Archaeology
- Archaeology
Horse domestication traced to ancient central Asian culture
New lines of evidence indicate that horses were domesticated for riding and milking more than 5,000 years ago by members of a hunter-gatherer culture in northern Kazakhstan.
- Health & Medicine
Chocolate may have arrived early to U.S. Southwest
A new study suggests that people in America’s Southwest were making cacao beverages as early as A.D. 1000.
- Archaeology
Armenian cave yields ancient human brain
A team of scientists has excavated 6,000-year-old artifacts and three human skulls, including one containing a preserved brain, from a cave bordering Armenia’s Arpa River.
- Archaeology
Early chemical warfare comes to light
Investigations of a Roman garrison in Syria conquered in a massive assault by Persians nearly 2,000 years ago have uncovered evidence of the earliest known chemical warfare.
- Archaeology
Shipwrecks harbor evidence of ancient sophistication
Research on shipwrecks from two ancient, submerged harbors shows that frame-based shipbuilding emerged surprisingly early and then became more sophisticated within a few hundred years.
- Archaeology
Tools with handles even more ancient
An analysis of stone tools excavated at a Syrian site indicates that, around 70,000 years ago, Neandertals used a tarlike adhesive to affix sharpened items to handles.
- Archaeology
An ancient healer reborn
A research team in Israel has uncovered one of the oldest known graves of a shaman. The 12,000-year-old grave hosts a woman’s skeleton surrounded by the remains of unusual animals.
- Archaeology
Return of the kings
Excavations in southern Jordan have incited controversy about whether a copper-producing society existed there 3,000 years ago, and whether it was controlled by Israeli kings described in the Old Testament.
- Archaeology
Really Cool History
Tales of the black band: Clues to a 4,200-year-old mystery lie frozen in icy records stored atop Mt. Kilimanjaro.
- Archaeology
Saharan surprise
A chance discovery in the Sahara leads to the excavation of a Stone Age cemetery containing remains from two lakeside cultures.
- Archaeology
Greeks followed a celestial Olympics
A Greek gadget discovered more than a century ago in a 2,100-year-old shipwreck not only tracked the motion of heavenly bodies and predicted eclipses, but also functioned as a sophisticated calendar and mapped the four-year cycle of the ancient Greek Olympics.
- Archaeology
From Science News Letter, August 2, 1958
PORCUPINES GNAWED ON STONE AGE MAN’S TOOLS — Razor sharp edges on some of the bone chisels of Middle Stone Age man in Africa were found to have been put there by the needle-sharp front teeth of porcupines, Dr. Raymond A. Dart of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, reports. But the fact […]
