Newsdesk Archive
Is there life on Mars? Despite the controversy surrounding Mars meteorites that some scientists think contain fossils of ancient Martian bacteria-like life forms, there is no conclusive evidence that life currently or ever existed on Mars. That, however, does not rule out the possibility that there was once life on Mars. Although there is no conclusive evidence, there are some tantalizing photos sent back from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and other probes that might raise some eyebrows.
Evidence for the dismemberment of the dead has been found on bones unearthed at the 5,300-year-old passage tomb complex at Carrowkeel, Ireland, by an international team of scientists.
Prominent historian and author Bassam El Shamaa spoke publicly about common myths and misconceptions in Ancient Egyptian history during a recent lecture at the Egyptian Public Library. Items discussed included an important stele that remained mislabeled in a museum for 10 years, and corrections to previous statements made by Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.
Horseshoe crabs are often called living fossils. These primitive arthropods have lived on earth for 360 million years, largely in the same form as they appear today. Despite their long history, the horseshoe crab's existence is now threatened by human activities, including harvesting for medical research.
For the first time, researchers have developed nanoscale quantum memory chips that store information in individual photons. The chips were able to store data for 75 nanoseconds before release, with a success rate of 97 percent.
From South Africa's Rising Star cave system, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger announced the discovery of bones he says belong to the species Homo naledi, dated to 335,000 years old. Based on the location of remains, scientists posit that the species may have intentionally disposed of their dead within the chamber.
Stanford neuroscientist E.J. Chichilnisky has a bold plan—Create implantable devices to restore vision to a number of people who have gone blind. But to do this, he'll have to revolutionize the way electronic devices interface with the human brain.
Research at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering has revealed new evidence for the occurrence of ground ice on the protoplanet Vesta. Finding ice on these bodies is of major importance to understanding the transport and evolution of water-rich materials in our solar system.
Physics professor answers the question posed by Quora and Newsweek magazine, and suggests the best method for destroying a huge asteroid that is headed towards Earth that would be to explode a thermonuclear warhead a few miles above its surface.
The tomb of a Maya ruler excavated this summer at the Classic Maya city of Waka’ in northern Guatemala is the oldest royal tomb yet to be discovered at the site, the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala has announced. This king’s tomb helped to make the royal palace acropolis holy ground, a place of majesty, early in the history of the Wak — centipede — dynasty.
An ancient building with a hypocaust, or central heating system, has been found underneath a site dating to late antiquity and a medieval necropolis in Croatia’s Nature Park Telaš?ica, which is located on the Dalmatian island of Dugi otok.
Citizen scientists, many working from home, are changing the world and making real scientific discoveries possible thanks to modern technology which has radically democratized science. Will you be the next citizen scientist to discover something unique?
One of the largest ancient Greek tombs ever discovered has been found near the mythical city of Orchomenus containing the body of one man and a trove of artefacts dating back to 1400 BC. The tomb for the unknown Mycenaean measures a massive 138 square feet in size, and its partially collapsed gabled ceiling measures 11 feet in height, making it one of the largest carved stone tombs to have been discovered from the period.
The Yerington Paiute Tribe is trying to hold the prior owners of an abandoned copper mine in Nevada accountable for polluting the environment. The tribe is seeking tens of millions of dollars from Atlantic Richfield Corp. (ARCO) and BP America Inc., The Associated Press reported. The lawsuit says the companies covered up the extent of contamination at the Anaconda Copper Mine Site, where uranium, arsenic and other dangerous toxins have contaminated the soil and groundwater.
In response to the Standing Rock Sioux battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin amended its constitution to include the Rights of Nature. This is the first time a North American tribe has used a Western legal framework to adopt such laws. Some American municipalities have protected their watersheds against fracking by invoking Rights of Nature.
No excavation has ever been undertaken at the Fort of the Caledonians, which gave the town its name, and it has been overgrown for decades. The possibility of discovering evidence a Celtic chieftain once ruled from on high above Dunkeld is a tantalising one.
In an experiment called Awake Your Curiosity, with help from Romanian digital agency Kubis Interactive, Grolsch beer brewers hooked 14 people up to neuro headsets that measured relaxation, attention and intensity in human brain waves. Then it blindfolded them and had a famous local rock band play on a nearby stage. Afterward, the listeners heard 'busy life' noises of traffic jams, sirens, and ringing telephones. Results were impressive.
