Newsdesk Archive
For classical music lovers, December 5 may be the saddest day of the year. At 12:55 a.m., 225 years ago, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart drew his last breath. Later, he was unceremoniously buried in a common grave — as was the custom of his era — in the St. Marx cemetery, just outside the Vienna city limits. Mozart was only 35.
Archaeologists have been able to provide insights into the life of a man whose remains were found at an Iron Age site on Orkney.
A human jaw with two teeth was discovered centrally placed in a large, carved whalebone vertebra within the ruins of a broch earlier this year.
The oldest genetic sample of smallpox ever studied could rewrite the timeline for this deadly disease, which ravaged Europe and much of the world beginning in the eighteenth century.
Using tissue samples taken from the mummy of a Lithuanian child dating back to the 1600s, an international team of researchers reconstructed the full RNA sequence of the smallpox virus strain that likely killed her.
New research shows that the metastatic process (cancer spread) is enhanced by fat intake. Mice given a high fat diet, including palmitic acid (a major component of palm oil which is found in lots of household products) developed the most aggressive cancer spread. The study identifies for the first time a protein called CD36 which has an essential role in cancer spreading.
A length of fluffy plumage discovered within a piece of amber has been identified as part of a dinosaur tail, offering new insights into the evolution of feathers.
Around 3.7cm long, with chestnut-coloured feathers on the top and pale feathers underneath, the tail was found complete with fossilised bones as well as traces of muscles, ligaments and mummified-looking skin.
When paleontologists at the University of Washington cut into the fossilized jaw of a distant mammal relative, they got more than they bargained for—more teeth, to be specific.
"I'm not talking half a century here; I'm talking decades. It's going to happen."
A few years ago Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, then a Ph.D. student in Arhat Abzhanov’s lab at Harvard, did something pretty incredible: He took an embryonic chicken and inhibited a couple of genes during its development. It was a tiny adjustment that produced a pretty amazing result: “Those chickens that were altered in that way, they grew up to have a snout that looked like a dinosaur snout,”
Is the future’s lab-made burger patty really better for the Earth? Meat giant Tyson Foods, Inc. is taking an interest in the developing technology. The company launched a $150 million venture capital fund on sustainable food solutions, focusing on alternative proteins—that is, “meatless meats.”
Scientists have discovered a dangerous and highly transmissible form of multidrug-resistant bacteria lurking on a Midwestern hog farm, according to a study published yesterday. The bacteria have easily shared bits of DNA that help them fight off antibiotics called carbapenems, and this is the first time such microbes have been found on a U.S. farm.
Related: Number of vegans in Britain rises by 360% in 10 years
Researchers at Oregon State have patented a new strain of seaweed that tastes like bacon when it's cooked.
The seaweed, a form of red marine algae, looks like translucent red lettuce. It also has twice the nutritional value of kale and grows very quickly. Did we mention it tastes like bacon?
Evidence buried in Greenland's bedrock shows the island's massive ice sheet melted nearly completely at least once in the last 2.6 million years. This suggests that Greenland's ice may be less stable than previously believed.
Robot aircraft are to be tested in UK airspace to help refine systems that control autonomous planes.
Related: Revealed: Rio Tinto's plan to use drones to monitor workers' private lives
Flying cars might not have the most beautiful exteriors, nor are they the safest form of transportation, but for Atomico, a European venture firm, that doesn’t matter. They’re betting flying cars will take-off, not only literally but financially as well.
Related: The Future of High-Speed Travel: A New Kind of Hyperloop Pod Was Just Unveiled
Related: This Is the World’s First 3D-Printed “Supercar”
Related: Europe is getting a network of ‘ultra-fast, high-powered’ EV chargers
Scientists in the US have unveiled an athletic robot which takes its inspiration from bush babies.
Salto the robot can perform multiple vertical jumps in a row - making it a champion robot athlete.
Related: Robotic hand exoskeleton lets quadriplegic people use cutlery
Parisians can use public transport for free for the second day running due to a spike in air pollution and some cars have been barred from the roads.
The city is suffering its worst and most prolonged winter pollution for at least 10 years
The rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the human brain that enhances emotional judgments and memory recall, scientists have discovered for the first time. These effects on behavior depend critically on whether you inhale or exhale and whether you breathe through the nose or mouth.
