Humans news stories

In a decision that shocked some observers, key advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted that the effectiveness of the party drug MDMA for treating post-traumatic stress disorder is unproven.

Details of the “highly unusual” neutron star’s discovery is published in Nature Astronomy. There have been more than 3,000 radio-emitting neutron stars discovered.  The newly found star’s spin is well outside what astrophysicists predict of neutron star behaviour.

Archaeologists have fully mapped a series of ancient rock art in Venezuela and Colombia, including the world’s largest monumental engraving, using photography and drone footage. The study was published on Tuesday (June 4) in the journal Antiquity.

Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilisation. The research is published in Nature Geoscience.

Image by: Marc Ryckaert (MJJR – Wiki Commons)

An uncle and nephew buried in two of the richest burial mounds, along with evidence of first-cousin inbreeding, point strongly toward matrilineal dynasties of elite power, according to the study, which was published Monday (June 3) in the journal Nature Human Behaviour

Despite decades of study, this Ice Age mystery remains unsolved. Researchers simply don’t have sufficient evidence at this point to rule out one scenario or the other—or indeed other explanations that have been proposed (e.g. disease, an impact event from a comet, or a combination of factors)… A new work published in Frontiers in Mammal Science set out to address this information deficit.

A new study from Tel Aviv University identified the earliest appearance worldwide of special stone tools, used 400,000 years ago to process fallow deer. The paper was published in Archaeologies.

The rich human occupation  of Mediterranean island Cyprus has been pushed back thousands of years by new research led by Cypriot and Australian archaeologists. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA shows the first human occupation on Cyprus between 14,257 and 13,182 years ago.

A new study of stick insects suggests that evolution may sometimes repeat itself in a predictable manner, which could help our understanding of how organisms may change in response to selection pressures. The study has been published in Science Advances.

French archaeologists have uncovered nine large graves containing the remains of horses from up to 2,000 years ago, in a find described as “extraordinary”.

The ancient Egyptians were remarkably sophisticated and advanced in the field of medicine – so noted for their skills and knowledge that we’re still learning from them thousands of years later. The findings have been published in Frontiers in Medicine.

In the face of a deepening mental health crisis, more police officers and public servants are turning to psychedelics for relief and healing from work-related trauma.

Mars’ moon Phobos may actually be a comet — or at least part of one — that was gravitationally captured by the Red Planet long ago, a new preprint study based on previously unpublished photos suggests.

Neanderthal children (who lived between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago) and modern human children living during the Upper Paleolithic era (between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago) may have faced similar levels of childhood stress but at different developmental stages, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that these findings could reflect differences in childcare and other behavioral strategies between the two species.

Six of the planets of the Solar System are about to line up for a rare sight in Earth’s sky. In the wee small hours of 3 and 4 June 2024, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus will appear in a straight line in an alignment known as a planet parade. Only Venus will be absent – even Earth’s waning crescent moon is going to put in an appearance.

A 7,000-year-old Neolithic settlement in modern-day Greece has, for the first time, been accurately dated down to the precise years it was built. The findings could provide a reference point in time to help date other archaeological sites in southeastern Europe. Their research is published in the journal Nature Communications.