Humans news stories

A landmass that once connected Britain to mainland Europe had temperate forests that could have sustained Stone Age people for millennia before the landmass was flooded, a new study suggests. The results were published on March 10 in the journal PNAS.

According to an article published in Antiquity by Dr. Svitlana Ivanova and her colleagues, the Yamna culture’s repurposing of older ritual spaces reflects a deliberate appropriation and continuation of sacred spaces

Neanderthals probably used birch tar for multiple functions, including treating their wounds, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by a team of researchers led by Tjaark Siemssen of the University of Cologne, Germany, and the University of Oxford, U.K.

An international team of archaeologists…has uncovered the earliest known clay ornaments in Southwest Asia, revealing a forgotten chapter in the story of how humans began to express identity, belonging, and meaning through material culture. The findings, published this week in Science Advances, push back the symbolic use of clay in the region by thousands of years.

A joint Egyptian-German archaeological mission between the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Tübengen has uncovered an astonishing 13,000 new ostraca at Atreps(ancient Athribis) in Sohag, Egypt. This brings the total recovered since 2005 to around 43,000, making Atreps the site with the largest known collection of ostraca in the world.

CERN scientists have uncovered a new proton-like particle, the Ξ_cc⁺, revealing a heavier and long-predicted member of the subatomic world.

It sounds like the opening of a sci-fi film, but US scientists recently uploaded a copy of the brain of a living fly into a simulation. In San Francisco, biotechnology company Eon Systems created a virtual insect that knew how to walk, fly, groom and feed in its virtual environment. Researchers in Australia, meanwhile, have taught a petri dish containing 200,000 human brain cells to play the iconic 90s shooter Doom. One experiment has pushed a brain into a computer; the other has plugged a computer into brain cells.

A new genetic study published in the journal Cell is filling in some important details about the earliest inhabitants of Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific Ocean consisting of approximately 340 islands.

Around 4,000 years ago, one of the world’s oldest civilizations emerged: The Indus Valley Civilization, flourishing in what is now Pakistan, western India, eastern Iran and parts of Afghanistan. In addition to building sizable cities, its people created a written script that consists of hundreds of signs that remain undeciphered…Could recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) help with decipherment?

A new study published in Scientific Reports suggests that the therapeutic effects of psychedelic mushrooms likely rely on a complex interplay of multiple chemical compounds rather than just a single active ingredient.

The partnership between ravens and wolves goes back to Norse mythology – Odin’s birds scouted ahead and led prey to the god’s canines, a relationship that provided food for all. The myth has some roots in reality: when wolves have a successful hunt, ravens are often observed first on the scene – and new research published Thursday in the journal Science put the legend to the test.

A new study, published in JAMA Network Open, reports the outcome of a clinical trial out of Johns Hopkins University assessing the effectiveness of psilocybin as a treatment for smokers attempting to quit. The trial compared the effectiveness of one dose of the “magic mushroom” drug to months of the common nicotine patch, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy in both groups. The results might push psilocybin into the limelight as a more effective addiction treatment.

In a study published in the journal Iran, researcher Gad Barnea has uncovered new evidence suggesting that Zoroastrian religious practices were more prevalent and left a deeper imprint on surrounding communities than previously recognized.

In his new book, “The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us About How to Live Well With the Rest of Life” (Hachette Book Group, 2025), Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, explores these complex interdependencies found across the natural world, including the numerous mutualisms humans engage in, such as our relationships with dogs and with the microbes in our guts.

Two researchers discuss how ancient DNA is used to track how people moved and lived during Britain’s Bronze Age. The new paper, produced with colleagues from the U.S. and across Europe, has highlighted some of the more complex interactions between ancient populations that took place in north-west Europe.

When the Spanish first reached the Andes, they found something surprising: Many of the locals had long, pointy heads. They discovered that the Collagua, an indigenous group in Peru that was conquered by the Inca, had a practice of shaping the head starting in infancy, before the skull bones fused and soft spots disappeared.