Truth-seeking questions got asked by nine transformational leaders from around the world on a high-risk extreme adventure, complete with ayahuasca ceremony, through the heart of the Costa Rican jungle.
The world is about to have its first quantum computers. The complexity and power of quantum hardware, such as ion traps and superconducting qubits, are scaling up. The problem is how best to program these devices. The stakes are high — get this wrong and we will have experiments that nobody can use instead of technology that can change the world.
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the KSC Visitor Complex and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Titusville, Florida, have reopened in the aftermath of hurricane force winds from Hurricane Irma that lashed the Florida Space Coast on Sunday and Monday (Sept. 10/11) – forcing launch delays and leaving damaged and destroyed homes, buildings, infrastructure and launch viewing locations in its wake. The visitor complex was without potable drinking water and remained closed to the public for several days.
Samson, an iconic longhorn steer, is both a farm animal and beloved family pet in hurricane-ravaged Texas. When he got stuck up to his neck in mud, social media pleas caused a whole community to band together and save his life.
The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico hold a forager archive in the form of over 300 rock art sites and murals, some from as far back as 4,200 years ago. They are multi-colored, highly complex, single compositions painted by archaic people to communicate their view of the cosmos and their place within it, and now we can read them thanks to the work of Dr. Carolyn Byrd. Unfortunately, the information held in these remote rock shelters must be recorded and saved from inevitable loss to flash floods that annually ravage these canyons.
One brave Twitter user asked a daunting question for #AskaCurator Day, asking who would win in a staff battle between The Science Museum and The Natural History Museum in London. They both responded repeatedly and brought out their best artillery. Article contains play-by-play with several tweets and images, and a link to the complete Twitter conversation.
This 13-minute YouTube video details the trek through hazardous terrain by Andy Collins and Hugh Newman, accompanied by Danny Hilman, to the legendary Batu Bedil "Gun Stone" on an adjacent site to Gunung Padang. Local folklore claims that whenever Java experiences a national crisis, Batu Bedil will sound a loud boom like a real cannon. The stones are said to possess magical properties, for if the “cannon” is dislodged or transported from its gun carriage, as it is today, then it would always return mysteriously to its original position.
A Roman Sarcophagus showing the 12 Labours of Hercules which was smuggled out of Turkey after being found during an illegal excavation in the Aksu district of Antalya in the 1960s, has been returned to Turkey, and will be exhibited at the Antalya Museum.
Diamond prospectors in Namibia nearly a decade ago stumbled upon remnants of a shipwrecked Portuguese vessel whose trading journey to India was cut violently short by a storm in 1533. Today the artifacts from the doomed ship, described by archaeologists as one of that era's most important finds, remain a hidden treasure and are in need of proper preservation.
A freelance photographer made an unusual discovery while out for a spin on his bicycle: A 600-lb waterlogged wooden dugout canoe kicked ashore in the wake of Hurricane Irma on the banks of the Indian River in Brevard County, Florida. Article details the steps taken for the preservation and analysis of this serendipitous find that may be centuries old.
The discovery is the oldest evidence of armour found in Siberia, and was located at the rich Ust-Polui site, dating to between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. Archaeologists believe the decorated armour may have been left as a sacrifice for the Gods by an ancient bear cult polar people who left no written records.
Kamchatka is a peninsula on Russia's eastern flank with a population of just 322,000, and 19 active volcanoes. Thanks are given regularly to Nature in Kamchatka for the end of the harvest by the Itelmen natives, sometimes known as Kamchadal. Traditionally, they compete in making faces to scare away the Gamuls, evil spirits living in the region's volcanoes.
There’s so much ice packed into the high mountains of Asia that scientists call it Earth’s “Third Pole.” The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau hold the largest reserves of freshwater outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Thousands of glaciers form the headwaters for 10 of Asia’s largest rivers, which help supply the region with drinking water, crop irrigation and hydroelectric power. These glaciers are already melting because of climate change.
A huge genetic study seeks to pinpoint how the human genome is evolving suggests that natural selection is getting rid of harmful genetic mutations that shorten people’s lives. Analysis of 215,000 people's DNA suggests variants that shorten life are being selected against.
Nearly 4,000 year old rhomboid bone ornaments, a 42 ton anthropomorphic capstone, and other rare objects belonging to the megalithic age have been found at different sites near Hyderabad, in southern India.
