Humans news stories

Items found during an archaeological dig near Stornoway have revealed people lived there thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Image from: Maximilian Dörrbecker (Chumwa) (Wiki Commons)

Scientists have tracked down the oldest wildfires ever detected thanks to 430-million-year-old charcoal deposits from Wales and Poland. They give us valuable insight into what life on Earth was like during the Silurian period.

Embryonic and fossil evidence proves that the human middle ear evolved from the spiracle of fishes. However, the origin of the vertebrate spiracle has long been an unsolved mystery in vertebrate evolution.

Mars object thought to be piece of thermal blanket from when Perseverance touched down on planet

Mastering fire cleared the way into whole new worlds for early humans – from accessing more nutrients through cooking (fueling an increase in brain size), to making the dark hours useful, and surviving migrations into harsher climates.

A team led by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers has for the first time discovered what may be a free-floating black hole by observing the brightening of a more distant star as its light was distorted by the object’s strong gravitational field—so-called gravitational microlensing.

Mammoth teeth dating from 200,000 years ago are to be tested in the hope DNA samples can be found to reveal more about the creatures.

Psilocybin is associated with general long-lasting positive psychological effects in healthy individuals as well. New research published in Frontiers in Pharmacology indeed found that psilocybin-induced psychedelic experiences are associated with long-lasting positive effects.

Shrooms, Alice, tweezes, mushies, hongos, pizza toppings, magic mushrooms — everyday lingo for psychedelic mushrooms seems to grow with each generation. Yet leading mycologist Paul Stamets believes it’s time for fans of psilocybin mushrooms to leave such childish slang behind.

Nasa is launching a study of UFOs as part of a new push toward high-risk, high-impact science.

On a sun-blasted hillside in southeast Turkey, the world’s oldest known religious sanctuary is slowly giving up its secrets.

The Wallacean islands have always been separated from Asia and Oceania by deep-sea waters. Yet, these tropical islands were a corridor for modern humans migrating into the Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea landmass (Sahul) and have been home to modern human groups for at least 47,000 years.

“In the history of our species, a number of civilians have practiced or allowed human sacrifice including the sacrifice of children,” he said.

“The Carthaginians, the Mesopotamians, the Incas, the Aztecs,” he listed.

“Will we be recorded as such as society that accepts the sacrifice of innocence?”

Image from Wiki Commons

A 65,000-year-old tool – a kind of ancient Swiss Army knife – found across southern Africa has provided scientists with proof that the ancestors of modern homo sapiens were communicating with each other.

An ancient Roman route found in Pembrokeshire could be the real “golden road” of the Preseli hills.