A genetic variant that appears to have boosted medieval Europeans’ ability to survive the Black Death centuries ago may contribute — albeit in a small way — to an inflammatory…
Category: Archaeology
Drone photos reveal an early Mesopotamian city made of marsh islands
A ground-penetrating eye in the sky has helped to rehydrate an ancient southern Mesopotamian city, tagging it as what amounted to a Venice of the Fertile Crescent. Identifying the watery…
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did
On sunny summer days, powerboats pulling water-skiers zip across Georgia’s Lake Oconee, a reservoir located about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Atlanta. For those without a need for speed, fishing…
‘The Five-Million-Year Odyssey’ reveals how migration shaped humankind
The Five-Million-Year OdysseyPeter BellwoodPrinceton Univ., $29.95 Archaeologist Peter Bellwood’s academic odyssey wended from England to teaching posts halfway around the world, first in New Zealand and then in Australia. For…
Britons’ tools from 560,000 years ago have emerged from gravel pits
In the 1920s, laborers and amateur archaeologists at gravel quarry pits in southeastern England uncovered more than 300 ancient, sharp-edged oval tools. Researchers have long suspected that these hand axes…
Ancient bacterial DNA hints Europe’s Black Death started in Central Asia
Although best known as a plague that killed millions of Europeans from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death originated about a decade earlier in Central Asia, a new study suggests.…
A new origin story for domesticated chickens starts in rice fields 3,500 years ago
It turns out that chicken and rice may have always gone together, from the birds’ initial domestication to tonight’s dinner. In two new studies, scientists lay out a potential story…
Lasers reveal ancient urban sprawl hidden in the Amazon
A massive urban landscape that contained interconnected campsites, villages, towns and monumental centers thrived in the Amazon rainforest more than 600 years ago. In what is now Bolivia, members of…
A special brew may have calmed Inca children headed for sacrifice
Two Inca children slated for ritual sacrifice more than 500 years ago quaffed a special soothing concoction that has gone undetected until now. Those young victims, most likely a girl…
