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Research team used advanced sequencing technology to analyze Ötzi's genome to obtain a more accurate picture of the Iceman's appearance and genetic origins Ötzi's genome was decoded for the first time more than ten years ago. This was also the first time the genome of a mummy had been sequenced. The results provided important insights into the genetic makeup of prehistoric Europeans.

Human history in one click: For the first time, numerous sites relating to the early history of mankind from 3 million to 20,000 years ago can be accessed in a large-scale database. Scientists from the research center ROCEEH ("The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans") have compiled information on 2,400 prehistoric sites and 24,000 assemblages from more than 100 ancient cultures.

While 21  century water companies struggle to maintain clean, fresh supplies, new research today from an international team led by Oxford geoarchaeologist Dr Güel Sürmelihindi , reveals that, some 2,000 years ago, Roman water engineers were keeping up a regular programme of managing and maintaining the ancient water systems.

Freiburg physicist provided evidence for interdisciplinary project by the Natural History Museum Bern In an interdisciplinary study by the Natural History Museum Bern, led by geologist Beda Hofmann , researchers have proven that a Bronze Age arrowhead found in Mörigen on Lake Biel, Switzerland, was definitely made of meteoritic iron.

An international research team lead by the University of Tübingen and the Brazilian University of São Paulo, with CIDEGENT researcher Domingo C. Salazar from the University of Valencia, compiled the largest genomic dataset from Brazil to demonstrate that sambaqui communities on the southern and southeastern coasts didn-t represent a genetically homogeneous population.

Researchers from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and the Brazilian University of São Paulo, together with an international research team led by first author Dr. Tiago Ferraz, compiled the largest genomic dataset from Brazil to demonstrate that sambaqui communities on the southern and southeastern coasts did not represent a genetically homogeneous population.

Linguistics and genetics combine to suggest a new hybrid hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages An international team of linguists and geneticists led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population.

A team of Swiss and Greek archaeologists recently completed the third season of excavations on the wreck of Antikythera. The wreck of Antikythera was recently brought into the spotlight by the film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Far from the cinematic imagination, an international team of archaeologists, divers, engineers and physical and natural scientists is currently excavating the famous wreck.

Contrary to prior assumptions, ancient Egyptian painters did at times push the boundaries of convention. Artistic creations supposed to be copies of canonical images were in fact often adapted and reworked during their execution. This discovery was made using new, portable chemical imaging tools that leave the artworks intact.

Researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in Britain. The excavations, which took place in Kent and were commissioned in advance of development of the Maritime Academy School in Frindsbury, revealed prehistoric artefacts in deep Ice Age sediments preserved on a hillside above the Medway Valley.

An international team led by Postdoctoral Researcher Margarita Salas of the University of Valencia Rafael Marquina, has studied the fossil remains of small vertebrates recovered from the Illa Grossa, the largest island of the archipelago of Columbretes.

An Italian study involving UdeM researchers shows new evidence that humans and Neanderthals milled flour as long as 43,000 years ago, several thousand years before what was previously thought, making Long before the invention of agriculture, humans already knew how to process cereals and other wild plants into a flour suitable for food - and now there's new evidence they did so long before scientists was previously thought.

A new study indicates that one of the largest of the indigenous language families in Latin America originated in the sixth century BCE in the basin of the Rio Tapajós and Rio Xingu, near the present-day city of Santarém in the Brazilian state of Pará. There are around fifty languages in the Tupí-Guaraní language family, which gave us words like -jaguar- and -piranha.

An international team of researchers who discovered a vast network of stone walls along the River Nile in Egypt and Sudan say these massive 'river groynes' reveal an exceptionally long-lived form of hydraulic engineering in the Nile Valley, and shed light on connections between ancient Nubia and Egypt.

Meat, milk, labor: domestic cattle have a lot to offer. Their history is consequently closely intertwined with that of humankind. Researchers at the University of Basel have investigated the genetic development of this livestock animal in Switzerland, and it is linked with societal developments. Cows are part of the Swiss landscape, and their meat, milk and resulting products are inextricably linked with traditional Swiss cuisine.

Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team 1 , are the subject of an article published on 9 June in Nature Scientific Reports .

The Hardouyn Hours, a jewelled fifteenth-century prayer book in Trinity College Library belonged to Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, new research has found. The most exciting Cromwell discovery in a generation - if not more. Tracy Borman Hever Castle curator, Alison Palmer, recognised the bejewelled, silver gilt binding of Trinity's Book of Hours from the famous portrait of Thomas Cromwell painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1532-3, which hangs in the Frick Collection in New York.

Study of 2,500-year-old latrines from the biblical Kingdom of Judah shows the ancient faeces within contain Giardia - a parasite that can cause dysentery. Toilets with cesspits from this time are relatively rare and were usually made only for the elite Piers Mitchell A new analysis of ancient faeces taken from two Jerusalem latrines dating back to the biblical Kingdom of Judah has uncovered traces of a single-celled microorganism Giardia duodenalis - a common cause of debilitating diarrhoea in humans.

Archaeologists from the University of Göttingen have discovered the earliest Iron Age house in Athens in Thorikos (Greece), south of Athens. This is an important, unexpected and unique finding for early Greek history: building structures from this early period, from the 10th to the 9th century BC, have never been excavated anywhere in Attica before.

Research team at Göttingen University analyse data from burial sites spanning nearly 4,000 years People tend to think that the idea that biological sex is linked with one-s role in society belongs in the past. But was it even the case in prehistory? Archaeologists at the University of Göttingen have investigated the representation of gender in Neolithic and Bronze Age graves (around 5500 BC to 1200 BC), in order to understand if the idea of gender in prehistoric Europe was really as -binary- as might be expected.