Researchers need to be careful not to contaminate ancient samples with their own DNA.
Caia Image via Getty Images
Thousands of ancient genomes have been sequenced to date. A Nobel Prize highlights tremendous opportunities for aDNA, as well as challenges related to rapid growth, equity and misinformation.
Sotheby’s sold a 77 million-year-old Gorgosaurus skeleton for over $6 million in July 2022.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Derided as ‘toys for the rich,’ the specimens being bought and sold raise broader questions about the relationship between science and capitalism.
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The Maya would have had to obtain mercury from far locations, transporting it by foot hundreds of kilometres across present-day Central America.
‘Trallib (Oil Container),’ by Norman Daly, 1970. Daily made this object with an orange juicer.
Photo by Marilyn Rivchin
Norman Daly’s 1972 exhibition, ‘The Civilization of Llhuros,’ presented fiction as fact – and reminded viewers of just how easily they could be duped.
Tim Maloney
An astonishing discovery from the oldest known grave in Southeast Asia has revised medical history – the previous known amputation surgery was just 7,000 years ago.
A new DNA method could help making it easier to date skeletons.
Malinka333/Shutterstock
DNA dating could complement radiocarbon technology to help make archaeology more accurate.
Yinika L. Perston
In a new study, archaeologists have re-discovered the role boomerangs played in retouching stone tools.
If you made it past early childhood, your chances got better to see your golden years.
Grafissimo/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images
Nasty, brutish – but not necessarily short. Here’s how archaeologists know plenty of people didn’t die young.
Bradley Russell
A change in climate may have triggered the decline and collapse of the Mayan city of Mayapán in the 15th century.
Does a painting from 1400 depict one of Jesus’ torturers as suffering from ‘saddle nose,’ a common effect of syphilis?
Detail of an Austrian painting c. 1400 of the Passion of Christ, The Cleveland Museum of Art
The idea that Europeans brought new diseases to the Americas and returned home with others has been widely accepted. But evidence is mounting that for syphilis this scenario is wrong.
During ice ages, ice sheets like the one in Greenland have covered much of Earth’s surface.
Thor Wegner/DeFodi Images via Getty Images
The Earth has had at least five major ice ages, and humans showed up in time for the most recent one. In fact, we’re still in it.
A modern cockerel with dramatic plumage.
Robert May, https://robertmay.photography/
Why did the chicken cross the globe? A new study has revealed how chickens were domesticated.
Paloma de la Peña
Shared designs for stone tools across southern Africa show early humans had wide social connections before beginning to migrate to the rest of the world.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Around 200,000 years ago, people were living who were as intelligent as us.
The iconic Iguanodon sculptures of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.
Witton and Michel (2022)
New research on the Crystal Palace dinosaurs is uncovering truths about these famous Victorian sculptures
Fabrice Demeter (University of Copenhagen / CNRS Paris)
The mysterious Denisovans left DNA traces in populations across Southeast Asia and Australasia, but until now no physical signs of their presence outside Eurasia had been found.
Author provided
A team of US archaeologists have revealed cave art almost 2,000 years old.
A man identified only as Viktor shows his neighbor’s grave in Bucha, Ukraine. It was too dangerous to go to the cemetery.
Jana Cavojska/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Ukrainian families’ anguish at not being able to bury their loved ones underscores a deep human need, an anthropologist writes.
A plate of fufu, a meal common in West Africa.
Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The preparation of ancient meals in prehistoric West Africa combined vegetables, pulses, tubers and, possibly, herbs and spices.
Thousands of years ago, people in this part of Sudan used underground tombs to bury their dead.
Michele R. Buzon
Promoting and practicing ethical research that includes the people who live in the area today is as important to the archaeological team as learning more about the lives of the ancient inhabitants.