Ancient news stories

Our Paleolithic ancestors ate each other. We (Homo sapiens) did it. Neanderthals did it. Homo erectus and Homo antecessor did it. It’s highly likely that almost all hominins have practised cannibalism in some form. The only questions are “why” and “how much”?

Archaeologists in northern Iraq have unearthed 2,700-year-old rock carvings featuring war scenes and trees from the Assyrian empire, an archaeologist has said.

Ancient creatures are emerging from the cold storage of melting permafrost, almost like something out of a horror movie.

It is no surprise that a 14km-wide asteroid slamming into the Gulf of Mexico would generate one hell of a tsunami, but this is the first time anyone has worked out how big and how far-reaching it would have been.

The changing shape of the frontal sinuses is helping to reveal more about how modern humans, and our ancient relatives, evolved.

Leaders of the Native American Church of North America (NACNA) held multiple meetings with congressional offices last month to advocate that federal funding be dedicated toward efforts to preserve habitats where peyote can be grown.

Nestled in a cave in the snowy Altai Mountains of Siberia, fragmented bones and teeth have revealed the first-ever glimpse of a Neanderthal family. More than 50,000 years ago, a group of adults and kids died while sheltering at their hunting camp…

A joint study by TAU and the Hebrew University, involving 20 researchers from different countries and disciplines, has accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth’s magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants.

Britain was home to at least two genetically distinct groups of humans at the end of the last ice age, the oldest human DNA from the UK has revealed.

The map segment, which was found beneath the text on a sheet of medieval parchment, is thought to be a copy of the long-lost star catalog of the second century B.C. Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who made the earliest known attempt to chart the entire night sky.

The interior of Central Asia has been identified as a key route for some of the earliest hominin migrations across Asia in a new study led by Dr. Emma Finestone, Assistant Curator of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History…

Strange libraries of supplementary genes nicknamed “Borg” DNA appear to supercharge the microbes that possess them, giving them an uncanny ability to metabolize materials in their environment faster than their competitors

A new study has shown milk was used by the first farmers from Central Europe in the early Neolithic era around 7,400 years ago, advancing humans’ ability to gain sustenance from milk and establishing the early foundations of the dairy industry.

One of the most bizarre phenomena in our Solar System is the strange way that Uranus spins on its side. That’s a puzzle because all the other planets spin upright. What could have happened to make Uranus so different, particularly from its neighbor Neptune, which formed at the same time in similar circumstances?

Dating from 1100, the fourth known Maya codex reveals this ancient civilization’s staggering understandings of — and reverence for — time, the cosmos and the role of the human scribe.

An analysis of obsidian artifacts excavated during the 1960s at two prominent archaeological sites in southwestern Iran suggests that the networks Neolithic people formed in the region as they developed agriculture are larger and more complex than previously believed, according to a new study by Yale researchers.