Hippos didn’t rush out of Central Europe as the ice advanced. New tests on ancient bones reveal these huge semi-aquatic animals still wandered Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley between about 47,000 and 31,000 years ago. Deep into the last ice age. A global team led by scientists from the University of Potsdam and the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in
Scientists probing the bones of Napoleon’s fallen troops have uncovered solid evidence of two brutal pathogens that turned the 1812 Russian retreat into a disaster. Researchers at the Institut Pasteur identified paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever in soldiers interred in a mass grave. They shared preliminary findings on bioRxiv July 16, 2025, before publishing
A team from the Szent István Király Museum has discovered an elite warrior’s grave near Aba and Székesfehérvár in central Hungary. The burial, dated between 670 and 690 CE, belonged to a member of the Avar Khaganate, the nomadic empire that ruled the Pannonian Basin and much of Central and Eastern Europe during the early
New research has decoded how Maya astronomers forecasted solar eclipses with remarkable precision more than a millennium ago, revealing a self-correcting system that maintained accuracy across multiple generations. The study, published in Science Advances by John Justeson from the University at Albany and Justin Lowry from SUNY, analyzes the eclipse table in the Dresden Codex,
Metalworkers on Elephantine Island near Aswan were deliberately producing arsenical bronze nearly 4,000 years ago using sophisticated alloying techniques, according to new research published in Archaeometry. The discovery overturns long-held assumptions about ancient Egyptian metallurgy and reveals technological innovation far ahead of what scholars previously credited to Middle Kingdom craftsmen. The study, led by Ing.
Ancient humans and their extinct relatives were exposed to toxic lead for nearly two million years, and this environmental stressor may have shaped the evolution of language and brain development in ways that gave modern humans a decisive advantage. A new study published October 15, 2025, in Science Advances reveals that a single genetic mutation