News Desk

Several studies have found psilocybin to be safe and effective in treating substance use disorders—but a first-of-its-kind analysis offers novel insights into exactly how psychedelic-assisted therapy works for people addicted to alcohol.

Markings on a cave wall in France are the oldest known engravings made by Neanderthals, according to a study published June 21, 2023, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jean-Claude Marquet of the University of Tours, France and colleagues.

Dutch archaeologists on Wednesday revealed an around 4,000-year-old religious site – dubbed the “Stonehenge of the Netherlands” in the country’s media – which included a burial mound serving as a solar calendar.

Researchers studying the sites have determined that the Yanliao Biota date back to between 164 million and 157 million years ago. Their results are published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

From the Mediterranean to North America, there’s a lot of evidence that the day the ‘sun stands still’ has been important to humans for thousands of years.

New clues from an ancient plague are pushing us to rethink where Britons were ‘really’ from – and the answer is complicated.

Brendan was once a leader in the US white nationalist movement. But when he took the drug MDMA in a scientific study, it would radically change his extremist beliefs – to the surprise of everyone involved.

Mysterious, spiral signals have been discovered in the human brain, and the scientists who found the swirls think they could help to organize complex brain activity.

Were anatomically modern humans the only ones who knew how to turn bone into tools? A discovery by an international team at the Chez-Pinaud-Jonzac Neanderthal site settles the question. Published in PLOS ONE, it sheds light on a little known aspect of Neanderthal technology.

An ancient oblong artifact made about 42,000 years ago bears a carving that looks suspiciously penis-like. Some archaeologists think it could be the earliest known phallic figurine in the world. See the research here.

Archaeologists have discovered a vast cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds, thought to be up to 4,400 years old, ahead of a building development less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Stonehenge.

The weary Indigenous men gathered at their base camp, nestled among towering trees and dense vegetation that formed a disorienting sea of green. They had been searching for four lost Indigenous children believed to have survived a plane crash in the ancestral jungle in southern Colombia for more than a month.

Archaeologists have discovered extremely rare evidence for early Homo sapiens in Britain. The finds of stone tools and animal bones, dating to the last Ice Age, were found during archaeological excavations at Pembroke Castle’s Wogan Cavern. Their excavations will continue this summer.

At the start of the week of the Summer Solstice, many will once again marvel at the magnificent structures built across Ireland thousands of years ago, including Newgrange in Co Meath. The structures were built by the descendants of the first peoples that landed on the island in what is believed to be two migratory waves from around 10,000 years ago.

Incorporating the psychedelic drug psilocybin into psychotherapy shows promise in the treatment of depression, according to new research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. But the study also highlights the difficulty of implementing effective blinding procedures to prevent expectancy effects when researching psychedelic substances.