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A woman long believed to be the 'first Black Briton' was in fact white and had local ancestry from southern England, according to a new genetic study that overturns more than a decade of public perception.For years, scientists believed the woman, known as the Beachy Head Woman, came from sub-Saharan Africa. Her remains were discovered near the cliffs of Beachy Head in East Sussex and were widely presented as early evidence of African presence in Roman Britain...Her remains were first rediscovered in 2012 in Eastbourne Town Hall, stored in a box suggesting they were originally excavated in the 1950s. At...

Fossil fragments of a face as well as teeth were reassembled to produce the most complete cranium of a human ancestor from this time in the Horn of Africa. (Credit: Karen L. Baab. Scans provided by National Museum of Ethiopia. Photographs courtesy of M. Rogers and G. Suwa.) ================================================================= 1.6-Million-Year-Old Fossil Combines Homo habilis Face With Homo erectus Brow In A Nutshell * What did researchers find? A 1.6-to-1.5-million-year-old skull from Ethiopia combines features from two different stages of human evolution. The braincase and brow ridge match Homo erectus, but the face, teeth, and brain size look more like the...

A new breakthrough shows that some of biology’s most fragile molecules can persist far deeper into the past than scientists ever imagined. By decoding ancient gene activity from Ice Age remains, researchers have opened a window into the real-time biology of long-extinct animals. Credit: Shutterstock =========================================================================== For the first time, researchers have uncovered Ice Age RNA preserved within permafrost mammoth tissue, offering a rare glimpse into real-time gene activity from tens of millennia ago. Researchers at Stockholm University have, for the first time ever, isolated and sequenced RNA molecules from woolly mammoths that lived during the Ice Age. The team...

European researchers have achieved a milestone in paleogenomics by sequencing RNA from a woolly mammoth specimen dating back approximately 39,000 to 40,000 years, roughly three times older than the previous record for ancient RNA. The RNA was recovered from a well-preserved juvenile mammoth known as Yuka, discovered in northern Siberian permafrost in 2010, according to Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University and lead author of a study published in the journal Cell. Dalén told the Wall Street Journal that the findings could aid in identifying the genetic traits responsible for the mammoth’s distinctive woolly coat. The...

The 2,000-year-old remains of a dog with its fur still intact have been found at a Roman fort. The rare find was made at Vindolanda, Hexham, near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, and has been sent for analysis to determine the dog's breed... Other finds included an 1,800-year-old skull of a beheaded native Briton that was stuck on a spike... The top part of the human skull also found showed evidence of numerous wounds including sword injuries... Another artefact found during this year's dig was a solid silver brooch in the shape of a duck dating back more than 1,800 years....

The most direct way to answer the ancestry question is through genetics. Recent studies of ancient DNA (aDNA) have provided a robust, chronologically consistent picture of the Egyptian people’s origins, showing remarkable stability over thousands of years, followed by gradual admixture. Genetic evidence shows that the foundational population of the Nile Valley was established long before the first dynasty. During the “Green Sahara” period (approx. 11,000 to 5,000 years ago), populations migrated towards the Nile from all directions as the Sahara dried, creating a unique, indigenous mix of Northeast African peoples and migrants from the Near East. A breakthrough 2025...

A central claim among those who deny a link between ancient and modern Egyptians is that subsequent invasions replaced the original population. This is not supported by demographic, genetic, or linguistic evidence. Genetic studies show ancient Egypt DNA continues.The Greek and Roman Periods: The Ptolemaic Greeks and later the Romans ruled as small, elite minorities. Their demographic footprint on the overall gene pool of Egypt was negligible.The Arab Conquest (7th Century CE): This was the most significant cultural event, introducing Arabic and Islam. However, this was a case of elite dominance and cultural diffusion, not population replacement. The Genetic Impact:...

An international team of researchers have successfully recovered and analysed ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies dating from approximately 1400 BCE to 400 BCE, including the first genome-wide data from three individuals. The study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did, whereas ancient Egyptians were found to be most closely related to ancient people from the Middle East and Western Asia. This study counters prior scepticism about the possibility of recovering reliable ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies. Despite the potential issues of degradation and contamination caused by climate and mummification methods, the authors were...

The Burtele Foot with its elements in the anatomical position. (Photo by Yohannes Haile-Selassie/ASU) In A Nutshell * Scientists matched a mysterious 3.4-million-year-old fossil foot discovered in Ethiopia to Australopithecus deyiremeda, a human ancestor that lived alongside Lucy’s species but retained tree-climbing abilities. * The discovery shows human evolution wasn’t a straight path from trees to ground. While Lucy’s species evolved rigid feet for walking, A. deyiremeda kept feet that could both walk and climb, plus ate different foods from forest environments. * A juvenile jaw with distinctive teeth from the same site as the foot provided the missing link....

