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It’s not much of a stretch to believe that getting stoned in the Stone Age was as popular among prehistoric Europeans as it is now. However, new evidence suggests that marijuana, mushrooms, alcohol and other mood-altering substances were used for more than zonking with Zonk – they played crucial roles in spiritual practices, especially burial rituals and communications with the after-world.Elisa Guerra-Doce of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain has documented the cultural contexts in which forms of alcohol and drugs were used in prehistoric Europe. The forms she looked for were fossilized leaves and seeds of psychoactive plants, residues...

One of the oldest human skeletons in North America has been discovered by a team of international scientists in an underwater Yucatán Peninsula cave. Named "Naia", the teenager fell to her death in a large pit called Hoyo Nego, meaning "black hole" in Spanish. Patricia Beddows, a cave-diving researcher from Northwestern University, said: "The preservation of all the bones in this deep water-filled cave is amazing - the bones are beautifully laid out." "The girl's skeleton is exceptionally complete because of the environment in which she died -- she ended up in the right water and in a quiet place...

Egypt said Wednesday archaeologists have unearthed a 5,600-year-old preserved tomb and mummy predating the pharaonic First Dynasty, a discovery that will shed new light on the pre-dynastic era. The tomb was built before the rule of king Narmer, the founder of the First Dynasty who unified Upper and Lower Egypt in the 31th century BC, the antiquities ministry said in a statement. The tomb was discovered in the Kom al-Ahmar region, between Luxor and Aswan, on the site of ancient Hierakonpolis, the city of the falcon, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Upper Egypt. The archaeologists found an...

Egypt's minister of antiquities says Japanese archeologists have unearthed the tomb of an ancient beer brewer in the city of Luxor that is more than 3,000 years old. Mohammed Ibrahim says Friday the tomb dates back to the Ramesside period and belongs to the chief "maker of beer for gods of the dead" who was also the head of a warehouse. He added that the walls of the tomb's chambers contain "fabulous designs and colors, reflecting details of daily life ... along with their religious rituals." The head of the Japanese team, Jiro Kondo, says the tomb was discovered during...

Archeologists have found a tomb dating back to around 1100 B.C. south of Cairo, Egypt's Antiquities Ministry said Thursday. Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said that the tomb belongs to a guard of the army archives and royal messenger to foreign countries. Ibrahim said the Cairo University Faculty of Archaeology's discovery at Saqqara adds "a chapter to our knowledge about the history of Saqqara." Ola el-Egeizy of Cairo University said the tomb contains "very nice inscriptions" of the funerary procession and the afterlife of the deceased. The tomb was found near another one dating back to the same period belonging to...

Egypt Archaeologists May Have Found Alexander the Great’s Tomb Nikoleta Kalmouki April 30, 2014 In Egypt, a team of archaeologists and historians from the Polish Center of Archaeology have revealed a mausoleum made of marble and gold that might be the tomb of Alexander the Great. The site is situated in an area known as Kom el-Dikka in the heart of downtown Alexandria, only 60 meters away from the Mosque of Nebi Daniel. The monument was apparently sealed off and hidden in the 3rd or 4th century AD, to protect it from the Christian repression and destruction of pagan monuments...

Central-east Mexico gave birth to the domesticated chili pepper—now the world's most widely grown spice crop—reports an international team of researchers, led by a plant scientist at the University of California, Davis. Results from the four-pronged investigation—based on linguistic and ecological evidence as well as the more traditional archaeological and genetic data—suggest a regional, rather than a geographically specific, birthplace for the domesticated chili pepper. That region, extending from southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca to southeastern Veracruz, is further south than was previously thought, the researchers found. The region also is different from areas of origin that have been suggested...

Some of the 11 Jewish ossuaries from Second Temple period still held bones, featured Hebrew script listing names of those interred. The Antiquities Authority and police cooperated last Friday to arrest suspects who allegedly stole ornate stone ossuary burial chests, which were used by Jews in Israel during the Second Temple period roughly 2,000 years ago. The suspects were caught while in possession of eleven ossuaries, some of them still containing skeletal remains. The suspected grave robbers, who were arrested and brought in for questioning, came from the Arab village of Abadiyah in Judea, located near Bethlehem, as well as...

A newly deciphered letter home dating back around 1,800 years reveals the pleas of a young Egyptian soldier named Aurelius Polion who was serving, probably as a volunteer, in a Roman legion in Europe. In the letter, written mainly in Greek, Polion tells his family that he is desperate to hear from them and that he is going to request leave to make the long journey home to see them. Addressed to his mother (a bread seller), sister and brother, part of it reads: "I pray that you are in good health night and day, and I always make obeisance...

Human remains dug up from an ancient grave in Oxfordshire add to a growing body of evidence that Britain's fifth-century transition from Roman to Anglo-Saxon was cultural rather than bloody. The traditional historical narrative is one of brutal conquest, with invaders from the North wiping out and replacing the pre-existing population. But a new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, hints at a more peaceful process. Dr Andrew Millard, from Durham University, is one of the study's authors. 'The main controversy over the years has centred on how many Anglo-Saxons came across the North Sea,' he says. 'Was...