Deep, dreamless sleep is often described as unconsciousness. We certainly don’t see distinct objects or have linear and memorable trains of thought, as we do in daily life or while dreaming. But in a meta-analysis published last month in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, cognitive science experts argue that there is no clear line of consciousness between dreaming and deep sleep.
Having an optimistic outlook on life may do more than just boost your mood. It may actually help you live longer, according to new research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Illness is best cured with drugs. That assumption has prevailed since pharmaceuticals became widely available. But in recent years there has been a growing interest in alternative medicines, many of which employ mental or spiritual powers to heal the body. Now research into the biochemistry of placebos is showing that these remedies are not as wacky as they sound and that we are, indeed, capable of curing ourselves.
A drug made from marijuana that does not produce a "high" may help reduce seizures in people with certain types of epilepsy that are difficult to treat, new research suggests.
Related: The fascinating, strange medical potential of psychedelic drugs, explained in 50+ studies
Ayahuasca is a beverage that has been used for centuries by Native South-Americans. Studies suggest that it exhibits anxiolytic and antidepressant effects in humans. One of the main substances present in the beverage is harmine, a beta-carboline which potential therapeutic effects for depression has been recently described in mice.
"It has been shown in rodents that antidepressant medication acts by inducing neurogenesis. So we decided to test if harmine, an alkaloid with the highest concentration in the psychotropic plant decoction ayahuasca, would trigger neurogenesis in human neural cells"
A new technique, developed at ANSTO’s Centre for Accelerator Science, has made it possible to produce some of the first reliable radiocarbon dates for Australian rock art in a study just published online in The Journal of Archaeological Science Reports.
Some three million years ago a humanoid in southern Africa stumbled upon a naturally formed stone in the shape of a head and carried it to a nearby cave. The Makapan Pebble, also known as the Stone of Many Faces, was most likely found by an Australopithecus africanus
An analysis of 2,000-year-old human remains from several regions across the Italian peninsula has confirmed the presence of malaria during the Roman Empire, addressing a longstanding debate about its pervasiveness in this ancient civilization.
There were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2015. Of these, 1.8 million were children.
Researchers have created a preventative HIV vaccine using a genetically modified killed whole-virus, the first to receive approval by the FDA to proceed to Phase II of human clinical trials.
Could the answer to fighting Alzheimer’s disease be as simple as a flickering light?
An hour a day of light therapy has been found to break down Alzheimer’s-like brain deposits in mice. That’s a long way from it working in people, but because it seems a safe therapy, it could move quickly into human trials.
An online robot lawyer designed to help people represent themselves in court state their case to the sentencing magistrate will be launched by a Melbourne law firm this week.
Sex work is known as the world’s oldest profession for a reason, and that reason is because as soon as money was invented, there was someone wanting to obtain sex in exchange for it, and also someone who needed money to exchange for food and housing. For thousands of years, to this day, that has remained true.
Related: Researchers baffled by nationalist surge
Related: A Canadian Province Just Passed a Resolution for Universal Basic Income
At the end of last year, Germany switched on a new type of massive nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, and it was successfully able to contain a scorching hot blob of helium plasma.
Related: The W7-X Is One Step Closer to Creating Nuclear Fusion
Britain is preparing to move its research station in the Antarctic 23km further inland because it is under threat from a growing crack in the ice.
Related: During last warming period, Antarctica heated up two to three times more than planet average
Related: Mexico-Size Chunk of Ice Missing from the Arctic
The image of the Earth from space is so seared into human consciousness that it is hard to conceive what it was like to live without the picture of our planet as a blue sphere that we all now carry in our minds.
Google’s data centres and the offices for its 60,000 staff will be powered entirely by renewable energy from next year, in what the company has called a “landmark moment”.
The latest findings in Earth science are brought to you by ancient astronomers who observed the heavens as much as 2,700 years ago.
Thanks to hundreds of records of lunar and solar eclipses carved in clay tablets and written into dynastic histories, modern scientists have determined that the amount of time it takes for Earth to complete a single rotation on its axis has slowed by 1.8 milliseconds per century, according to a report published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
A team of University of Illinois researchers has discovered the existence of hot atomic hydrogen (H) atoms in an upper layer of Earth's atmosphere known as the thermosphere. This finding, which the authors report in Nature Communications, significantly changes current understanding of the H distribution and its interaction with other atmospheric constituents.
