news

A study develops a revolutionary method to establish the time between Neanderthal fires Santiago Sossa-Ríos, from the Universitat de València, excavating a hearth at El Salt. Photo: Sven Kleinhapl. The interdisciplinary research team from the Universitat de València, the University of Burgos, the University of La Laguna, the University of Alacant, the Complutense University of Madrid and the Institute of Geosciences has succeeded in determining with high precision the time between different Neanderthal fires at El Salt site (Alcoi, Alicante).

A series of ancient South American engravings are thought to be the largest prehistoric rock art in the world, reveals a new study by an international team of archaeologists involving UCL researchers. The team co-led by researchers at Bournemouth University and Universidad de los Andes in Colombia published their results in the journal Antiquity .

Papyrologists decipher manuscript fragment and date it to the 4th to 5th century. For decades, a papyrus fragment with the inventory number P.Hamb.Graec. 1011 remained unnoticed at the Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky State and University Library. Now papyrologists Dr Lajos Berkes from the Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), and Prof Gabriel Nocchi Macedo from the University of Liège, Belgium, have identified the fragment as the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas .

A team of archaeologists discovers an almost 1.000-year-old games collection including a well-preserved chessman, gaming pieces and dice. Laboratory analyses show that one party played with red. The laboratory results also allow conclusions to be drawn about the astonishing continuity of the rules of the game.

Genetic analyses of Celtic burial mounds from 500 BCE reveal close relationships and provide new insights into the power structures of early Celtic elites The Celtic culture of the pre-Roman Iron Age in Western and Central Europe has left numerous traces to this day, not least in the form of enormous burial mounds and spectacular archaeological artifacts.

Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilisation. Research published in Nature Geoscience reveals a major shift in the Nile around four thousand years ago, after which the floodplain in the Nile Valley around Luxor greatly expanded.

Thanks to a new multidisciplinary approach, a team from the University of Geneva and the CNRS has traced the dietary practices of a Senegalese village. This method will be used for other archaeological digs. Food is more than just a biological need. A veritable marker of culture and identity, it encompasses a wide range of practices that allow us to "read" a region, a country or a social group.

Although the children of Neanderthals, who lived until around 40,000 years ago, and those of modern humans of the Upper Paleolithic Age 50,000 to 12,000 years ago were probably subjected to comparable stresses, systemic stress peaked at different stages of development. Research into their teeth has revealed that enamel growth reflects stress phases caused by issues such as disease and malnutrition during the early years of life.

In The Conversation, Dr Ceri Shipton (UCL Institute of Archaeology) explores his new research that has found a large wave of migration reached the island of Timor not long after 50,000 years ago. Humans arrived in Australia at least  65,000 years ago , according to archaeological evidence. These pioneers were part of an early wave of people travelling eastwards from Africa, through Eurasia, and ultimately into Australia and New Guinea.

New archaeological evidence indicates that humans first reached the island of Timor in large numbers, challenging scientists' understanding of how ancient people migrated from Southeast Asia to Australia, according to a new study led by a UCL researcher. The study, published in Nature Communications , dated and analysed ancient sediment, artefacts, and animal remains discovered in a large rock overhang in Laili, located in north-central Timor-Leste (East Timor).

Since 2022, anthropology has been in the spotlight at CNRS. Caroline Bodolec, the deputy scientific director behind this initiative, looks back at the main mediation actions around the discipline after it "put on a show" on April 30, 2024. The CNRS Sciences humaines & sociales "Sharing Anthropology" focus ended on April 30.

A 3,500-year-old suit of Mycenaean armour may have been used in battle - and not just for ceremonial purposes as previously thought - new research reveals. Researchers worked with a group of Greek military volunteers who wore a replica of the Dendra armour during extended simulations of the rigours of battle.

Researchers at the University of Bern have for the first time been able to pin down a prehistoric settlement of early farmers in northern Greece dating back more than 7,000 years to the year. For this they combined annual growth ring measurements on wooden building elements with the sudden spike of cosmogenic radiocarbon in 5259 BC.

Horses crossed the Baltic Sea in ships during the Late Viking Age and were sacrificed for funeral rituals, according to research from Cardiff University. Published in the journal Science Advances , studies on the remains of horses found at ancient burial sites in Russia and Lithuania show that they were brought overseas from Scandinavia utilising expansive trade networks connecting the Viking world with the Byzantine and Arab Empires.

Researchers have found that 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two thousand years, almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during the same period. When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is Ulf Büntgen Although 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record, the instrumental evidence only reaches back as far as 1850 at best, and most records are limited to certain regions.

Mark Gwynn Australian National Dictionary Centre The 2022 Netflix television series Heartbreak High introduced many people to the Australian word eshay . The word puzzled some Australians, and most of the international audience of the award-winning series, who never heard it before. One of the central characters in this high school drama is a school kid named Ca$h.

Ancient grave find in Wels provides new insights through interdisciplinary research. When a grave was discovered in Wels 20 years ago, the find was thought to be the early medieval double burial of a married couple together with a horse due to its unusual characteristics. Only now has it been possible to clarify the biological sex and relationship of the buried persons using the latest archaeological technologies.

Researchers at the University of Basel and the University of Zurich have been able to prove that British squirrels carried leprosy bacteria as early as the Middle Ages. Further results revealed a link between the pathogens found in the medieval rodents and those in the local human population during that period.

Weizmann Institute researchers establish absolute chronology for Kingdom of Judah's Jerusalem Jerusalem has been inhabited continuously for thousands of years, serving as both a center of religious significance and a seat of power for kingdoms, yet despite the vast number of historical texts about the city, there are still gaps in its absolute chronology.

Researchers from TU Graz and the University of Graz have digitised a broken altar stone from Lavant so that citizens can put it together on the internet. The aim is to achieve what generations of archaeologists have failed to do. The Bishop's church at Kirchbichl in Lavant in East Tyrol is one of the most important early Christian monuments in Austria.