YAKOHAMA, JAPAN—A new genetic study conducted by Xiaoxi Liu of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences and his colleagues suggests that modern Japanese people are mostly descended from three ancestral groups, according to a...
GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA—According to a CNN report, burned human remains and artifacts have have been discovered under a pile of discarded construction materials in a room beneath a temple at Guatemala’s Maya site of Ucanal by a team of...
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA— Nature News reports that hundreds of human and animal bones and more than 40 fragments of stone tools have been uncovered at the entrance to a lava tube cave in northwestern Saudi Arabia. The stone tools are thought...
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—According to a Cosmos Magazine report, Laura van Holstein of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues examined the rate of evolution of hominin species over a period of five million years. First, Van Holstein...
WEST YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND— Newsweek reports that the examination of the contents of a Roman lead coffin discovered in 2022 in the city of Leeds has identified the partial remains of a child. The initial evaluation of the coffin’s poorly...
NEW YORK, NEW YORK—According to a statement released by The Metropolitan Museum of Art , museum officials handed over a Sumerian sculpture to representatives from Iraq in a ceremony conducted in Washington, D.C. The copper alloy...
PILBARA, AUSTRALIA— ABC News Australia reports that an excavation conducted at the site of a rock shelter destroyed by mine blasting in 2020 in north Western Australia’s Juukan Gorge has uncovered a tooth from a Tasmanian devil....
New research has highlighted an area in Arabia that once acted as a key point for cultural exchanges and trades amongst ancient people -- and it all took place in vast caves and lava tubes that have remained largely untapped reservoirs...
HUAINAN, CHINA— China Daily reports that a tomb built by the Chu vassal state at the end of the Warring States Period (475–221 B.C.) has been excavated at the Wuwangdun site in eastern China. Looting has severely damaged the tomb,...
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA—According to a Live Science report, David Zeanah of California State University, Sacramento, representatives of the Thalanyji people, and their colleagues have analyzed more than 4,400 cutting and grinding tools...
New evidence of one of the first cities in the Pacific shows they were established much earlier than previously thought, according to new research. The study used aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of...
Astrophysicists shed light on the relationship between the Milky Way and the Egyptian sky-goddess Nut. The paper draws on ancient Egyptian texts and simulations to argue that the Milky Way might have shone a spotlight, as it were, on...
Byzantine bullion fueled Europe's revolutionary adoption of silver coins in the mid-7th century, only to be overtaken by silver from a mine in Charlemagne's Francia a century later, new tests reveal. The findings could transform our...
A new reconstruction of the 375-million-year-old fossil fish Tiktaalik -- a close relative of limbed vertebrates -- used micro-CT to reveal bones still embedded in matrix. The reconstruction shows that the fish's ribs likely attached to...
A new data crowdsourcing platform aims to preserve the sound of Romeyka, an endangered millennia-old variety of Greek. Experts consider the language to be a linguistic goldmine and a living bridge to the ancient world.
An international team of scholars present the earliest clear archaeological and biomolecular evidence for the raising of chickens for egg production, based on material from 12 archaeological sites spanning one and a half millennia. The...
What did an ancient Chinese emperor from 1,500 years ago look like? A team of researchers reconstructed the face of Chinese Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou using DNA extracted from his remains. The study suggests the emperor's death at the...
For centuries, the Cerne Giant, a figure carved into a hillside in Dorset, has fascinated locals and visitors to the area. A new paper proposes that the Cerne Giant can in fact be dated to the early Middle Ages, and, as a result, its...
A new study combining genetic, palaeoecological, and archaeological evidence has unveiled the Persian Plateau as a pivotal geographic location serving as a hub for Homo sapiens during the early stages of their migration out of Africa. It...
A team of archaeologists discovered tiny microplastic particles in deposits located more than seven meters deep, in samples dating back to the first or early second century and excavated in the late 1980s.
Archaeological analysis of a near unique animal cemetery discovered in London nearly 30 years ago has revealed there was an international horse trading network, orchestrated by the elites of late medieval and Tudor England, which brought...
Scientists have uncovered the fossilized skull of a 270-million-year-old ancient amphibian ancestor in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The team of researchers described the fossil as a new species...
Detailed reports on thousands of artifacts pulled from 'Britain's Pompeii' reveals the surprisingly sophisticated domestic lives of Bronze Age Fen folk some 3,000 years ago -- from home interiors to recipes, clothing, kitchenware and pets.
