At https://phys.org/news/2025-10-discovery-stone-megastructures-view-prehistoric.html … LiDAR has proved extremely useful when seeking out prehistoric structures and enclosures. In the UK it has been used to discover activity such as forts and camps or Neolithic and Bronze Age enclosures and settlements. It has even been used to discover the line of Roman roads, old river channels, what lies beneath what is now thick woodland. In southern Scotland armchair archaeologists using LiDar have found a lot of new sites, from Roman fortlets to numerous enclosures whose purpose has to be investigated on the ground. At the link above we have the use of LiDAR on a karst plateau between Slovenia and Italy. Enormous structures, never before imagined, have turned up. They have long low walls leading towards a pit. These are thought to be traps funnelling wild animal herds into a kill spot. In this instance, it is suggested the prey were red deer. They work much like a duck decoy as used in earlier centuries on great estates in the UK. Ducks for the table. However, the new find is on a much greater scale. One can see a distinct link here with similar structures, known as desert kites, in the Arabian peninsular. There are litterally hundreds of them, preserved in the desert sands. The prey there were gazelles, it is thought. They also exist in North Africa and even in South America. The latter were discovered recently in satellite images over high ground in Chile. Here the prey were viruna. See https://phys.org/news/2025-10-satellite-images-reveal-ancient-south.html … it would seem hunting and foraging groups were still active in South America into the 16th to 19th centuries. The Spanish recorded their activities – as an economic anomaly not worth taxing. It is not surprising that foragers would migrate on to high ground, or habitats unsuitable for agriculture, living in proximity, or nearly so, with the more populous communities engaged in farming. Possibly, the latter also did a bit of hunting in their spare time – much like modern anglers nowadays. However, part tiem hunters would not have wasted all that energy. Farming was hard wor as it is. The South American animal traps date from around 6000BC all the way down to the 18th century. The European ones, on the other hand, appear to have ceased being built and used prior to the Late Bronze Age. In European terms that would be something like 1000BC.
Over at https://phys.org/news/2025-10-sticky-secrets-ancient-gum-neolithic.html … the Mesolithic revolution involved the use of microliths – often attached to wood. Tools and weapons. They required the use of resin as a bonding mechanism – something that had probably been going on even in the Late Palaeolithic. Spears attached to wooden handles, for example. Glues may go back even into the Neanderthal era. However, at this link it is the continued use of such glues, down into the Neolithic. Chewing gum and Neolithic communities across Europe. This concerns the use of birch bark resin that was boiled into a gluey mixture – toughened by the use of a few additives. These were used to repair or construct tools and the gum was first chewed in order to make it more pliable. It was useful also as a chewing gum, we are led to believe- as it has turned up in archaeological contexts. It was also used to make repairs to pottery and ceramics in general – much as we use superglue nowadays.