On this stick from the 1200s found in Bergen, two men named Sigurd and Lavran have written their names both in code and with regular runes. This helped runologist Jonas Nordby to solve the Jötunvillur code. For the first time, the Jötunvillur runic code is cracked. It can help to solve the mystery of the Vikings’ secret codes. Why did the Vikings use codes when they wrote runes? Was it a secret message or other reasons that they encrypted runic texts? This, we still know little about. But runologist Jonas Nordby think he may be one step closer to the...

Prehistoric Boy May Be Native American 'Missing Link' LiveScience.com By By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience ContributorFebruary 12, 2014 A prehistoric boy's DNA now suggests that ancient toolmakers long thought of as the first Americans may serve as a kind of "missing link" between Native Americans and the rest of the world, researchers say. The findings reveal these prehistoric toolmakers are the direct ancestors of many contemporary Native Americans, and are closely related to all Native Americans. Scientists investigated a prehistoric culture known as the Clovis, named after sites discovered near Clovis, N.M. Centuries of cold, nicknamed the "Big Freeze," helped...

Scientists Find 800,000-Year-Old Footprints Inn UK (Update) Jill LawlessFebuary 7, 2014Undated handout photo issued by the British Museum Friday Feb. 7, 2014 of some of the human footprints, thought to be more than 800,000 years old, found in silt on the beach at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast of England, with a camera lens …They were a British family on a day out—almost a million years ago. Archaeologists announced Friday that they have discovered human footprints in England that are between 800,000 and 1 million years old—the most ancient found outside Africa, and the earliest evidence of human life in...

TORONTO — Archaeologists working near the ancient settlement of Edfu, in southern Egypt, have uncovered a step pyramid that dates back about 4,600 years, predating the Great Pyramid of Giza by at least a few decades.

Here's What Happened When Neanderthals And Ancient Humans Hooked Up 80,000 Years Ago Dina Spector Jan. 29, 2014, 1:49 PM     Neanderthal REUTERS/Nikola Solic Hyperrealistic face of a neanderthal male is displayed in a cave in the new Neanderthal Museum in the northern Croatian town of Krapina February 25, 2010 By comparing the Neanderthal genome to modern human DNA, the authors of two new studies, both published on Wednesday, show how DNA that humans have inherited from breeding with Neanderthals has shaped us. Modern humans, Neanderthals, and their sister lineage, Denisovans, descended from a common ancestor. The...

Alexander the Great built a legendary empire before his untimely—and mysterious—death at the age of just 32 in 323 BC. Some historians argued was death was due to natural causes, while others maintained he was secretly murdered at a celebratory banquet. Now, an Otago University scientist may have unraveled the case some 2,000 years later. National Poisons Center toxicologist Dr. Leo Schep thinks the culprit could be poisonous wine made from an innocuous-looking plant, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald. […] His research, co-authored by Otago University classics expert Dr. Pat Wheatley and published in the medical...

Ancient Humans Had Sex With A Mystery Species Stephanie Pappas Live Science Dec. 4, 2013, 3:33 PM A new, improved sequencing of ancient human relative genomes reveals that Homo sapiens didn't only have sex with Neanderthals and a little-understood line of humans called Denisovans. A fourth, mystery lineage of humans was in the mix, too. As reported by the news arm of the journal Nature, new genetic evidence suggests that several hominids — human relatives closer than humans' current living cousin, the chimpanzee — interbred more than 30,000 years ago. This group of kissing cousins included an unknown human ancestor...

Italian archaeologists have unearthed a 2,600-year-old intact Etruscan tomb that promises to reveal new depths of one of the ancient world’s most fascinating and mysterious cultures.

An Incredible New Skull Is Forcing Us To Rethink The Evolution Of Early Humans Dina Spector Oct. 17, 2013, 2:01 PM Photo courtesy of Georgian National Museum A 1.8-million-year-old skull combines a small braincase with a long face and large teeth, which is unlike any other Homo fossils on record. Researchers have traditionally used differences among fossilized remains of ancient humans to define separate species among the earliest members of our Homo genus — Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Homo rudolfensis, for example. But an amazing new skull found in a republic of Georgia suggests that the specimens previously representing...

Scientists Have Found An Ancient Fossilized Mosquito Full Of Blood Jennifer Welsh Oct. 14, 2013, 5:37 PMBlood engorged mosquito Researchers have just published an exciting find: a 46-million-year-old mosquito full of blood. Next stop "Jurassic Park"? Not so fast. The find is really interesting because it's the first example of blood-feeding in these ancient insects. We hadn't had clear evidence of when this began until now. They found the mosquito in shale sediments in Montana. They first found the presence of iron in the female mosquito's belly, then used a non-destructive technique to study the molecules inside the find. They...