DNA study confirms: “Viking” was a job, not an ethnicity.
Science reveals the results of a massive genetic study of Viking remains across Europe, which found that people from all genetic backgrounds took up the […]
archaeology
Science Art: Gold plaques (items 9-14 in catalogue), by Ian Richardson, The British Museum, 2012
Click to embiggen Treasure! Literally! A hoard of Roman gold and silver, including jewelry, figurines, and a lot of these votive “leaf” plaques. A votive […]
Supernovas have caused mass extinctions. (As if asteroids weren’t bad enough.)
Science Daily reports on radioactivity research that has found evidence that at least one mass extinction event in Earth’s history was caused not by an […]
Neanderthals were more sensitive to pain.
Nature produces one more clue that if any prehistoric “cave men” were the tough, insensitive brutes, it was our ancestors. Neanderthals, a new gene study […]
Growing Neanderthal brains in the lab (using European stem cells).
CNN covers an odd project, using Svante Paabo’s reconstructed Neanderthal genome and European stem-cell banks to recreate mini-brain cell-clusters that are up to 20% Neanderthal […]
Mapping an invisible Roman city
The Guardian has another radar-archaeology victory, looking underground with Cambridge University scientists mapping Falerii Novi, the first ancient Roman city to be surveyed by ground-penetrating […]
DNA testing the Dead Sea Scrolls
National Geographic gets physical clues about the parchment the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on – by DNA testing the fragmentary animal skins that these […]
Oldest known cave paintings show modern human thoughts – as a story.
Scientific American marvels over paintings found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi – 44,000-year-old images of fantastic beast-men that bear signs of modern human ways […]
Neanderthal yarn proves math skills in prehistoric culture.
Ars Technica looks at the world’s oldest bit of string and find it tells a profound story about Neanderthal life: The 6.2mm (0.24 inch) long […]
There were a bunch of different humans hanging out in southern Africa
That’s before Homo sapiens came on the scene. Science News looks at new evidence that three different species of human ancestors were present in the […]
Yes, indigenous South Americans were actively managing the forest.
Scientific American looks at old trees to determine how so-called hunter-gatherers were actually actively “farming” the Brazil nuts and cocoa trees they relied on for […]
Ancient African genome offers migration clues for the first humans.
Nature shares DNA research on the remains of four children in what is now Cameroon, revealing clues about how they lived and where they came […]
Science Art: Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon (1825-1835), by Jean-Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck
Click to embiggen A painting of Mayan pyramids by a mysterious man, described on Public Domain Review (where I found this image) as an “artist, […]
Learning from the ashes of Notre Dame
Nature takes a look at how the tragic fire at Notre Dame last year created a unique opportunity for researchers to study medieval construction: The […]
U.S. returns pre-Spanish copper coins to Mexico.
Mexico News Daily reports on a trove of 3,500 coins – long, copper strips used for exchange as early as 1200 CE – that U.S. […]