Archaeology
- Anthropology
Skulls from ancient London suggest ritual decapitations
The city’s Roman rulers had special watery places to keep the heads of military enemies or vanquished gladiators.
- Archaeology
Animal mummies were a message direct to the gods
A new theory about the purpose of animals mummified by ancient Egyptians proposes that the cats, ibises and other dead critters were more than just simple sacrifices.
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- Humans
Year in Review: New discoveries reshape debate over human ancestry
Human evolution appears poised for a scientific makeover as the relationships among early hominids are disputed.
- Animals
China trumps Near East for signs of most ancient farm cats
Earliest evidence found for grain as a force in feline domestication.
- Archaeology
Easter Island’s farmers cultivated social resilience, not collapse
A Polynesian society often presumed to have self-destructed shows signs of having carried on instead.
- Humans
Fossils reveal a strong-armed, dead-end hominid
Olduvai Gorge finds suggest extinct hominid both walked and hung out in trees.
- Archaeology
Early shrine unearthed at Nepal Buddhist site
Ritual structure could help pin down when the sage known as the Buddha lived in South Asia.
- Genetics
Ancient Siberian bones clarify Native American origins
Some New World ancestors came from western Eurasia, not East Asia.
- Anthropology
Human ancestors threw stone-tipped spears at prey
African discoveries show that hunting weapons thrown from a distance appeared by 279,000 years ago.
- Anthropology
Ancient farming populations went boom, then bust
Agriculture’s introduction led to big falls as well as rises in numbers of Europeans.
- Astronomy
‘Space beads’ push back origins of iron working
Ancient Egyptians used advanced techniques to make beads out of 'metal from the sky.'
