News Desk

Researchers at La Trobe University, Australia, and the University of Utah, U.S., report that recent DNA findings challenge claims of a 65,000-year-old human arrival in Sahul—the ancient paleocontinent that existed during the Pleistocene ice age, made up of present-day Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. The study, “Recent DNA Studies Question a 65 kya Arrival of Humans in Sahul,” was published in Archaeology in Oceania.

But the brutal trauma wasn’t lethal, research finds. The individual survived, with the bone healing around the projectile injury, meaning they lived the rest of their life with the flint arrowhead embedded in their rib.

An ancient Egyptian rock engraving may have been carved at the dawn of the first dynasty, up to 5,100 years ago, a new study suggests. The study was published Thursday (July 10) in the journal Antiquity.

A recent study by Dr. Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, explores the transformation of elk rock art in the Mongolian Altai. Her research sheds light on the possible factors that influenced these changes, leading to realistic elk images devolving into warped wolf-like beasts.

The team says the result marks a milestone in our ability to determine the ages of old stars and use them as living fossils to study the Milky Way’s distant past. This investigative technique makes it possible to analyze thousands of ancient stars in our galaxy, reconstructing the Milky Way’s evolution over billions of years. The findings are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Archaeologists in Belize have unearthed the tomb of the first ruler of the ancient Maya city of Caracol, which was a major center in the Maya Lowlands during the sixth and seventh centuries.

New rules banning recreational cannabis use have put Thailand’s $1bn cannabis industry in limbo, with some stores fearing they will have to close

The environment minister, Murray Watt, hosted more than a dozen ambassadors from countries on the world heritage committee on Monday as he ramped up lobbying efforts to get the Murujuga rock art complex inscribed on the world heritage list.

Archaeologists have unearthed the earliest known multifunctional tool made from cave lion bone, shedding new light on Neanderthal ingenuity…Published in Scientific Reports, the detailed analysis of the bone revealed signs of deliberate shaping, use and repurposing

A University of Maryland-led team of astronomers found that while the mission successfully proved that kinetic impactors like the DART spacecraft can alter an asteroid’s path, the resulting ejected boulders created forces in unexpected directions that could complicate future deflection efforts. According to the team’s new paper published in the Planetary Science Journal on July 4, 2025, using asteroid deflection for planetary defense is likely far more complex than researchers initially understood.

French and Egyptian researchers are making a “digital twin” of the Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt after lifting its ancient submerged blocks out of the Mediterranean Sea.

A 2.35-billion-year-old meteorite with a unique chemical signature, found in Africa in 2023, plugs a major gap in our understanding of the moon’s volcanic history. The researchers plan to publish their findings in full in a peer-reviewed journal later this year.

Archaeologists have analyzed ritual spaces and monumental structures across Polynesia, questioning the idea that Rapa Nui (Easter Island) developed in isolation following its initial settlement. Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.

The 300,000 year-old tools show that hominins in East Asia made planned foraging trips to lakeshores and designed instruments for specific purposes. The study was published Thursday (July 3) in the journal Science.

A new study has found that leprosy was circulating in Chile some 4,000 years ago, meaning the disease arrived in the Americas much earlier than previously thought. The research has been published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The research, published Wednesday (July 2) in the journal Science, reveals that these archaic human relatives had a process for extracting grease from animal bones — and it may have saved them from a lethal condition.