Hollywood loves a gigantic ape. It gave the world King Kong and in Disney’s remake of The Jungle Book, it has given King Louie an upgrade. A big one. Formerly an average-sized orangutan, his lumbering body now fills an abandoned temple deep in the Indian jungle. Image: Gerg1967
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This is the story of the discovery of a truly fantastic beast, the greatest of all great apes. According to some estimates, it stood 3.5 metres tall, weighed over 500 kilograms, and stalked the nightmares of the earliest humans to reach China. Its name? Gigantopithecus. Image: Craig Newsom
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The first Americans don’t give up their secrets easily. Archaeologists working in Florida had to don scuba gear to recover the latest evidence of these elusive ancient people. The finds, removed from the bottom of a water-filled sinkhole 9 metres deep, include 14,500-year-old stone tools alongside the remains of a butchered or scavenged mastodon, a type of prehistoric elephant. Image: Brendan Fenerty
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The Trojan War was a grander event than even Homer would have us believe. The famous conflict may have been one of the final acts in what one archaeologist has controversially dubbed “World War Zero” – an event he claims brought the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age world crashing down 3200 years ago. Image: Jorge Lascar
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A proud lineage with a history stretching back thousands of years is swept aside by newcomers from the south-east – only to rise to dominance once more 15,000 years later. It’s not the plotline of some fantasy epic, but the real story of prehistoric Europe in the years after modern humans conquered the continent – as a new genetic analysis has just revealed. Image: Martin Frouz and Ji?í Svoboda
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