Ancient news stories

Recent research has found that individuals who had meaningful psychedelic experiences tended to report increases in moral expansiveness. In other words, the scope of entities (humans, animals, the environment, etc.) that they considered worthy of moral consideration and protection expanded. The research was published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

A new study sheds light on how prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations in Europe coped with climate changes over 12,000 years ago…The study has been published in PLOS One under the title “Large scale and regional demographic responses to climatic changesin Europe during the Final Palaeolithic.”

Today, the Sahara Desert is a sea of sand, but 7000 years ago it was a lush savanna full of hippos, crocodiles, elephants, and giraffes. During a humid, monsoon-heavy interval that spanned more than 5 millennia, people hunted, fished, and eventually herded livestock in a landscape now covered by shifting dunes. The findings are reported in a paper this week in Nature.

In a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of international collaborators describe their discovery in China of the first complete example of a Middle Paleolithic technology previously seen only in Europe and the Middle East.

A team of Tel Aviv University researchers from the field of prehistoric archaeology has proposed an innovative hypothesis regarding an intriguing question: Why did ancient humans bring their young children to cave-painting sites—deep underground—through dark, meandering, hazardous passages? The paper is published in the journal Arts.

Controversial claim that Homo naledi buried its dead gets new proof from 2025 research study.

A new archaeological discovery at Kach Kouch in Morocco challenges the long-held belief that the Maghreb (north-west Africa) was an empty land before the arrival of the Phoenicians from the Middle East in around 800 BCE. It reveals a much richer and more complex history than previously thought.

Researchers in the UK have now suggested in a report that is yet to be peer reviewed that there’s a very good reason these oddities don’t fit neatly on the tree of life – they belong to a branch all of their own, with no modern equivalent.

A new study reveals plants, fungi, bacteria, protists, and even some viruses deploy venom-like mechanisms, similar to that of venomous snakes, scorpions and spiders, according to researchers at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. The study is published in the journal Toxins.

The mortar, pestle and cutting board in your kitchen are modern versions of manos and metates—ancient cooking implements found in archaeological sites around the world. The latest findings were published last month in the journal American Antiquity.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of at least five woolly mammoths at a site in Austria. The remains suggest that ancient humans processed the mammoths’ ivory tusks 25,000 years ago.

The discovery of bone implements that are the oldest ever found, by far, casts light on human evolution. It shows that our hominin ancestors were able to think about and make this technology a lot earlier than anyone realised. The research was published in Nature.

Chains of up to a dozen carbon atoms have been detected in what appears to have been an ancient lakebed on Mars, contributing to a growing library of compounds that could be a vital clue about the history of life on the red planet. This research was published in PNAS.

Papers published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Astrophysical Journal suggest astrophysicists need to update their theories on how galaxies evolve.

A team of botanists with members from Muse–Museo delle Scienze, Udzungwa Corridor LTD, Via Grazia Deledda and the National Museum of Kenya has discovered a new species of tree growing in the mountainous rain forests of Tanzania. In their paper published in the journal Phytotaxa, the group describes how and where the tree was found and its characteristics.

It may look like just another random boulder, but this old Spanish rock bears engraved lines that could be an astounding 200,000 years old, according to government officials.