Human remains reveal a rare instance of intergroup violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Researchers found the remains of at least 27 people at a site in Kenya, including ten skeletons showing signs of blunt-force or sharp-force trauma to the head and/or neck. The remains, dating to 9,500 – 10,500 years ago were found with no signs […]
Tag: history
Drinking 170-year-old champagne for science
Tasting and chemically analyzing 170-year-old champagnes recovered from the Baltic Sea in 2010 has revealed some features of 19th-century winemaking practices. Researchers compared the chemistry of the historic bottles to that of modern champagnes and found the recovered bottles had less alcohol but higher levels of iron, copper, sodium and chlorine. The discovery of traces […]
Rock art of ages – cave paintings from Indonesia
Cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi date back nearly 40,000 years, on par with the oldest known human artwork from caves in Europe. The paintings include stencils of hands that date back as far as 39,900 years ago, making them the oldest known hand stencils. The paintings also include representations of a babirusa, […]
What really killed Richard III?
Modern forensic techniques provide a blow-by-blow account of the injuries sustained by England’s Richard III over 500 years ago. The remains of the last English monarch to die in battle were discovered under a car park in 2012 and confirmed by DNA analysis in 2013. The latest paper provides detailed analysis of the 11 wounds […]
Solving a 4000-year-old ‘cold case’
A 4000-year-old skull is missing its front two teeth on the bottom jaw and has a projectile point embedded in it, but a new study shows the two aren’t related. Researchers used advanced bone imaging analysis techniques to show that the projectile tip was part of a larger arrowhead, the rest of which was buried […]
