By using novel methods developed for tracing the origins of virus outbreaks, researchers say they have identified present-day Turkey as the homeland of the Indo-European language family. The international team used computational methods analyzing words from more than 100 ancient and contemporary languages, as well as geographical and historical data. By doing so, the scientists…
An ancient Roman lead scroll unearthed in England three years ago has turned out to be a curse intended to cause misfortune to more than a dozen people, according to new research. Found in East Farleigh, U.K., in the filling of a 3rd to 4th Century AD building that may have originally been a temple,…
A new analysis of complex interactions between humans and the environment preceding the 9th century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula points to a series of events — some natural, like climate change; some human-made, including large-scale landscape alterations and shifts in trade routes — that have lessons for…
Newfound pieces of human skull from “the Cave of the Monkeys” in Laos are the earliest skeletal evidence yet that humans once had an ancient, rapid migration to Asia. Anatomically modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. When and how our lineage then dispersed out of Africa has long proven controversial. Archaeological…
Archaeologists date relic, found in dig near Jerusalem, to the 12th century B.C.
Human history more than matches the best soap operas and Hollywood thrillers. The latest blockbuster is a tale of sex and war on an epic scale but from an era that pre-dates conventional historical analysis. It comes from the world of anthropology where researchers are piecing together the twists and turns using the latest genome…
For centuries, the people of the Gilbert Islands in the central Pacific Ocean have crafted weapons from shark teeth. Joshua Drew, a conservation biologist at Columbia University in New York, has used these teeth to show that the waters around the islands were once home to three species of shark that no longer live in…
A first-of-its-kind “crowdsourced and crowdfunded” archaeological dig at Cambridgeshire’s Flag Fen has finished. It is the site of a Bronze-Age “causeway” of millions of preserved timbers that are rotting away as groundwater recedes from the site. The not-for-profit Digventures team raised £27,000 from members of the public who then joined in an expert-led dig to…
During the Neolithic Age (approximately 10000 BCE), early man evolved from hunter-gatherer to farmer and agriculturalist, living in larger, permanent settlements with a variety of domesticated animals and plant life. This transition brought about significant changes in terms of the economy, architecture, man’s relationship to the environment, and more. Now Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel…
A new genetic map paints a comprehensive picture of the 2,000 or so years in which different Jewish groups migrated across the globe, with some becoming genetically isolated units while others seemed to mix and mingle more. The findings allow researchers to trace the diaspora, or the historical migration, of the Jews, which began in…