Einstein’s General Relativity provides an elegant description of how space, time and matter affect one another. It makes precise predictions of gravitational effects, which have been verified by many measurements.
As soon as the Apollo 11 footage hit the airwaves, people began making claims that the footage was somehow faked and that the moon landings were a hoax altogether. A 1979 book, We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was one of the first sources to push these hoax claims into popular culture, and the rest is history.
Luckily for those of us who put our faith in NASA, a German team of citizen scientists has a plan to return to the original Apollo 11 site to put these hoax claims to rest once and for all.
Cosmic dust raining down from space has been discovered on rooftops in three major cities.
The tiny particles date back to the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
Scientists usually collect cosmic dust in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Now, for the first time, the space debris has been found hidden in city dirt.
New observations from a NASA spacecraft could help solve a persistent mystery — why the sun's atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface.
While the sun's visible surface is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,538 degrees Celsius), its upper atmosphere, known as the corona, has temperatures in the millions of degrees.
Nitrogen is one of the essential nutrients of life on Earth, with some organisms, such as the kinds of microbes found within the roots of legume plants, capable of converting nitrogen gas into molecules that other species can use.
With organisms playing such a crucial role in the chemistry of nitrogen on Earth, scientists are examining nitrogen in billion-year-old rocks to decipher its potential as a bio-signature of life on other planets
Despite their obvious physical differences, elephants, lizards and trout all have something in common. They possess elongated, flexible structures at the rear of their bodies that we call tails. But a new study by a University of Pennsylvania paleobiologist reveals that the tails of fish and the tails of tetrapods, or four-limbed animals, are in fact entirely different structures, with different evolutionary histories.
Some dinosaurs may not have been restricted to life on the ground and instead could have launched into the air for quick flights, researchers have found.
As long as the creature's wing size, weight and muscles met certain criteria, it could likely fly. But these feathery creatures would be no match for today's birds, which can fly long distances.
Arachnophobes might be shocked to learn that some spiders can fly hundreds of miles across the ocean.
Two million years ago, airborne arachnids colonized remote Pacific islands by ballooning, a technique in which spiders use their silk as a kind of kite that can carry them long distances.
In case you thought we’d figured out life in the oceans even a little bit, a new study published in Nature Communications sets the record straight. For the first time, scientists have found experimental evidence of underwater pollination. There are bees in the sea—or at least creatures that perform the same kind of work.
In a new study, Vanderbilt pharmacologist Jerod Denton, Ph.D., Ohio State entomologist Peter Piermarini, Ph.D., and colleagues report an experimental molecule that inhibits kidney function in mosquitoes and thus might provide a new way to control the deadliest animal on Earth.
Related: Why is a banned pesticide that harms bees actually being used more?
Naturally occurring chemicals found in road salts commonly used to de-ice paved surfaces can alter the sex ratios in nearby frog populations, a phenomenon that could reduce the size and viability of species populations, according to a new study.
Related: A switch to daylight saving time could be lifesaving for koalas, researchers say
The regular use of Caesarean sections is having an impact on human evolution, say scientists.
More mothers now need surgery to deliver a baby due to their narrow pelvis size, according to a study.
Infertile women have been offered new hope after scientists found that a common cancer drug triggers the development of new eggs, an outcome which was previously thought to be impossible.
Children are at substantially increased risk of contracting drug-resistant infections in the months after taking a course of antibiotics, a leading public health official has warned.
Related: A Third of People Given Antibiotics Don't Need Them
A man with advanced prostate cancer is believed to be cured after doctors 'shocked' his tumour to death with huge amounts of testosterone.
Related: Students have made Martin Shkreli's $750 drug in their chem lab for just $2
A new review finds evidence that the Chinese performed trepanation more than 3,500 years ago
Near the beginning of the 3rd century in ancient China, Han Dynasty leader Cao Cao is said to have called upon a famous doctor named Hua Tuo to treat a headache. Cao Cao had received said headache from a hallucinatory dream that occurred after attacking a sacred tree with his sword, according to the classic 14th century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Seven years ago, a team of divers uncovered a set of ancient fishing traps off of the coast of Sweden. Radiocarbon dating confirmed the traps were built during the Mesolithic, or middle Stone Age period roughly 9,000 years ago. That discovery set in motion a full-scale excavation of the underwater site, which has now been confirmed to be a complete Mesolithic fishing village that some archaeologists have dubbed the “Swedish Atlantis.”
