Science - The Parnassian (Page 2)

Archaeology · Science · Nature

A group of scholars from Spanish universities has studied the origins of Iberian viticulture through DNA from archaeological seeds and suggests that it appeared long before the arrival of the Romans

For a long time it was believed that the wine industry of Spain traces its descent to the Roman conquest of Iberia, which began in the 3rd century BC. The importance of viticulture to the Romans is well known, and the vine followed them everywhere. A new study shows that

Archaeology · Geography · Science · Rome

Not All Roads Lead to Rome

In 20 BC the Emperor Augustus set up the Golden Milestone in the Roman Forum, from which distances along all the roads of the empire were symbolically measured. A team of researchers led by Tom Brughmans has analysed this network, which covers some 300,000 kilometres of roads in Europe,

Archaeology · Science · Nature

Continuing our reading on plague among the hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region 5,500 years ago

Continuing our reading on plague among the hunter-gatherers of the Baikal region 5,500 years ago. An international team has studied ancient DNA from human remains at four burial grounds in the Lake Baikal area and, by sequencing genetic material preserved in teeth, has reconstructed bacterial genomes and identified

Archaeology · Science · Society · Ethnography

A new estimate of the Indigenous population of Australia before the arrival of Europeans has been published

A new estimate of the Indigenous population of Australia before the arrival of Europeans has been published. Modelling based on archaeological, genetic, ethnographic and ecological data has produced a median estimate of 2.22 million people by 1788, that is, by the arrival of the First Fleet. Earlier estimates ranged

Science · Palaeontology · Nature

A Feather Found in the Fossilised Dung of a Large Dinosaur Dating from 66 Million Years Ago

David DeMar of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington found the specimen in 2016 in north-eastern Montana, while collecting fossil fish. He picked up a dark reddish-brown nodule about half the size of a golf ball, examined its surface through a hand lens and saw a

Archaeology · Faith · Observations · Science

Swedish astrophysicist Göran Henriksson of Uppsala University finds that the pagan inhabitants of Old Uppsala used an exact lunisolar calendar to fix the date of the great winter sacrifice

Swedish astrophysicist Göran Henriksson of Uppsala University has established that the pagan inhabitants of Old Uppsala used an exact lunisolar calendar to fix the date of the great winter sacrifice. In the pre-Christian era Old Uppsala was the principal religious and political centre of the Svear, one of the

Archaeology · Science

A team of researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution has found traces of cannibalism in three caves in southern Spain

The scholars examined some one thousand human bones and teeth from the caves of Malalmuerzo, Carigüela and Maiolicas. They looked for signs pointing to the eating of human flesh: butchery marks, characteristic fractures, traces of boiling and tooth impressions. By butchery marks archaeologists mean the cuts and notches left on

Archaeology · Geography · Science · Nature

This melon seed is more than 1,000 years old, and its DNA proves that melons reached China from South Asia

Melon seeds found during the 2024 excavations at the submerged medieval port of Shomen Gugan, in the present-day city of Wenzhou in south-eastern China, have preserved their DNA thanks to airtight, waterlogged sediments. Four seeds were found in all. Two of them contained enough genetic material for sequencing,

Archaeology · Heritage · Science

A NASA Method for Processing Satellite Images Is Now Used to Read Faded Rock Art

The technique is called decorrelation stretch. The algorithm was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and its description was published in 1996 by a member of the laboratory's staff, Ronald Alley, in connection with an instrument that later flew on the Terra satellite.

Coming Up · Moscow · Science · Society

When the theatre sets about making sense of the algorithmic age, the talk inevitably turns to the balance between tradition and experiment

When the theatre sets about making sense of the algorithmic age, the talk inevitably turns to the balance between tradition and experiment. The project “Neurotheatre: A Rehearsal for the Future”, whose launch was announced on 7 September at the opening of the Theatre of Nations season, is conceived not as

Archaeology · The East · Science

Tiny 80,000-year-old stone points found in Uzbekistan's Obi-Rakhmat cave, which by wear traces and mass can only have served as arrowheads: the earliest evidence of ranged weapons in Eurasia

Tiny stone points 80,000 years old have been found in Uzbekistan's Obi-Rakhmat cave, which by wear traces and mass can only have served as arrowheads: that is, the earliest evidence of ranged weapons in Eurasia. Such technology has hitherto been associated exclusively with Homo sapiens, so

Archaeology · Faith · The East · Art · Books · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Science · Society · Nature

Marcus Aurelius advised retreating into oneself, for nowhere does a man withdraw more quietly

Marcus Aurelius advised retreating into oneself, for nowhere does a man withdraw more quietly. In the digest, for my part, I try to gather what has been published over the month while the memories are still fresh. So, the main things on the channel for August. The section on archaeology