A new study has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare. The team compiled a new archive of preserved human brains, which highlighted that nervous tissues actually persist...
Archaeologists rediscovers 46 sites at the Eastern Sovereign Base Area at Dhekelia, Cyprus. Archaeologists located sites from archive records, a number of which were thought to have been 'lost.' They uncovered evidence of quarries and...
A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to research.
A 30 million year-old fossil whale may not be the heaviest animal of all time after all, according to a new analysis by paleontologists. The new analysis puts Perucetus colossus back in the same weight range as modern whales and smaller...
Thousands of historic and archaeological sites in Georgia are at risk from tropical storm surges, and that number will increase with climate change, according to a new study.
Potters of different cultural backgrounds learn new types differently, producing cultural differences even in the absence of differential cultural evolution. The research has implications for how we evaluate the difference of...
While many aspects of Philistine culture are well-documented, the specifics of Philistine religious practices and deities have long remained shrouded in mystery. A recent study contributes valuable new data to our understanding of the...
By analysing ancient DNA, an international team of researchers have uncovered cases of chromosomal disorders, including what could be the first case of Edwards syndrome ever identified from prehistoric remains.
A new study reveals that the first farmers and herdsmen settled in Andalusia collected and consumed shellfish throughout the year, especially in winter.
Located at the Callacpuma archaeological site in the Cajamarca Basin of northern Peru, the plaza is built with large, vertically placed megalithic stones -- a construction method previously unseen in the Andes.
Some people from an ancient community in what is now northern Italy were interred with animals and animal parts from species such as dogs, horses and pigs. The reasons remain mysterious, but might indicate an enduring companion...
Following the arrival of the first farmers in Scandinavia 5,900 years ago, the hunter-gatherer population was wiped out within a few generations, according to a new study. The results, which are contrary to prevailing opinion, are based...
A mortuary practice known as Log Coffin culture characterizes the Iron Age of highland Pang Mapha in northwestern Thailand. Between 2,300 and 1,000 years ago, individuals were buried in large wooden coffins on stilts, mostly found in...
Using advanced geospatial modeling to compare environmental and archaeological evidence, researchers found evidence that connects ancient mobility and subsistence strategies to cultural connections forged among Tibetan farmers and...
Did the ancient Greeks and Romans experience Alzheimer's? Medical texts from 2,500 years ago rarely mention severe memory loss, suggesting today's widespread dementia stems from modern environments and lifestyles, a new analysis shows.
Rickets ran rife in children following the Industrial Revolution, but new research has found factory work and polluted cities aren't entirely to blame for the period's vitamin D deficiencies.
Archaeologists have debated whether Neanderthals or modern humans made stone tools that are found at sites across northern Europe and date from about 40,000 years ago. A new excavation at one site in Germany turned up 45,000-year-old...
A new study, which centers on evidence from skulls of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape, Lufengpithecus, offers important clues about the origins of bipedal locomotion courtesy of a novel method: analyzing its bony inner ear region using...
Analysis of the remains of 24 individuals from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik'aya Patjxa burial sites in Peru shows that early human diets in the Andes Mountains were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.
DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a new study.
The brown bear is one of the largest living terrestrial carnivores, and is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike many other large carnivores that went extinct at the end of the last Ice Age (cave bear, sabretoothed...
For almost 200 years, archaeologists have been puzzled by a mysterious brown stain on the ancient Greek Parthenon temple in Greece. Now, researchers have conducted new scientific analyses, and their verdict is clear: The mystery remains.
When combined with data from tree-ring records, stalagmites can open up a unique archive to study natural climate fluctuations, a research team has demonstrated. The researchers analyzed the isotopic composition of oxygen in a stalagmite...
Researchers have linked the travels of a 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth with the oldest known human settlements in Alaska, providing clues about the relationship between the iconic species and some of the earliest people to travel across...
New research has precisely dated some of the oldest fossils of complex multicellular life in the world, helping to track a pivotal moment in the history of Earth when the seas began teeming with new lifeforms -- after four billion years...
Researchers have identified a 3D fragment of fossilized skin that is at least 21 million years than previously described skin fossils. The skin, which belonged to an early species of Paleozoic reptile, has a pebbled surface and most...