Cave stalagmites show that flooding destroyed Liangzhu City
How an ancient Chinese culture met its end.
The Liangzhu excavation site, on the Yangtze River Delta, southwest of Shanghai in China, is home to the remains of a...
archaeology
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Rare non-returning boomerangs analysed for new clues
Find underlines the threat of climate change to ancient artefacts.
Four summers ago, Katheryn Litherland, a Yandruwandha Yawarrawarrka woman from north-eastern South Australia, and Jas...
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Origins of the mysterious Tarim Basin mummies revealed
Ancient DNA data has traced where the Bronze Age peoples of the Tarim Basin came from.
The dry Tarim Basin, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of north-western China, is home to hundreds of naturally mummi...
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Spotting Australian animal bones with collagen
Collagen is the protein making waves in animal archaeology.
How do scientists determine which animal a bone has come from? When it’s large or recent, the bone’s shape and DNA ca...
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Hunt for ancient Mesoamerican civilisations yields 478 new sites
Huge remote-sensing project creates a map of Olmec and Mayan structures.
Lidar – light detection and ranging, a light-based method of remote sensing – has become a valuable tool in archaeolo...
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Toasting a big week for ancient gastronomy
Gourmet goodies found in centuries-old Austrian and Byzantine sites.
Blue cheese, beer and wine - it’s the hipster’s smorgasbord, but it turns out humans have been chowing down on these ...
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Human evolution: a last archaic hominin stronghold in India
New research reveals some of the last practitioners of an archaic human culture.
Scientists trace the evolution and migration of ancient hominins to the edges of India Human history can be characte...
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Moths vs bats, weird asteroids, and ancestors with a sweet tooth – catch up on the science you mi...
Moths vs bats: moths use sound to thwart bat attacks Photograph of the Atlas moth (Attacus atlas). This large silk...
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First ancient human DNA from the gateway between Asia and Australia
Genomic clues from the grave of an ancient ‘princess’ reveal a vanished people.
When Griffith University archaeologist Adam Brumm heard from local villagers on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi abo...
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‘Climate windows’ allowed the first human migrations
New modelling reveals when conditions were favourable for ancient humans to leave Africa.
Migration is part of the great evolutionary story of our species – humans first evolved in Africa several million yea...
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Lead in the air ends up in our bones throughout history
Italian remains show that people have been breathing in lead for thousands of years
A study has traced lead concentrations in human bones between 400 and 12,000 years in age, finding that the amount of...
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A 3,500-year-old epic text begins its journey home
A looted relic is finally returned to its rightful place, but the problem is enormous.
The Iraqi culture and foreign ministries have said this week that 17,000 ancient artefacts, looted from the country d...