The Stores Cavern caves below Dudley Zoo feature silurian limestone which contain 400 million year old fossils, and provide a unique look at the prehistoric seabed below Dudley's Castle Hill in England's west Midlands.
Concealed under thick layers of turf are huge stones put in place by ancient Man, say scientists. Six rows of a parallel wall system limited access to the Altai Mountain complex from the north via the valley of the Katun River. Their width is a substantial ten meters with an impressive height of up to eight meters. It is not known who built the giant ramparts.
Greece has a lot of ancient temples. Greece also has a lot of earthquakes. And sometimes they happen in the same places. On one hand, this shouldn’t be surprising. Greece and its neighboring islands are contained in a “box” of seismic fault lines that run in all different directions. The region also has millennia of history and is bursting with ancient ruins. But new research from the University of Plymouth suggests the overlap of earthquakes and temples may be no accident.
First-person article written by a traditionally trained Ayahuasquera and vocal advocate for all sacred psychedelic spaces. Money is a complicated force woven within our cultural psychology, and when you combine it with our spiritual pursuits, the energies can go haywire.
The Chachapoya people, commonly known as the Cloud Warriors, began living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of present day Peru as early as 200 AD. The Inca culture conquered their region shortly before the Spanish arrived. It only took about a decade for the Chachapoya people to lose most of their cultural traditions following the Inca conquest. Then the Spanish arrival decimated the remainder of the Cloud Warriors. Yet the purunmachu remained patiently standing on the cliffsides.
Time for rethink on the capabilities of lost species of ancient Man as academics ponder amazing DNA link between today's Aboriginal people and Altai cave dwellers. Evidence from the Denisova cave in Siberia shows they had myriad talents at least 50,000 years ago, even if their ultimate fate was extinction. Yet remarkably their DNA lives on in Australian Aborigines and the Melanesians of Papua New Guinea to a far greater extent than in any other modern day populations worldwide.
A 17 mile wide impact crater in Canada was home to what scientists say was the hottest temperature ever recorded in Earth’s crust: a whopping 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit. The crater is some 36 million years old, and embedded in the crater walls were crystals of cubic zirconia that form only under temperatures of at least 4,300 F degrees, if not hotter.
In new analysis of climate models, researchers from the University of Pennslyvania, Spain's Institute of Marine Sciences, and Johns Hopkins University reveal the significant global effects that seemingly anomalous sea ice openings, or polynyas, can have. Findings indicate that heat escaping from the ocean through these openings impacts sea and atmospheric temperatures and wind patterns around the globe, and even rainfall around the tropics. Though this process is part of a natural pattern of climate variability, it has implications for how the global climate will respond to future anthropogenic warming.
Scientists are getting their first sunlit looks at the massive iceberg that broke away from the Larsen C ice shelf in July. This natural-color image was captured on September 11, 2017, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
British authorities approved plans for a contentious and long-delayed tunnel under the site of Stonehenge, but altered its route so it won't impede views of the sun during the Winter Solstice. The government said the 1.8-mile (2.9-kilometer) tunnel will bury a frequently gridlocked road that now runs past the prehistoric monument in southwest England.
Scythian man’s head goes on display along with computerized scan showing his features for the first time in 2000 years, including a ginger moustache, pierced ear, and a savage wound, beautifully stitched and healed, which ran from the corner of his eye socket to the point of his jaw. The mummified head is part of the exhibit, Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia, which also has loans from the new National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ashmolean, and the Royal Collection in the UK.
Reuters reports that US Air Force C-130 cargo planes have sprayed insecticides over an area amounting to about 1.85 million acres across three eastern Texas counties. Insecticide-spraying trucks have also been dispatched nightly in afflicted areas of Houston since September 4. The Air Force program will be extended further across Texas to lower the risk of several mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus, Zika virus, equine encephalitis, yellow fever, and Dengue fever.
The Uluburun shipwreck is a Bronze Age vessel discovered lying off the coast of Kas, Turkey. The ship, probably originally from Phoenicia/Canaan, dates to around 1300 BCE and was carrying a full cargo of trade goods, likely on its way to the Greek mainland. Marine archaeologists excavated the site over eleven seasons beginning in 1984, and have accumulated over 17 tons of artifacts.