A valuable collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts was returned to its motherland by the US government in a clampdown on criminal gangs smuggling cultural treasures. Among the ancient artifacts was a child-sized sarcophagus uncovered in a Brooklyn garage in 2009, ancient figurines and a limestone carving of an Egyptian temple. The most noticeable item, however, was a 2,800-year-old mummy hand, which had ended up as a Hollywood movie prop, valued at the ridiculous price of $66.
MEXICO CITY—In 1519, Hernán Cortés and his conquistadors arrived in Cholula, one of the largest cities in central Mexico. Roughly 50 miles southeast from modern day Mexico City, its tens of thousands of residents sat in the shadows of the 17,000 foot Popocatépetl volcano. It had a temple featuring more stairs, claimed one Spaniard, than the main pyramid in Tenochtitlan. The Spanish tore it down, and rebuilt Cholula in the same fashion they did across Mexico—replacing “demon-worshipping” sites with Catholic ones.
A tiny grape pip (scale 1mm), left on the ground some 780,000 years ago, is one of more than 9,000 remains of edible plants discovered in an old Stone Age site in Israel on the shoreline of Lake Hula in the northern Jordan valley, dating back to the Acheulian culture from 1.75-0.25 million years ago. The floral collection provides rich testimony of the plant-based diet of our prehistoric ancestors.
11,000 years ago, a Syrian community began a practice which would change man’s relationship with his surroundings forever: the initiation of cereal domestication and, with it, the commencement of agriculture, a process which lasted several millennia.
New figures coming from the Brazilian government suggest illegal logging has taken more trees from the Amazon rainforest than previously expected.
Related: Corporate growth still driving deforestation, CDP shows
The Army Corps of Engineers will not grant the permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the Missouri river, the army announced on Sunday, handing a major victory to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe after a months-long campaign against the pipeline.
The South Pole’s special blanket of clouds usually rolls in during late November and early December, just in time to give the Southern Hemisphere its very own light show for the holidays.
Alt: The mystery of the glowing blue clouds over Antarctica: Nasa spots strangely early 'night clouds'
A photographer in the United Kingdom recently came upon a striking white rainbow hovering over Rannoch Moor in Scotland. Melvin Nicholson and a friend had just arrived at a tree he was hoping to photograph when they witnessed the phenomenon, he told ABC News.
For the first time, astronomers have observed a strange quantum phenomenon in action, where a neutron star is surrounded by a magnetic field so intense, it’s given rise to a region in empty space where matter spontaneously pops in and out of existence.
A team of physicists in Australia has used a technique known as 'ghost imaging' to create an image of an object from atoms that never interact with it. This is the first time that ghost imaging has been achieved using atoms, although it has previously been demonstrated with light, leading to applications being developed for imaging and remote sensing through turbulent environments.
Like ghosts, ultra-diffuse galaxies often float undetected in the night sky — stretching the size of the Milky Way, but containing only a dwarf galaxy's worth of stars. Now, a new simulation suggests their explosive origins, and hints that there may be many more than seen so far.
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created the world’s most stable clock by using not one, but two atomic clocks. Atomic clocks are timepieces that measure the optical frequencies of ytterbium atoms or strontium ions with a laser probe, and use this standard in order to keep time.
Politicians have exempted themselves from Britain's new wide-ranging spying laws.
The Investigatory Powers Act, which has just passed into law, brings some of the most extreme and invasive surveillance powers ever given to spies in a democratic state. But protections against those spying powers have been given to MPs.
Five Nobel Laureates have called for urgent action to save ancient sites from conflict, as a cultural heritage summit opens in Abu Dhabi.
France and the UAE are leading a push to create a $100m fund to protect and restore antiquities under threat from extremists and fighting.
Skeletons excavated at a site near Glastonbury are the oldest examples of monks ever found in the UK, carbon dating has proved.
The remains, unearthed at the medieval Beckery chapel in Somerset, said to have been visited by legendary figures such as King Arthur and St Bridget, indicate a monastic cemetery dating back to the fifth or early sixth centuries AD, before Somerset was conquered by the Saxon kings of Wessex in the seventh century.
A Viking toolbox found in Denmark has been opened for the first time in 1,000 years, revealing an extraordinary set of iron hand tools that may have been used to make Viking ships and houses, according to archaeologists.
