Scientists Reconstruct 14,400-Year-Old Cave Expedition Using Pine Branch Torches

Fourteen thousand years before the first written word, a small group of humans and their dog descended into the Bàsura cave in northern Italy carrying nothing more than burning pine branches — and left behind a record precise enough for modern science to reconstruct their journey almost step by step. Italian researchers, working from 56 fragments of charcoal and a series of careful experiments, have determined that these Upper Paleolithic explorers did not rely on the large torches long assumed by archaeologists, but instead carried thin, handheld pine branches that burned cleanly, cast steady