Enlarge / Stonehenge as viewed from the northeast, showing the post-and-lintel construction of the Sarsen Circle. (credit: Timothy Darvill) Stonehenge was an important place for thousands of years before people placed the first stones, according to a recent study. Archaeologists used the microscopic remains of insects, pollen, fungal spores, and ancient DNA preserved in the […]
Enlarge / Analysis of the reputed self-portrait drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (~1515, Biblioteca Reale, Turin). (credit: C. Tyler/Saiko, Creative Commons) A recently assembled Leonardo da Vinci family tree, spanning 21 generations from 1331 to the present, could pave the way for DNA testing that might confirm whether the bones interred in da Vinci’s grave […]
Enlarge / Neanderthals and Denisovans probably enjoyed the view from Denisova cave, too. (credit: flickr user: loronet) At various points in the last 300,000 years, Denisova Cave has sheltered three different species of hominins. But with fossils from only eight individuals—four Denisovans, three Neanderthals, and the daughter of a Neanderthal/Denisovan pairing—it’s hard to tell a […]
Enlarge (credit: Italian Culture Ministry) Archaeologists in Italy recently unearthed the remains of at least nine Neanderthals in Guattari Cave, near the Tyrrhenian Sea about 100 km southeast of Rome. While excavating a previously unexplored section of the cave, archaeologists from the Archaeological Superintendency of Latina and the University of Tor Vergata recently unearthed broken skulls, […]
Enlarge (credit: Hajdinjak et al. 2020) DNA from the earliest Homo sapiens in Europe adds more detail to the story of our species’ expansion into Eurasia—and our complicated 5,000-year relationship with Neanderthals. The earliest traces of our species in Eurasia are a lower molar and a few fragments of bone from Bacho Kiro Cave in […]
Enlarge / X-ray image of the mysterious fetus found in the coffin of the 17th-century Swedish Bishop Peder Winstrup. (credit: Gunnar Menander) When Swedish archaeologists in 2015 X-rayed the remains of a 17th-century bishop, they were shocked when the images revealed that the bishop shared his coffin with the remains of a stillborn premature baby. Now, […]
Enlarge Archaeologists working near the small Croatian village of Potočani made a grim discovery in 2007. In a shallow pit, just a meter deep and two meters wide, they found the jumbled bones of at least 41 people. Radiocarbon dating on several of the bones revealed that they’d been in the pit for around 6,200 […]
Enlarge / A mammoth tusk thaws out of the ground in Siberia. Ancient DNA has revolutionized how we understand human evolution, revealing how populations moved and interacted and introducing us to relatives like the Denisovans, a “ghost lineage” that we wouldn’t realize existed if it weren’t for discovering their DNA. But humans aren’t the only […]
Enlarge / El Salt is an open-air rock shelter nestled against the base of a limestone cliff. Archaeological evidence tells us that Neanderthals lived here from around 60,700 to 45,200 years ago. (credit: Candela et al. 2021) Biologist Marco Candela and his colleagues recently sequenced ancient microbial DNA from 50,000-year-old Neanderthal feces found at the […]
Enlarge (credit: Luna) Dogs tagged along with the first humans to venture into the Americas, according to a recent study that analyzed existing collections of canine and human DNA. The results suggest that people domesticated dogs sometime before 23,000 years ago in Siberia, where isolated groups of wolves and people were struggling to survive the […]