally known as Atapuerca are a series of very important excavations in the Sierra Atapuerca, in Spain, first discovered as a result of the construction of a railway line through this limestone region. Taken together, the sites are more extensive in terms of hominin discoveries than any