Ancient news stories

Spectacular valleys and cliffs hidden beneath the North Sea
11th September 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Earth

Like a bowl of spaghetti noodles spilled across the floor of the North Sea, a vast array of hidden tunnel valleys wind and meander across what was once an ice-covered landscape.

The World’s Oldest Known Forest Was Not Like We Imagined, New Study Shows
11th September 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Earth

The fossilized web of a 385-million-year-old root network has scientists reimagining what the world’s first forests might once have looked like.

Environmental conditions of early humans in Europe
11th September 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

Understanding the environmental conditions under which early humans dispersed out of Africa is important for understanding the factors that affected human evolution.

The lost generation of ancient trees
11th September 2021 | bbc.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

Inside some of our most magnificent trees, miniature worlds are at risk of extinction. The race is on to accelerate trees’ ageing process, so these intricate communities aren’t lost forever

Meet the Scientists Investigating a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid
9th September 2021 | vice.com | Ancient, Humans, Space

Right now, a spacecraft is carrying a very special delivery to Earth after a years-long voyage to a cosmic destination that can shed light on how life might have first emerged on our planet and how we can protect it from future cosmic hazards.

Image from: asteroidmission.org (Wiki Commons)

Late Neanderthals used complex tool-making techniques
9th September 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

Neanderthals living in the Swabian Jura more than 45,000 years ago used sophisticated techniques with many different production strategies to make stone tools.

The strange race to track down a missing billion years
8th September 2021 | bbc.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

A billion years have vanished from the geological record – and over 152 years after this was first discovered, scientists can’t agree on why.

‘Green Arabia’ was a crucial migration route for early humans
7th September 2021 cosmosmagazine.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

The new research establishes northern Arabia as a critical migration pathway in the storied history of our species

Bristol manuscript fragments of the famous Merlin legend among the oldest of their kind
7th September 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

Medieval manuscript fragments discovered in Bristol that tell part of the story of Merlin the magician, one of the most famous characters from Arthurian legend, have been identified by academics from the Universities of Bristol and Durham as some of the earliest surviving examples of that section of the narrative.

New evidence supports idea that America’s first civilization was made up of ‘sophisticated’ engineers
3rd September 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

The Native Americans who occupied the area known as Poverty Point in northern Louisiana more than 3,000 years ago long have been believed to be simple hunters and gatherers. But new Washington University in St. Louis archaeological findings paint a drastically different picture of America’s first civilization.

Beer Was Drunk in China 9,000 Years Ago, But It Likely Wasn’t For Recreation
3rd September 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Humans

Archaeologists have discovered some of the oldest artifacts ever found to be associated with beer, in a haul from Qiaotou in southern China dating back 9,000 years. However, it appears the ancient drinkers in question weren’t in it simply for a buzz.

Ancient monument linked to King Arthur is older than Stonehenge, research finds
29th August 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Humans

A mysterious stone tomb in western England — known as Arthur’s Stone because of its links to the mythical King Arthur — originated almost 6,000 years ago as part of an elaborate “ceremonial landscape” across the whole area, according to archaeologists.

New species of ancient four-legged whale discovered in Egypt
29th August 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Scientists in Egypt have identified a new species of four-legged whale that lived around 43 million years ago.

A Neanderthal hunting camp in the center of the Iberian Peninsula
29th August 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Humans

Abel Moclán, a researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews which undertook a zooarchaeological and taphonomic study of the Neanderthal Navalmaíllo Rock Shelter site (Pinilla del Valle, Madrid), some 76,000 years old, whose results indicate that these Neanderthals mainly hunted large bovids and cervids.

7,200-Year-Old Human DNA With Unique Denisovan Ancestry Has Been Found in Indonesia
29th August 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Humans

The skeleton of an ancient woman, discovered in an Indonesian cave in 2015, appears to have ancestry unlike any other human found to date.

Mystery object in space could be a new arm of the Milky Way
24th August 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Space, Weird

Scientists spot giant feature at edge of the galaxy.

News stories covering history, archaeology, ancient Egypt, and mysteries of the past.