Stone Age blueprints are the oldest architectural plans ever found
17 May 2023
Plans etched into stone tablets depict vast hunting traps called desert kites built 9000 years ago, showing a mastery of geometry long before the invention of writing
-
Subject
-
Section
-
Type
-
Topics
-
Author
-
Issue
-
Premium
DNA from 25,000-year-old tooth pendant reveals woman who wore it
3 May 2023
A new technique for extracting DNA from ancient artefacts without destroying them could give us unprecedented insights about the people who made or wore them
Early humans may have cooked fish in ovens 780,000 years ago
14 November 2022
The remains of fish teeth at an archaeological site in Israel appear to have been cooked with controlled heat rather than directly exposed to fire
17th-century infant's life and health revealed by 'virtual autopsy'
26 October 2022
A young child found in an unmarked coffin in an Austrian crypt was exceptionally well preserved, and his bones and organs show signs of rickets and pneumonia
Hunter-gatherers kept animals for food before they farmed crops
14 September 2022
Ancient dung hints that 12,000 years ago, a population of hunter-gatherers in what is now Syria kept animals like sheep or gazelles around – probably for food
Shoulder growth may slow during human development to make birth easier
11 April 2022
CT scans of humans, chimpanzees and macaques reveal that human collarbones slow their growth rate in the final months of pregnancy, perhaps to make it easier for babies to squeeze through the pelvis
Non-pilots think they can land a plane after watching a YouTube video
16 March 2022
A psychological study shows that people can be overconfident in their ability to perform tasks for which they have no formal training
Languages could go extinct at a rate of one per month this century
16 December 2021
As people around the world travel more and receive more formal education, languages are predicted to vanish at an alarming rate
Marie Antoinette's censored love letters have been read using X-rays
1 October 2021
Love letters that Marie Antoinette wrote to a Swedish count have been impossible to read because he added extra handwriting on top of hers – but now the original words have been deciphered with X-rays
Last meal of a man mummified in a bog reconstructed after 2400 years
20 July 2021
Tollund Man ate a simple meal of cooked cereals and fish before being hanged and dumped in a bog in Iron Age Europe
