News Desk

New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that our ancestors were not just lucky scavengers. They were also effective foragers who repeatedly processed, accessed, and shared animal resources across different environments.

Neanderthals may not only have feasted on rhinoceroses, they may also have used their exceptionally hard teeth as specialized tools for a range of tasks, such as retouching the edges of stone tools. Their work is published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Researchers at the University of Vermont have uncovered a powerful new insight about how language works—one that overturns a cornerstone assumption in psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence that has stood for more than 70 years. Their study was published in Science Advances.

A new analysis, based on the crystals growing inside one of the bones, showed scientists the site dated back to an ice age 146,000 years ago—challenging long-held ideas about early humanity at this site becoming creative thanks to warmer times of plenty.

A half century after NASA’s Apollo 17 lunar module lifted off the Moon’s northeastern near side quadrant, planetary scientists still don’t completely understand when or how our Moon first formed.

Archaeologists from the University of Southampton have excavated and recorded a large timber platform hidden beneath what today appears to be a stone-built island, located in a Scottish loch. They used a technique called stereophotogrammetry to record the human-made island above and below the waterline as a single continuous structure, providing a perspective that wouldn’t have been possible using land or underwater survey alone. Their technique is described in an article in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice.

Just one insightful psychedelic trip can have a profound impact on a person, and a new study goes some way to explaining why. The research was published in Nature Communications.

Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from the Star Wars universe.

The site dates back to 7100–6700 BCE during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period. A new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, describes plaster floors from the site made by a technique previously thought to have been first developed by the Romans 8,000 years later. The finding has archaeologists looking at Neolithic craftsmen in a new light.

Dozens of pieces of bright-green rock discovered in a cave in the Pyrenees may be evidence of copper smelting 7,000 years ago. The study was published Tuesday (May 5) in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

Mayflies are among the world’s oldest winged insects, emerging roughly 300m years ago – long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. Even the Mesopotamian poem the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest pieces of literature, makes reference to the short-lived mayfly. Over the epochs, the insect’s basic design has changed very little compared with the fossils of their ancestors.

Prehistoric humans in Africa may have avoided areas infested with malaria-spreading mosquitoes, a new study suggests —published April 22 in the journal Science Advances

A recent study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, presents and discusses the earliest burial site in Patagonia and one of the earliest pieces of evidence of Early Holocene human settlement on the South American Atlantic coast.

There’s a new contender for the universe’s earliest first-generation stars. A bright clump seen about 450 million years after the Big Bang has the chemical hallmarks of first-generation stars — notably that it appears to have no elements heavier than helium. This identification, reported in a trio of papers submitted on March 20 to arXiv.org, pushes the evidence for these pristine stars much earlier than for previous candidates.

A single dose of the psychedelic compound psilocybin, when paired with behavioral counseling, helped smokers quit at substantially higher rates than a standard nicotine patch paired with the same counseling. The results suggest that psychedelic treatments might offer a highly effective new approach for people struggling to overcome tobacco addiction. The findings were recently published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The exact origin of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is still a mystery, but researchers believe they are edging closer to the source of one of the most important food staples worldwide. Using genetic studies and ancient plant remains, an international team of scientists has narrowed the location and timeline to the Neolithic period(around 8,000 years ago) in Georgia, in the South Caucasus. They present their findings in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.