A third shape hidden in the infamous Vitruvian Man drawing suggests an even deeper understanding of human anatomy than previously known. Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: * A London-based dentist spotted a “hidden in plain sight” third shape within Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man drawing. * The 1490 illustration was originally created to demonstrate a principle theorized by the Roman architect Vitruvius—that the human body could proportionally fit within both a circle and a square. * The dentist noticed that a third shape in the drawing—a triangle between the figure’s legs—was reminiscent of a dental...

New research suggests that dozens of Bronze-Age era Britons were killed in an attack unlike any previous known to archaeologists studying that time period and location. The research on human remains from Charterhouse Warren in southwest England, conducted by a team of researchers from multiple institutions including Oxford University, was published in Antiquity, a journal of world archaeology. It found that at least 37 Bronze Age-era men, women and children were "killed and butchered" and then cannibalized, with their bodies then thrown down a nearly 50-foot deep natural shaft. While archaeologists have found the remains of Bronze Age and later...

Archaeologists uncover the remains of a community brutally murdered, ten thousand years ago. The bones of men, women and children have emerged from the bed of an ancient lake, providing evidence of a violent massacre in prehistoric Kenya. Marta Mirazón Lahr describes the gruesome find in this Nature Video and you can read the full paper here: Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya | 20 January 2016 | M. Mirazón Lahr et alAttack by the lake: a prehistoric massacre | 3:20nature video | 814K subscribers | 60,942 views | January 20, 2016

According to a statement released by Eötvös Loránd University, an international team of researchers led by Tamás Hajdu of Eötvös Loránd University has identified a skeleton unearthed on Budapest's Margaret Island as the remains of Duke Béla of Macsó. The thirteenth-century duke is known to have been the maternal grandson of King Béla IV of Hungary and a member of the Scandinavian Rurik dynasty, which ruled Kievan Rus, on his father's side. Austrian historical accounts attest that the duke was assassinated in November 1272, and that his body was recovered by relatives and buried in a monastery on Margaret Island....

Everyone knows Beethoven went deaf, but nobody really knew what killed him until now. Let’s get into it. For centuries, people talked about his genius and his misery like they were the same thing. And as it turns out, they kinda were. The man who gave the world symphonies was being poisoned every single day of his life. Scientists have tested the locks of hair that fans snipped from his head when he died in 1827. And what they found was pure mayhem. His body was loaded with lead, arsenic, and mercury. His wine, his medicine, even the glass he...

Archaeologists from Bournemouth University have uncovered the remains of a teenage girl buried face down in a pit in Dorset, southern England—an extraordinary discovery that may point to one of Britain’s earliest recorded cases of human sacrifice. The burial, dated to around 2,000 years ago, sheds new light on the ritual practices of the Iron Age Durotriges tribe, who inhabited the region long before the Roman conquest.The skeleton, discovered during ongoing excavations at an Iron Age settlement, was found without grave goods and in a position that deviates sharply from normal burial customs of the time. Researchers believe her hands...

The retreat from Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Grande Armée in 1812 was a cataclysmic event that marked the beginning of the end for his empire and personal dominance in Europe, with about 300,000 soldiers perishing in a force that originally numbered roughly a half million. A new study involving DNA extracted from the teeth of 13 French soldiers who were buried in a mass grave in Lithuania's capital Vilnius along the route of the retreat is offering a deeper understanding of the misery the Grande Armée experienced, detecting two pathogens not previously documented in this event. "Vilnius...

Abstract: The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE. Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures. To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe. We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively. Their demise was...

For years, archaeologists have struggled to answer a surprisingly human question: how do you tell if a skeleton from a thousand years ago was once pregnant? © Credit: Dr Hugh Willmott, University of Sheffield Pregnancy has long remained one of the most elusive aspects of human life to trace in the archaeological record, especially when it comes to skeletons. While modern tests rely on the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), this biomolecule degrades too quickly to survive underground for centuries. Now, a new study led by scientists at the University of Sheffield reveals that bones and teeth from ancient skeletons...

A pair of Ice Age “puppies” preserved in Siberian permafrost for over 14,000 years have turned out to be wolves, not early domesticated dogs. A recent study of two ancient “puppies” dating back more than 14,000 years suggests they were actually wolves, not early domestic dogs as once believed. Genetic testing revealed that the cubs were sisters, around two months old. Like modern wolves, they ate a combination of meat and plants. What surprised researchers most was the discovery of woolly rhinoceros remains in their stomachs, since such a massive animal would have been a difficult target for wolves to...

According to a statement released by Peking University, researchers led by Huang Yani and Pang Yuhong of Peking University analyzed the complete genomes of 58 individuals whose remains were recovered from central China's Baligang site. This Neolithic site is situated between the Yellow River basin to the north, where early farmers grew millet, and the Yangtze River basin to the south, where people planted rice. The DNA study suggests that in the early Neolithic period, the Baligang population comprised a mix of northern and southern East Asian ancestry. Then, some 4,200 years ago, there was an increase in people bearing...