Article contains a brief history of computing in the form of a timeline (from 1801 to present day) of how computers evolved from their humble beginnings to the machines of today that surf the Internet, play games and stream multimedia in addition to crunching numbers.
Deep in the heart of Rome’s largest catacombs, laser beams have unveiled stunning 1,600-year-old early Christian frescoes. Mixing pagan symbols with Christian images, the paintings adorn the ceilings and walls of two burial chambers in the Catacombs of Domitilla, a labyrinth of tunnels and tombs stretching over 10 miles beneath Rome near the ancient Appian Way.
The Inga Stone of Brazil features hundreds of strange symbols and stars that stretch over a rock measuring 245 meters in length, 3 meters in height. The age of the inscriptions is unknown, but geologists estimate that the rock formation dates back at least 6,000 years. The most famous symbols on it represent the constellation of Orion, and the Milky Way Galaxy. Experts refer to the stone as “an exceptional archeoastronomy monument, like no other in the world.”
Located about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, the ancient city of Babylon served for nearly two millennia as a center of Mesopotamian civilization.
Excavations in one of the most important coastal towns of the Hellenistic era, the ancient city of Parion in the northwestern Turkish province of Çanakkale’s Biga district, have unearthed a 2,000 year old infant feeding bottle.
How fishing for anchovies helped create the earliest monumental Pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.
Veterinarians at the South Florida Wildlife Center in Fort Lauderdale are working round-the-clock to provide lifesaving care to hundreds of injured and displaced animals in Hurricane Irma’s wake this week, even if it means providing care without total power and water. Article contains a video clip of the team in action, as well as a link for charitable donations to the Humane Society.
Book review of Portmahomack on Tarbat Ness: Changing ideologies in Northeast Scotland, sixth to sixteenth century AD. Archaeology can provide new historical narratives for familiar places. The excavations at Portmahomack on Tarbat Ness, beyond the Great Glen on the northeast coast of Scotland, have enriched a story anchored around the 12th-century foundation of St Colman’s.
Danish archaeologists from Moesgaard Museum have discovered the remains of a jewelry workshop on a small island in Kuwait, which includes semi-precious stones, baubles and beads that are 3,500 years old.
A number of fossilised footprints believed to belong to a hominid ancestor of modern humans have been stolen from Kissamos on Crete, by a person or persons unknown, authorities revealed on Thursday, 14 September. Ten of some 40 footprints that have been studied on the Kasteli site have been cut away and removed from the rock.
Some of the areas hosting most of the world’s biodiversity are those inhabited by indigenous peoples. In the same way that biodiversity is being eroded, so is the world’s cultural diversity. As a result, there have been several calls to promote biocultural conservation approaches that sustain both biodiversity and indigenous cultures.
The symbol “0” is a familiar sight, but its origins are far from certain. A recent batch of carbon dating is causing the history of mathematics to be rewritten, as it has discovered zeros dating back to a period 500 years before previously seen. The numbers appear in an ancient Indian text called the Bakhshali manuscript, which consists of 70 leaves of birch bark, filled with mathematics and text in the form of Sanskrit.
Microbes represent monumental gaps in our knowledge of the natural world. We know they're out there, but we don't know anything about their nature. That could soon change, however, thanks to a breakthrough technique called metagenomics, reports New Scientist, which involves taking an environmental sample and combing it for all of the DNA that can be found within it.
Close to a week after Hurricane Irma tore through the Caribbean and claimed over 69 lives, some of the hardest hit island-states and territories in the region deal with dwindling supplies and a stunning breakdown in law and order.
Like a puddle under hot sunshine, the world's largest inland body of water is shrinking in the face of a scorching climate. The Caspian Sea which lies between Europe and Asia has been slowly evaporating over the past two decades due to rising temperatures associated with climate change.
Ernest Hemingway's historic home in the Florida Keys, now a museum, as well as the descendants of his personal cats with extra toes and 'opposable thumbs' have all survived the wrath of Hurricane Irma.
Experiments carried out at Oxford University have revealed that tectonic plates are weaker than previously thought. The finding explains an ambiguity in lab work that led scientists to believe these rocks were much stronger than they appeared to be in the natural world. This new knowledge will help us understand how tectonic plates can break to form new boundaries.
An interactive map showing real-time updates on the power outages across Florida to an estimate 3.8 million households caused by Hurricane Irma has been released by PowerOutage.us. Despite work crews of thousands from all over the country, it will take many days to restore power. Some residences, schools, and businesses won't be fully restored until after Sunday, 17 September.
