Archaeology · Heritage · Science

Earliest traces of iron production in Angola found at the Ndalambiri rock shelter

The earliest iron production in the territory of Angola dates to the 5th to 8th centuries. Since 1974 the Ndalambiri rock shelter in Angola has been protected as a monument of national heritage, thanks to a painted frieze 60 metres long with almost 1,200 figures. A team led by

Archaeology · Science · Education · Nature

Homo sapiens tools 150,000 years old found in Côte d'Ivoire rainforest

Here is another recent study claiming to change our ideas about the origin of humankind. An international team led by Eslem Ben Arous and Eleanor Scerri describes stone tools of Homo sapiens, 150,000 years old, found at the Bété I site in Côte d'Ivoire. The layer has

Archaeology · Heritage · Science · Palaeontology · Nature

The 17th-century "Whalers' Cemetery" on Spitsbergen, by the Likneset station, has begun to thaw after 400 years

The 17th-century "Whalers' Cemetery" on Spitsbergen, by the Likneset station, has begun to thaw after 400 years. And now Norwegian archaeologists are examining knitted woollen stockings, finely woven woollen trousers, blue silk neckerchiefs, fragments of blue-striped linen shirts, caps and blankets found in remarkably well-

Archaeology · Observations · Science · Ethnography

Vessels 4,500 years old with traces of beer or grog found in northeastern Poland

Thirteen vessels 4,500 years old have been found in north-eastern Poland. Nine of them bear chemical traces of fermentation: lactic, acetic and levulinic acids, the by-products of yeasts and bacteria, and biomarkers of wheat and barley, fruit and resins. The researchers from the University of Warsaw call

Archaeology · Science · Nature

Why Humans Became Right-Handed: Oxford Study Links It to Brain Size and Upright Walking

Nine people in ten are right-handed. Other primates show no such picture: chimpanzees and gorillas may also prefer one hand, but far less often and far less markedly. Scientists have long been trying to work out why humans, specifically, have gone so far. There is no shortage of hypotheses:

Archaeology · Science · Humour

Dental calculus is the last kind of stone an archaeologist expects to find, yet Elena Fiorin and her colleagues have published measurements of mercury concentrations not in bones but in the dental plaque of those buried at two leprosaria: St Leonard in…

76 samples of dental plaque and 45 of soil showed that the inmates of the leprosaria carried between 0.11 and 9.7 mg/kg of mercury, that is, several times more than the control groups from ordinary cemeteries. This confirms that lepers were indeed treated with mercury. It was

Archaeology · Science

Drilling marks on a 59,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth found in Chagyrskaya Cave in Altai

The earliest dental intervention in human history was performed by Neanderthals. In Chagyrskaya Cave in the Altai, researchers have found a lower left second molar with a large artificial cavity on its chewing surface. Its age is about 59,000 years. Until now the earliest evidence of deliberate treatment of

Archaeology · Observations · Science · Humour

Scientists' conclusion on food procurement outside agriculture after its emergence

Prehistoric Danes kept hunting and fishing as their main sources of sustenance even centuries after the arrival of agriculture! Now there's a discovery! People went on procuring food outside agricultural practices, despite their appearance. When I hear scientific conclusions of this kind, I am never quite sure: is

Science · Palaeontology · Nature

Fossils from the Ediacaran Period prove to be microorganisms, not animal traces

540-Million-Year-Old Microfossils from Brazil, Long Regarded by Palaeontologists as Traces of the Movement of the Earliest Worm-Like Animals or Meiofauna, Turn Out to Be Fossilised Colonies of Bacteria and Algae. The discovery casts doubt on the hypothesis that complex, mobile animals were widely active before the

Archaeology · Science · Palaeontology

Aberdeen researchers find Neanderthals used rhinoceros teeth as tools

Researchers from the University of Aberdeen have analysed marks on the teeth of the narrow-nosed rhinoceros Stephanorhinus hemitoechus from two Middle Palaeolithic sites in Spain and France, dating to some 100,000 years ago. The grooves, notches, sliding marks and scratches proved to be precisely what repeated percussion leaves

The East · Science · Society · People

In 2022 a Swiss programmer from Lausanne, Solal Pirelli, while going through the proceedings of conferences held under the aegis of the Association for Computing Machinery, discovered systematic anomalies in volumes published under the chairmanship of the

In 2022 a Swiss programmer from Lausanne, Solal Pirelli, while going through the proceedings of conferences held under the aegis of the Association for Computing Machinery, discovered systematic anomalies in volumes published under the chairmanship of the Jordanian computer scientist Shadi Aljawarneh of the Jordan University of Science and Technology.

Archaeology · Geography · Science

At Nauwalabila I, in Kakadu National Park in the north of Australia, what may be the world's oldest evidence of the heat treatment of flint has been found

Patrick Schmidt and Peter Hiscock have re-examined flakes from the deep layers of this rock shelter and found on them traces of deliberate heating dating from 45 to 60 thousand years ago. The technique is as follows: a piece of flint is buried in hot sand beneath a fire,