For the first time, advanced technologies made it possible to read parts of a damaged scroll that is at least 1,500 years old, discovered inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi in Israel. High-resolution scanning and UK Professor Brent Seales' revolutionary virtual unwrapping tool revealed verses from the Book of Leviticus.
In a collaborative effort with the Tennessee Valley Authority, The University of Alabama’s Office of Archaeological Research has begun a rehabilitation project on collections that were gathered 80 years ago with artifacts that span a 13,000-year time period.
Current climate models do not accurately account for humans’ role in changing the environment, according to a University of Chicago-led team of international researchers embarking upon a project to help climate scientists better document land cover and use over the past 10,000 years.
A WWII aircraft carrier used for atomic-bomb target practice is scuttled off the coast of California in the 1950s. Berkeley Lab researchers help scientists determine the radiation risk of exploring the sunken ship.
The new study, co-led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator David Reich at Harvard Medical School and Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, provides the first genetic evidence that humans interbred with Neanderthals in Europe.
New research conducted by archaeologists from the University of York and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in collaboration with members of Tel Aviv University, reveals striking insights into the living conditions and dietary choices of those who lived during the Middle Pleistocene some 300,000 - 400,000 years ago.
When thinking about the extinction of Neanderthals some 30,000 years ago, rabbits may not be the first thing that spring to mind. But the way rabbits were hunted and eaten by Neanderthals and modern humans – or not, as the case may be – may offer vital clues as to why one species died out while the other flourished.
Archaeologists at the University of Southampton have found evidence of an ancient gold trade route between the south-west of the UK and Ireland. A study suggests people were trading gold between the two countries as far back as the early Bronze Age (2500BC).
Monkey see, monkey count—almost. New research from the University of Rochester shows that while monkeys don’t have words or symbols for numbers like we do, they do understand the basic logic behind counting—and that can show us how humans first learned to count.
A new study by anthropologists from The University of Texas at Austin shows for the first time that epigenetic marks on DNA can be detected in a large number of ancient human remains, which may lead to further understanding about the effects of famine and disease in the ancient world.
Research into lethal wounds found on a human skull may indicate one of the first cases of murder in human history—some 430,000 years ago—and offers evidence of the earliest funerary practices in the archaeological record.
Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: gun regulation, psychology and altruism, big data, threats to coral reefs, extra-terrestrial life, personalized diets, metabolic syndrome and heart health, new drug target to treat arthritis, and archeologists find oldest tools.
Research by Bournemouth University's John Stewart has found that birds living during the Ice Age were larger, with a mixture of birds unlike any seen today, and many species now exotic to Britain living in Northern England.
Our ancestors were making stone tools some 700,000 years earlier than we thought. That’s the finding co-led by Stony Brook University's Drs. Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis—who have found the earliest stone artifacts, dating 3.3 million years ago.
Modern lifestyles have made our bones lighter weight than our hunter-gatherer ancestors. A study of the bones of hundreds of humans who lived during the past 33,000 years in Europe finds the rise of agriculture and a corresponding fall in mobility drove the change, rather than urbanization, nutrition or other factors.
An international team, including archaeologists from the University of Southampton, has found evidence suggesting leprosy may have spread to Britain from Scandinavia. The team, led by the University of Leiden examined a 1500 year old male skeleton, excavated at Great Chesterford in Essex, England during the 1950s.
Karen Kramer, an associate professor of anthropology, published a study in the Journal of Human Evolution titled, “When Mothers Need Others: Life History Transitions Associated with the Evolution of Cooperative Breeding.” Her research examines how mothers underwent a remarkable transition from the past – when they had one dependent offspring at a time, ended support of their young at weaning and received no help from others – to the present, when mothers often have multiple kids who help rear other children.
Assistant professor Sharon Moses is unearthing artifacts under former slave quarters. Her research is filling in historical gaps of slaves, including black Indians.
Archaeologists from the University of York have played a key role in Anglo-Danish research which has suggested the dawn of the Viking Age may have been much earlier – and less violent – than previously believed.
As with rivers, civilizations across the world rise and fall. Sometimes, the rise and fall of rivers has something to do with it. At Cahokia, the largest prehistoric settlement in the Americas north of Mexico, new evidence suggests that major flood events in the Mississippi River valley are tied to the cultural center’s emergence and ultimately, to its decline.
Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: exercise and obesity, Focused Ultrasound to treat uterine fibroids, neurology, diet supplements and cancer (day 4 in top 10), genetics, geology, skin cancer, sleep and Alzheimer's, and water conservation.
Using statistics that describe how an infectious disease spreads, a University of Utah anthropologist analyzed different theories of how people first settled islands of the vast Pacific between 3,500 and 900 years ago. Adrian Bell found the two most likely strategies were to travel mostly against prevailing winds and seek easily seen islands, not necessarily the nearest islands.