The sun blasted out seven massive solar flares in as many days in an extraordinary period of space weather that has sparked stunning geomagnetic storms above the earth. Between September 4 and September 11, NASA observed seven flares, all classed in its strongest “X” category, with the most impressive registering at X9.3, a very significant event
It is a scenario that brings us one step closer to a robot-run world. Flippy, the artificial intelligence-driven robot that can supposedly cook the perfect burger every time will replace human workers in 50 CaliBurger restaurants in 2018.
Research proposes an intermediate interpretation that the feathered serpent of Teotihuacan was a new deity serving as a symbol of the city—one conceived in direct opposition to the jaguars used to symbolize kingship in contemporary Mayan polities.
Near the village of Gulu, China, there’s a cliff that has a mysterious talent: It lays eggs. More precisely, beautifully round egg-like rocks stud its face, MetroUK reports. Eventually, over the course of about three decades, those rocks emerge until they drop from the cliff face to the ground—smooth and nearly spherical. No one knows what is responsible for this phenomenon.
Archaeologists attached to the Moesgaard Museum have discovered the remnants of a small village that disappeared nearly 400 years ago near modern-day Odder in mid-Jutland.
The Stormhenge footage was captured during four different shoots at Carhenge, in the High Plains of Nebraska, between 2015-2017 by Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan as part of SkyGlow Project, their ongoing quest to raise awareness about the damage and dangers of light pollution. Article contain a link to watch the entire video.
Facebook announced a new site feature called Crisis Response, which will act as a central hub for safety-related tools. That primarily includes Safety Check, the feature that lets Facebook users tell friends and family members they’re safe during natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and other life-threatening incidents. The feature also includes community offers of help and requests for help.
The Christmas Island pipistrelle, a bat species found only on an Australian island, has been declared extinct. The final nail in the coffin was hammered in as part of the latest update to the Red List of Threatened Species, which is maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has made a startling discovery at the necropolis at Vangchhia in Mizoram — sculptures of Ganesha, Kalki, and Makara, guarded by the neolithic menhirs of the lost civilisation.
A time crystal is, as you might expect, an arrangement of atoms or molecules that form a regular, repeated pattern in time. They'll sit in one configuration for a while, then flip to another, back and forth and back and forth. They can oscillate forever. This sounds suspiciously like a perpetual-motion machine — hence all the buzz.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of the largest potential sources of rising sea levels. Over the past 40 years, glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea sector of the ice sheet have thinned at an accelerating rate, and several numerical models suggest that unstable and irreversible retreat of the grounding line—which marks the boundary between grounded ice and floating ice shelf—is underway.
Ancient rhino, alligator, invertebrates, plants and literally hundreds of tapirs have been found at the Gray Fossil Site in Tennessee. Mastodons, however, are less common thus far, and the excavation of this one particular atypical and as yet unidentified proboscidean specimen has been a slow process.
NOAA helped Key West residents check on the storm. Now, it's helping them check on their property. The agency published roughly 36 square miles of satellite imagery taken Monday on its website. It's a quick way for evacuated residents to assess whether their homes are still standing after Hurricane Irma blew through.
Archaeologists deploy innovative technology to discover what lies within and below ancient Mayan ruins. A multidisciplinary team of scientists is launching the first comprehensive investigation of Mexico's Chichén Itzá in 50 years.
The Uros people live on 42 artificial floating islands on Lake Titicaca. They call themselves "Lupihaques" (Sons of the Sun) and descendants of the ancient Uros, a pre-Incan people. However, there has been a great deal of academic debate on their real origins. Recent genetic study clarifies some of their story.
In research that may prove useful to future lunar explorers, scientists from Brown University created the first quantitative map of water and its chemical building blocks trapped in the uppermost portion of the Moon's soil. Amounts increase toward the poles, suggesting that much of the water was implanted by solar wind. Yellow dots on the map represent Apollo lunar landing sites.
The Gyro-X stands out even in this field of one-of-a-kind cars, not for its beauty or elegance but because it stands on two wheels, balanced by the whirling, beachball-sized gyroscope tucked under its hood. It's not the first time it has managed the feat, but it's been awhile. After 50 years of neglect and abuse, the Gyro-X has been reborn, thanks to years of hard work, a small fortune, and some tech borrowed from the luxury yacht industry.
