Ancient smells reveal secrets of Egyptian tomb
eternal souls still smell sweet. A team of analytical chemists and archaeologists has analysed these scents to help identify the jars’ contents. Image: Stefano Merli
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Category: Featured
Greenland’s Vikings may have vanished because they ran out of water
For more than 450 years, Norse settlers from Scandinavia lived—sometimes even thrived—in southern Greenland. Then, they vanished. Was it drought that drove their disappearance? Image: gordontour
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Fossil fish reveal timing of asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
Winter began in spring for many animals during the final year of the age of dinosaurs. Palaeontologists studying fossilized fish suggest that spring was in full bloom in the Northern Hemisphere when an asteroid slammed into Earth, triggering a devastating global winter and mass extinction. Image: Joschua Knüppe
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How did Neanderthals and other ancient humans learn to count?
A bone found at an archaeological site may encode numerical information. And if that’s correct, anatomically modern humans might not have been alone in developing a system of numerical notations: Neanderthals might have begun to do so, too. Image: F. d’Errico
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Exploring ‘Aquaterra’, the drowned continent walked by our ancestors
With the archaeology of our coastal waters largely unexplored, we are missing a huge piece of human history. Now, however, that is changing. Image: NOAA’s National Ocean Service
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3300-year-old baboon skull may tell of mysterious ancient kingdom
Ancient Egyptian legends tell of a magical faraway land where intrepid travelers could obtain wondrous products including gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Now researchers they may have their hands on the first known Puntite treasure: a 3300-year-old baboon skull that may have come from the fabled land. Image: The Trustees of the British Museum
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Ancient humans may have hibernated to survive brutal glacial winters
Some of the ancient humans living in Europe half a million years ago had a remarkable strategy for dealing with winter: they hibernated. At least, that is the claim being made by two researchers. Others dispute the evidence – but ongoing research suggests that it might be possible to induce a hibernation-like state in modern humans. Image: quinet
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500-year-old remains may be first African woman to reach the Americas
A 15th-century skeleton buried at the first European settlement in the Americas probably belonged to an unknown African woman, an analysis of her teeth suggests. The woman died in her mid-20s, within about five years of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas. Image: smashz
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Evolution is evolving: 13 ways we must rethink the theory of nature
Our picture of evolution is changing once more, as discoveries in genetics, epigenetics, developmental biology and other fields lend a new complexity and richness to our greatest theory of nature. Find out more in this special feature. Image: tauntingpanda
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How ancient proteins are untangling humanity’s family tree
In the past few years we have learned to read the signals in other organic molecules that tend to survive longer than DNA and persist even in warm environments. Now, some think they could reveal how archaic humans like H. naledi evolved and interacted. Image: hape662
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Controversial cave discoveries suggest humans reached Americas much earlier than thought
Archaeologists excavating a cave in the mountains of central Mexico have unearthed evidence that people occupied the area more than 30,000 years ago — suggesting that humans arrived in North America at least 15,000 years earlier than thought. Image: Devlin A. Gandy
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‘Invasion’ of ancient Egypt may have actually been immigrant uprising
Ancient Egypt’s first “foreign” takeover may actually have been an inside job. About 3600 years ago, the pharaohs briefly lost control of northern Egypt to the Hyksos, rulers who looked and behaved like people from southwest Asia. But the Hyksos were Egyptian-born members of an immigrant community. Image: A.D. Riddle Photograph
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