A study of more than 300 Neolithic skeletons suggests evidence of “hereditary inequality” among farmers 7,000 years ago, researchers claim. Archaeologists from Cardiff University led a team who studied the skeletons from across Europe. They say evidence suggests farmers buried with tools had access to better land than those buried without. Dr. Penny Bickle, of…
The end of the classic Mayan civilization in the lowlands of Mesoamerica was likely expedited by shifting trade routes that started to bring valuable goods to coastal regions instead of the inland city-states of the ancient Native Americans. While the cause of this decline is still shrouded in mystery, most scholars consider the period of…
Researchers have identified what they say are the oldest musical instruments in the world. The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, were found in a cave in southern Germany. Carbon dating revealed the flutes to be between 42,000 and 43,000 years old. Scientists think the musical instruments may have been used for religious…
Linguists know that languages change drastically over the course of a few thousand years, so drastically that there’s no telling what the original human language was like or how it came into being. Language consists of words, not rocks, so there are no linguistic fossils comparable to the fossils in rock that reveal ancient stages…
Species don’t hang around forever. Homo sapiens has already notched up a mind-boggling 200,000 years on Earth. Is the end nigh? The geological statistics suggest not – the average mammal species celebrates its millionth birthday long before it begins to slip towards oblivion. But we are no average species, and there has long been a…
Archaeologists digging at a Jerusalem site have found the oldest artifact that bears the inscription of Bethlehem — a 2,700 years old seal with the name of Jesus’ traditional birthplace. The tiny clay seal’s existence and age show Bethlehem was a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem, not merely a fabled biblical town.
Archaeologists have found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes apparently used walls like a blackboard to keep track of astronomical records and the society’s intricate calendar some 1,200 years ago. The walls reveal the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. Scientists already knew they must have been keeping such records at…
Not long ago, the story was simple. A vanguard of modern humans left their African birthplace 50,000–60,000 years ago and quickly conquered Asia. They turned left into Europe some 40,000 years ago, later crossing the Bering Strait and marching southward into the Americas. With their advance, Neanderthals and other earlier peoples dwindled and vanished. But…
A new University of Florida study that determined the age of skeletal remains provides evidence humans reached the Western Hemisphere during the last ice age and lived alongside giant extinct mammals. The study published online in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology addresses the century-long debate among scientists about whether human and mammal remains found at…
Researchers studying Oetzi, a 5,300-year-old body found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991, have found red blood cells around his wounds. Blood cells tend to degrade quickly, and earlier scans for blood within Oetzi’s body turned up nothing. Now a study in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface shows that Oetzi’s remarkable preservation…