Humans news stories

In the Middle Ages, the Roman alphabet and runes lived side by side. A new doctoral thesis challenges the notion that runes represent more of an oral and less of a learned form of written language.

Together, amino acids form proteins that play many vital roles in organisms. This new study was designed to help establish why a specific group of 20 ‘canonical’ amino acids is used again and again to build proteins when there are so many more of these amino acids to pick from.

Tiny traces of protein lingering in the bones and teeth of ancient humans could soon transform scientists’ efforts to unravel the secrets of the evolution of our species.

A study suggests that psychedelics can access receptors inside cells that standard antidepressants usually can’t affect.

Researchers have discovered evidence of horse riding by studying the remains of human skeletons found in burial mounds called kurgans, which were between 4,500 and 5,000 years old.

A Nasdaq-listed company is trialling the active ingredient in magic mushrooms as a new treatment.

A pair of studies offer the most detailed look yet at groups of hunter-gatherers living before, during and after the last ice age.

On March 1 and 2, Jupiter and Venus will appear side by side in the night sky in an event called a conjunction, which is visible without a telescope or binoculars.

Hunter-gatherers took shelter from the ice age in Southwestern Europe, but were replaced on the Italian Peninsula according to two new studies, published in Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution today.

Researchers modeling eastern Neanderthal migration from Europe have found the area south of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran to be the most likely route, suggesting there could be significant yet-to-be-discovered archaeological sites hidden in less explored areas along the way. See study here.

An unusual whale feeding technique only recorded for the first time in 2011 may have been around for at least two thousand years, according to researchers from Flinders University in Australia.

The study was published in Marine Mammal Science.

A study by an international and interdisciplinary team headed by University of Freiburg archaeologist Dr. Ralph Araque Gonzalez from the Faculty of Humanities has proven that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2,900 years ago.

A newly discovered Moai statue on Easter Island has been found buried in a dried up lake bed.

Over five hundred years ago, in the Guatemalan highlands of the Midwest, the Maya people traded goods with far less intervention from their rulers than previously believed by many archaeologists.