Humans news stories

Stone Age people in Belgium were hunting with spear-throwers more than 30,000 years ago  — the earliest known evidence of such a weapon in Europe, a new study suggests.

A secret text has been discovered in Türkiye, scattered among tens of thousands of ancient clay tablets, which were written in the time of the Hittite Empire during the second millennium BCE.

Scientists in China have announced the birth of a primate like no other, with eyes that shined green and fingertips that glowed yellow – and those were just the observable features. The study was published in Cell.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team…has discovered the most distant barred spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way that has been observed to date. The research, published in Nature, was led by scientists at the Centro de Astrobiología in Spain.

On the shores of Lake Turkana in East Africa, about 5,000 to 4,000 years ago, pastoralists buried their dead in communal cemeteries that were marked by stone circles and pillars.

Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the new study analyzes two skull fragments dating back between 37,000 and 36,000 years to conclude that our ancestors came from Eastern Europe and migrated westwards.

A new facial reconstruction depicts a Neanderthal whose skeleton was found by priests in a French cave.

According to the researchers, the pyramid is a mausoleum complex for a ruler from the Begazı Dandibay culture, a late Bronze Age culture that flourished during the last phase of the Andronovo period (2000–1150 BC).

Image by: Sanjay Rao (Wiki Commons)

Like tiny, hairy Yodas raising X-wings from a swamp, rats can lift digital cubes and drop them near a target. But these rats aren’t using the Force. Instead, they are using their imagination. See the study here.

A giant underground pyramid hidden beneath a hillside in Indonesia far outdates Stonehenge or the Giza Pyramids and may come to rival the oldest megalithic structures ever built by human hands. See the study here.

The study reveals that the genetic variant observed, which affects zinc regulation, could have signified an evolutionary advantage in our ancestors’ adaptation to the cold.

It is often thought of as something not of this world, a magical, mystical place. But the Festival of Neolithic Ideas at Stonehenge will take a more scientific look at the great circle and the landscape it sits within.

People who have used psilocybin hold strong expectations about its antidepressant effects, with those experiencing higher levels of mystical experiences, emotional breakthroughs, and ego dissolution holding greater expectations, according to new research published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.

In a 1981 Smithsonian Magazine article, geologist Farouk El-Baz theorizes that the ancient Egyptians didn’t create the sphinx from scratch, like the pyramids, but that desert winds formed the overall contours of the sphinx and the ancient stonemasons gave the rock a celestial facelift. Now, scientists from New York University have tested that theory…See the study here.

An archaeological site south of Sydney has investigated 2,000-year-old dingo bones, buried alongside, and in the same way, as the Indigenous people of the area. The research has been published in PLOS One.

A study in the Netherlands reported that regular participants in ayahuasca ceremonies have better general well-being, fewer chronic or lifestyle-related diseases, more physical activity, and a more balanced diet compared to the general population of the Netherlands. The study was published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.