Maybe pieces of old bone and flint don't seem like the most exciting archeological discovery, but they get a lot more so when they're found just a mile away from Stonehenge.

Though the world's most beloved henge is still filled with mystery, the scientific community now has a few new clues about it all, including more information about the people who actually made Stonehenge. Or, rather, more info about the ancestors of the people who made it. The nearby Blick Mead excavation site is pumping out remnants of the hunter-gatherers who predate those large standing stones by a millennium. One such find? A hearth dating from 4300 B.C. littered with tools, animal bones, and a pod used to hold pigments. One of the projects lead archaeologists, David Jacques, is able to imagine what that spot was like, four millennia ago: "There's people here doing stuff. Just like us. Same kids and worries."

For more on this latest (earliest?) piece of the puzzle, read the full article at The New York Times. And to find out about the groundbreaking geophysical mapping survey--the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project--that has identified hundreds of “invisible” archaeological features beneath the ground, check out "Hidden Landscapes of Stonehenge" from the June/July 2015 issue of British Heritage magazine.

[The New York Times]