Ancient news stories

In the largest ever modern whole-genome analysis from South Asia…The study also turns up a surprise: an unexpectedly rich diversity of genes from Neanderthals and their close evolutionary cousins, the Denisovans. Because no fossils of these ancient human relatives have been found in India, researchers are speculating about how these genes got there—and why they stuck around.

Psilocybe mushrooms appear to have started producing psilocybin roughly 67 million years ago, right around the dinosaurs’ demise, new research shows.

Fossilized trees discovered by chance in southwest England belong to Earth’s earliest-known forest, new research has found. The 390 million-year-old fossils supplant the Gilboa fossil forest in New York state, which dates back 386 million years, as the world’s oldest known forest.

Archaeologists have identified evidence of a Jewish-Islamic scientific collaboration having taken place a thousand years ago, thanks to an archaic star chart once thought to be a forgery.  Gigante’s analysis is published in the journal Nuncius.

An investigation into the genomes of 10 people who lived between 6350 and 4810 B.C. revealed few biological links among these small communities, according to a study published Feb. 26 in the journal PNAS.

Roughly 128 million years ago, snakes suddenly burst into an abundant existence on Earth, eventually diversifying into the 4,000 or so species we see today. See the research in Science.

Our understanding of the human past is changing rapidly, and this does not come from new evidence alone. We are seeing an increasing diversity of perspectives among archaeologists, and they are asking new and important questions. But the field still has a long way to go.

Image by: Downtowngal (Wiki Commons)

Now, the team has unlocked the life history of this ill-fated man, combining modern and traditional archeological methods to read the story written in his bones. The research was published in PLOS ONE.

The discovery, led by now-retired head of conservation at the National Archeological Museum Spain, Salvador Rovira-Llorens, suggests that metalworking technology and techniques were far more advanced than we thought in Iberia more than 3,000 years ago.

Words of wisdom from Hopi elder Paul Sifki.

Neanderthals created stone tools held together by a multi-component adhesive, a team of scientists has discovered. Its findings, which are the earliest evidence of a complex adhesive in Europe, suggest these predecessors to modern humans had a higher level of cognition and cultural development than previously thought. See the study here.

Traits common to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), such as distractibility or impulsivity, might have been an evolutionary advantage for our ancestors by improving their tactics when foraging for food. See the study here. 

In a new study published Tuesday (Feb. 20) in the journal Antiquity, researchers revealed that the inscription is the oldest and longest ever found in a Vasconic language, a group of languages that includes modern Basque.

The invisible substance called dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Perhaps, a new study suggests, this strange substance arises from a ‘dark mirror universe’ that’s been linked to ours since the dawn of time.

The evidence suggests it was constructed by Paleolithic people between 11,700 and 9,900 years ago, probably as an aid for hunting reindeer…The archaeologists investigating the Bay of Mecklenburg used a range of submarine equipment, sampling methods and modeling techniques to reconstruct the ancient lake bed and its surrounding landscape.

A Stone Age skeleton found in a peat bog in northwest Denmark has been analysed to flesh out in stunning detail the ancient person’s life and death. New analysis of the remains is published in the journal PLOS ONE.