Archaeology

Archaeology

An ancient Egyptian mummy was wrapped in an unusual mud shell

Commoners in ancient Egypt may have used mud in place of expensive resin to imitate royal mummification techniques.

Archaeology

The oldest known abrading tool was used around 350,000 years ago

A flat-ended rock found in an Israeli cave marks an early technological shift by human ancestors to make stone tools for grinding rather than cutting.

Archaeology

One of the oldest known cave paintings has been found in Indonesia

A drawing of a pig on the island of Sulawesi dates to at least 45,500 years ago.

Archaeology

Ivory from a 16th century shipwreck reveals new details about African elephants

Ivory from the sunken Portuguese trading ship Bom Jesus contains clues about elephant herds that once roamed Africa, and the people who hunted them.

Archaeology

Ancient people may have survived desert droughts by melting ice in lava tubes

Bands of charcoal from fires lit long ago, found in an ice core from a New Mexico cave, correspond to five periods of drought over 800 years.

Archaeology

Two stones fuel debate over when America’s first settlers arrived

Stones possibly used to break mastodon bones 130,000 years ago in what is now California get fresh scrutiny.

Humans

Ancient humans may have deliberately voyaged to Japan’s Ryukyu Islands

Satellite-tracked buoys suggest that long ago, a remote Japanese archipelago was reached by explorers on purpose, not accidentally.

Archaeology

The biblical warrior Goliath may not have been so giant after all

Archaeological finds suggest the width of the walls of Goliath’s home city were used to metaphorically represent the Old Testament figure’s height.

Anthropology

Female big-game hunters may have been surprisingly common in the ancient Americas

A Peruvian burial that indicates that women speared large prey as early as 9,000 years ago sheds new light on gender roles of ancient hunter-gatherers.

Anthropology

These human nerve cell tendrils turned to glass nearly 2,000 years ago

Part of a young man’s brain was preserved in A.D. 79 by hot ash from Mount Vesuvius’ eruption.

Anthropology

Mummified llamas yield new insights into Inca ritual sacrifices

Bound and decorated llamas, found at an Inca site in southern Peru, may have been buried alive as part of events in annexed territories.

Anthropology

How environmental changes may have helped make ancient humans more adaptable

An East African sediment core unveils ecological changes underlying a key Stone Age transition.