The pictographs of the Pecos River have lasted millennia in a tempestuous desert, surviving mostly in silence. Now an archaeologist has cracked the code — and they can begin to speak again.
£48m recreation of French caves will let visitors experience magic of the ‘prehistoric Sistine chapel’ for first time in decades
Today, Lascaux is closed to the public and has been for more than 50 years, after it was discovered visitors were unwittingly destroying the Unesco world heritage site simply by breathing in the caves.
Doctors will seek permission this month to create Britain’s first baby from the DNA of three people if the government’s fertility regulator approves the treatment for carefully chosen patients.
Estimates suggest more than 2.4 billion people around the world still live in unsanitary conditions. Without access to clean running water, these at-risk communities face life-threatening sanitation-related diseases. The waterless and easy-to-use Nano Membrane is meant to offset this scarcity.
Related: Glowing crystals can detect, cleanse contaminated drinking water
Related: After centuries, scientists have finally figured out how water conducts electricity
When we are in a deep slumber our brain's activity ebbs and flows in big, obvious waves, like watching a tide of human bodies rise up and sit down around a sports stadium. It's hard to miss. Now, researchers have found, those same cycles exist in wake as in sleep, but with only small sections sitting and standing in unison rather than the entire stadium. It's as if tiny portions of the brain are independently falling asleep and waking back up all the time.
Some people are so good at remembering faces that it’s downright creepy
How often do you stare blankly into someone's face and think "why don't I know who this is?,” as the other person smiles widely and goes in for a familiar hug.
Chimpanzees can recognize one another from behind. Apes remember faces, too, but new research suggests chimps recognize buttocks just as well as humans recall familiar faces.
Related: Ants communicate by mouth-to-mouth fluid exchange
It’s something all whale-watchers yearn to see. The sight of whales breaking the surface and slapping their fins on the water is a true spectacle – but the animals don’t do it just for show.
Instead, it appears that all that splashing is about messaging other whales, and the big splashes are for long-distance calls.
One of the world's largest, most endangered, and most mysterious freshwater fish has yielded a new surprise: a likely new species—and possibly several more—have been lurking in the backwaters of the Amazon.
Related: Mice can smell oxygen
Related: How single-celled organisms navigate to oxygen
Coral genotypes can survive for thousands of years, possibly making them the longest-lived animals in the world, according to researchers at Penn State, the National Marine Fisheries Service and Dial Cordy & Associates.
Related: Blue leaves help begonias harvest energy in low light
One of the recurring tropes of science fiction is the discovery of hidden underground human societies or untouched ecosystems full of bizarre, otherworldly creatures. Now that we have explored nearly every corner of the Earth and have satellites peering down on us from above, deep underground environments represent some of the last frontiers on Earth.
Pluto is thought to possess a subsurface ocean, which is not so much a sign of water as it is a tremendous clue that other dwarf planets in deep space also may contain similarly exotic oceans, naturally leading to the question of life, said one co-investigator with NASA's New Horizon mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Related: Pluto’s heavy 'heart' may have led to depression. Seriously
Deep canyons and valleys on Mars may have formed as the result of warming periods that stretched for up to 10 million years, melting the glaciers that covered its surface.
The theory could solve the mystery of Mars’ water-carved features, which formed roughly 3.8 billion years ago during a period many believe the planet was frozen.
Related: Europe okays 1.4 bn euros for Mars rover, ISS
Only one person in recorded history has ever been directly hit by a meteorite.
Ann Hodges, 34, was napping under quilts on her couch in Sylacauga, Alabama, on November 30, 1954, when a nine-pound meteorite came through the ceiling and bounced off a radio before hitting her in the thigh. It left a deep bruise and catapulted her into both quiet fame and a major legal dispute with her landlady, who thought she rightfully owned the rock.
Astronomers have set a new record, taking the measure of a tiny space rock just 6 feet (2 meters) wide.
The researchers used four different telescopes on Earth to study the near-Earth asteroid (NEA), which is called 2015 TC25, during a close flyby it made of the planet in October 2015.
Since man first explored space, it has been a largely peaceful environment. But now US adversaries are deploying weapons beyond Earth's atmosphere, leading the US military to prepare for the frightening prospect of war in space.
Related: Is it time to think about how to prevent a space war?
A potentially Earth-like planet circles a bright star 150 light-years away, casting a shadow tracked from space — and now from Earth, too.