Article focuses on the health benefits and medicinal uses of 3 ancient natural medicines that may already live in your home: garlic, dandelions, and apple cider vinegar.
Book review of The Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World. Everyone has heard of the Rosetta Stone. Not so familiar, but equally compelling, is a purely Greek artefact of the same period found in a first-century bc shipwreck chanced upon by sponge divers off the coast of Antikythera, an island between Crete and the Peloponnese. It triggered the first underwater archaeological excavation in 1901.
Squid ink might be a great ingredient to make black pasta, but it could also one day make getting checked for gum disease at the dentist less tedious and even painless. By combining squid ink oral rinse with light and ultrasound, a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new dental imaging method to examine a patient's gums that is non-invasive, more comprehensive and more accurate.
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters has shown that major oceanic shipping lanes can experience twice the amount of lightning strikes compared with surrounding waters.
Like trick-or-treaters sorting their Halloween candy haul, fox squirrels apparently organize their stashes of nuts by variety, quality and possibly even preference, according to new UC Berkeley research. Fox squirrels stockpile at least 3,000 to 10,000 nuts a year, and under certain conditions separate each cache into quasi subfolders, one for each type of nut, researchers said.
A North Carolina-based wife and mother has home-brewed a spray that she claims can attract any Bigfoot within a mile and a half.
A seemingly brain-dead young man makes a startling recovery, and a neuroscientist tries to find out why.
Clay tablets dating back 4,000 years show the beginnings of writing and literacy in ancient Anatolia, in the middle of modern day Turkey, according to researchers.
A kauri tree preserved in a New Zealand peat swamp for 30,000 years has revealed a new mechanism that may explain how temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere spiked several degrees centigrade in just a few decades during the last global ice age.
Archaeologists and preservationists are discovering and conserving deep human history at a site in Turkey that is reshaping our understanding of the first whispers of early civilization.
Geoscientists in Germany are currently reconstructing the fluctuations of the North Atlantic Oscillation over the last 10,000 years with the aim of being able to predict future developments using stalagmites obtained from subterranean caves in Morocco as natural climate archives and new indicators of climate change. Initial results indicate that it is likely that the NAO will respond to the melting of the Arctic ice cap in the future with consequences for our climate, environment, and society as a whole.
The mammoth remains, from Siberia, are thought to be between 12,000 and 16,000 years old. This is the first time a complete mammoth family including a rare 1 year old infant has gone up for auction, and are expected to fetch up to £400,000 ($530,000) in Sussex, England, later this year.
The vast majority of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century have been due to human activities. A new Tel Aviv University study has uncovered the earliest known geological indications of manmade climate change from 11,500 years ago.
Archaeologists excavating at the site of Huaca Prieta are finding that, more than 14,000 years ago, people were living along the northwestern coast of Peru.
Using new methods to analyze stone projectile points crafted by North America’s earliest human inhabitants, Smithsonian scientists have found that these tools show evidence of a shift toward more experimentation in their production beginning about 12,500 years ago, following hundreds of years of consistent stone tool production created using uniform techniques.
The booming popularity of the Amazonian hallucinogen ayahuasca can be great for business in remote communities, but it does have a dark side.
Ancient monuments and art have either been destroyed, damaged, or lost as chaos persists in a region that has for thousands of years seen the footprint of a parade of civilizations. The founding and flourishing of the ancient Syrian city of Apamea depicted on a Roman mosaic, stolen in 2011, is now missing and wanted by INTERPOL.
The outside world might never have heard about the suspected massacre if not for some bar room boasting by a group of miners working an illegal gig in the Amazon jungle. The garimpeiros had bragged that they’d come across members of a reclusive, uncontacted Amazonian tribe near Brazil’s border with Peru and Colombia, authorities say. An investigation has been launched.
A type of bird-like dinosaur that lived in what is now China during the Cretaceous period — about 145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago — laid eggs that had a bluish-green tint, the first evidence of pigment in dinosaur eggs, according to a new study. The well-preserved eggshells belonged to the oviraptorid Heyuannia huangi, a small-bodied, short-snouted group of dinosaurs with toothless beaks.
A model ‘inspired by Cleopatra’ ended up in prison after posting naked at various ancient temples. Marisa Papen travelled to Egypt to take part in the secret photoshoot, without permission from authorities.