Anthropology professor Bill Schindler and his costar Cat Bigney will recreate the living conditions of our earliest ancestors when filming begins this month for National Geographic Channel's The Great Human Race.
Iowa State University anthropology professor Jill Pruetz and her research team were the first to observe savanna chimps using tools to hunt prey. Since making that discovery, Pruetz's team has observed more than 300 tool-assisted hunts and found female chimps hunt with tools more than males.
Why are modern humans the only species to have chins? University of Iowa researchers say it's not due to mechanical forces, such as chewing, but may lie in our evolution: As our faces became smaller, it exposed the bony prominence at the lowest part of our heads. Results appear in the Journal of Anatomy.
Northern Europeans in the Neolithic period initially rejected the practice of farming, which was otherwise spreading throughout the continent, a team of researchers has found. Their findings offer a new wrinkle in the history of a major economic revolution that moved civilizations away from foraging and hunting as a means for survival.
Almost 6,000 years ago, the man was placed behind the woman with his arms around her body, and their legs were intertwined. They were buried. Why they were interred in this manner is not yet determined, but the international team that discovered them in Greece is still searching for answers, according to team member Michael Galaty, a Mississippi State University archaeologist.
Historian J. Laurence Hare, who examines the emergence of antiquarianism in the German-Danish border regions in his new book, Excavating Nations: Archaeology, Museums and the German-Danish Borderlands.
Researchers surveying for endangered primates in national parks and forest reserves of Ivory Coast found, to their surprise, that most of these protected areas had been turned into illegal cocoa farms, a new study reports.
A large bronze mask of the god Pan, the only of its kind, was uncovered at the University of Haifa’s excavation at Hippos-Sussita National Park. According to Dr. Michael Eisenberg, bronze masks of this size are extremely rare and usually do not depict Pan or any of the other Greek or Roman mythological images. “Most of the known bronze masks from the Hellenistic and Roman periods are miniature."
A unique archaeological find uncovered near the site of a Roman villa in Dorset could help to shed light on the rural elite of late-Roman Britain.
A collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins includes an incredibly rare aureus of the Roman emperor Otho, who reigned for a mere three months.
LiDAR technology is helping archaeologists see through the thick jungle to Maya ruins in Belize.
Isotopic analysis of animal teeth from a 2,000-year-old herding settlement near Lake Victoria in southern Kenya show the area was once home to large grassland corridors — routes that could have been used to dodge tsetse flies and bring domesticated livestock to southern Africa, according to new research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
A University of Utah study of nearly 2,000-year-old livestock teeth show that early herders from northern Africa could have traveled past Kenya’s Lake Victoria on their way to southern Africa because the area was grassy – not tsetse fly-infested bushland as previously believed.
A partial human skull unearthed in a cave in northern Israel is providing clues as to when and where humans and Neanderthals might have interbred. In order to precisely determine the age of the skull, a combination of dating methods were employed, including accelerator mass spectrometry by the Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Elisabetta Boaretto.
Despite notable differences in appearance and governance, ancient human settlements function in much the same way as modern cities, according to new findings by researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Colorado Boulder.
A statistical technique that sorts out when changes to words’ pronunciations most likely occurred in the evolution of a language offers a renewed opportunity to trace words and languages back to their earliest common ancestor or ancestors.
This video features offers an inside look at the U.S. Lab where Brent Seales develops digital imaging software to unlock the mysteries of these ancient European scrolls.
For the first time, grape seeds from the Byzantine era have been found. These grapes were used to produce “the Wine of the Negev” — one of the finest and most renowned wines in the whole of the Byzantine Empire
A new Santa Fe Institute study by Paul Hooper and collaborators details the intergenerational food sharing in a society of Amazon forager-farmers and shows that differences in relative need determine contributions to children from parents, grandparents, and other kin.
University of Kentucky Department of Computer Science's Brent Seales is on his way to making history, and uncovering it, with revolutionary software and 2,000-year old Herculaneum scrolls.
A multi-purpose bone tool dating from the Neanderthal era has been discovered by University of Montreal researchers, throwing into question our current understanding of the evolution of human behaviour. It was found at an archaeological site in France.
Whether you are a Pygmy in the Congolese rainforest or a hipster in downtown Montreal, certain aspects of music will touch you in exactly the same ways. Researchers found that although the groups felt quite differently about whether specific pieces of music made them feel good or bad, their subjective and physiological responses to how exciting or calming they found the music to be appeared to be universal.
New research by UChicago art historian Claudia Brittenham examines the mysterious and magnificent murals at the ancient site of Cacaxtla in present-day Mexico.
Using anthropology to look at similarities between different cultures can tell us a lot about what "the good life" means for everyone, says Vanderbilt anthropologist and World Health Organization wellbeing adviser Ted Fischer.
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