The planet, called K2-3d, was originally seen crossing in front of its star by NASA's Kepler space telescope during that instrument's ongoing K2 mission.
There’s an abundant new swath of cosmic real estate that life could call home—and the views would be spectacular. Floating out by themselves in the Milky Way galaxy are perhaps a billion cold brown dwarfs, objects many times as massive as Jupiter but not big enough to ignite as a star. According to a new study, layers of their upper atmospheres sit at temperatures and pressures resembling those on Earth, and could host microbes that surf on thermal updrafts.
Alt: Planetary Scientists: Alien Life Might Not Need Planets to Evolve and Survive
The face of the sun was nearly spotless this month as our star marches toward solar minimum, hitting its lowest activity level since 2011.
Images captured by Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory from Nov 14-18 reveal just a handful of barely-visible spots on the surface of the sun, which is otherwise as blank as a cue ball.
Related: Sun Storm May Have Caused Flare-Up of Rosetta's Comet
A company named Sky Canvas plans to launch a colorful artificial meteor shower barrage via micro-satellite.
In the ‘strange but true department’ and a plan that would make any super-villain envious, a Japanese start-up plans to shoot meteoroids at the Earth to create the first orchestrated artificial meteor shower.
When dust whirls into the air in the southwestern desert of the United States, NASA takes interest. The dervishes are miniature versions of the kilometers-tall storms that physically morph the surface of Mars. Now, researchers have measured a basic property of earthly dust devils for the first time: their electric current signature.
Motor company Nikola just unveiled a first of its kind, 100 percent emissions-free hydrogen-powered semi-truck. The vehicle can travel between 1287 and 1931 kilometers (800 and 1,200 miles) on a single tank of fuel, a distance as far as San Francisco to Cheyenne, Wyoming.
India may have the world’s largest solar plant, but Morocco is building a gigantic solar farm that could even power Europe. Dubbed as the Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex (after the city near the place, nicknamed “the door to the desert”), this gigantic structure covers an area equivalent to about 200 football fields — roughly 1,400,000 sq m (15,000,000 sq ft) of desert.
It’s been a long time coming, but the world’s top powers are now betting billions on the Iter collaboration to deliver clean, safe, limitless energy for the modern world
Related: Fusion energy: A time of transition and potential
The next few years are going to be rough on coal producers as nations are slowly shifting away from it as a source of electricity. Solar and wind power is becoming a much cheaper alternative to coal and countries have been making sure that new power plants to be constructed are for renewable sources.
Industrial pollution may seem like a modern phenomenon, but in fact, an international team of researchers may have discovered what could be the world's first polluted river, contaminated approximately 7,000 years ago.
While searching through historical archives to find out more about the 15th-century climate of what is now Belgium, northern France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, Chantal Camenisch noticed something odd. “I realised that there was something extraordinary going on regarding the climate during the 1430s,” says the historian from the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Göbeklitepe, a set of ancient structures labeled as the world's oldest temple, will be nominated to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Turkey plans to present its nomination to the international body in February, in addition to other historical sites, aiming to boost their preservation.
The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal has sometimes been described as the ‘first library’ in the world, or the ‘oldest surviving royal library in the world’. The library was discovered by archaeologists who were excavating at the site of Nineveh, today known as Kuyunjik.
Cypriot-style pottery may have been locally produced as well as imported and traded in Turkey during the Iron Age, according to a study published November 30, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Steven Karacic from Florida State University, USA, and James Osborne of the University of Chicago, USA.
The Salem witch trials began when a group of young girls claimed they were attacked by 'supernatural beings' sent by villagers who practiced 'the Devil's magic'.
However, scientists claims that that rye grown in Salem had been contaminated with a type of fungus found in LSD that causes people to experience seizures, pain and hallucinations.
An 800-year-old Mexican skull decorated with turquoise mosaic, for decades believed to have been a masterpiece of Mixtec indigenous art is a forgery, a Dutch museum and media said Saturday.
When a set of 70 bound metal tablets was unearthed in Jordan in 2008, questions about the artifacts validity arose. However, researchers have now analyzed the codices and say they are genuine and may date to about 2,000 years ago. Furthermore, one of the metal tablets could have the earliest depictions of Jesus.
Alt: Is this the first written mention of Jesus? 2,000-year-old lead tablets found in a remote cave are genuine, claim researchers