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Pytheas of Massalia was the first-ever Mediterranean to reach and explore Great Britain and the Arctic Circle.He is believed to have traveled as far as Iceland, becoming the first person on record to describe the midnight sun and the first known scientific visitor to see and describe the Celtic and Germanic tribes.According to Henry Fanshawe Tozer, Pytheas' voyage to the north took place at about 330 BC, derived from three main sources. Sadly, his original writings, titled On The Ocean, did not survive, but he is quoted in the works of later geographers, such as Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History...

The stunning sight of emerald green-colored icebergs in Antarctica has been documented for more than a century — in literature and beyond. For decades, scientists have argued about the cause behind the bizarre phenomenon and debated why the green-hued ice chunks aren't the typical blue or white color. But a recent discovery from a 2016 research trip to East Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf may provide the final clue they've been waiting for. In a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, researchers found marine ice varies in color due to the "abundance of foreign constituents in the...

While the use of ochre by early humans dates to at least 250,000 years ago in Europe and Africa, this is the first time a paint containing ochre and milk has ever been found in association with early humans in South Africa, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and lead study author. The milk likely was obtained by killing lactating members of the bovid family such as buffalo, eland, kudu and impala, she said... The powdered paint mixture was found on the edge of a small stone flake in a layer of...

The burial of the so-called Red Lady, dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic, was discovered in El Mirón cave (Cantabria) in 2010. The Journal of Archaeological Science has devoted a special edition to all the studies conducted at this unique burial site, because there are hardly any Palaeolithic tombs like this one which is intact and which has not been contaminated. One study is the research led by the UPV/EHU's Ikerbasque lecturer Mª José Iriarte, who analysed the remains of fossilised pollen dating back more than 16,000 years ago and which appeared on the tomb. "They put whole flowers on...

Aged between 35 and 40 when she died, she was laid to rest alongside a large engraved stone, her body seemingly daubed in sparkling red pigment. Small, yellow flowers may even have adorned her grave 18,700 years ago -- a time when cave burials, let alone one so elaborate, appear to have been very rare. It was a momentous honour, and no one knows why she was given it... Her remains were discovered when Straus's team began digging behind this block in 2010. Radiocarbon dating reveals that the block fell from the ceiling at most only a few hundred years...

Paviland cave, on the Gower peninsula in South Wales, is a crucial site for tracing the origins of human life in Britain. It was in here, in 1823, that William Buckland, the first professor of geology at Oxford University, excavated the remains of a body that had been smeared with red ochre (naturally occurring iron oxide) and buried with a selection of periwinkle shells and ivory rods. Buckland initially thought the body was that of a customs officer, killed by smugglers. Then he decided it was a Roman prostitute... This misidentification gave the headless skeleton its name -- "the Red...

Ancient skeleton was 'even older' The burial site was in Goat's Hole Cave at Paviland on Gower The Red Lady of Paviland has always been a little coy about her age - but it appears she may be 4,000 years older than previously thought. Scientists say more accurate tests date the earliest human burial found in the UK to just over 29,000 years ago. When discovered in a cave on Gower in the 1820s the bones were thought to be around 18,000 years old, but were later redated to between 25,000 and 26,000. Researchers said it casts a new light...

Paviland Cave and The Red Lady Paviland Cave, on the south coast of the Gower peninsula, South Wales, is an Early Upper Palaeolithic (Early Stone Age) archaeological site, dating to roughly 30,000 - 20,000 years ago. It is the richest site of its kind in Britain, with four and a half thousand finds, including worked bone and stone (lithic) tools. The Red Lady of Paviland was a fairly complete human skeleton dyed in red ochre that was discovered in 1826 by the Reverend William Buckland in one of the Paviland limestone caves at )Goat’s Hole Cave). The "lady" has since...

Campaign to bring 'Red Lady' back to Swansea after 180 years Dec 27 2004 Robin Turner, Western Mail THE chairman of Swansea's tourism association is backing an Elgin Marbles style campaign to secure the return to Wales of the Red Lady of Paviland. The skeleton of the "red lady", complete with jewellery and a mammoth's head grave marker, is regarded as one of the world's most important archaeological finds. It was discovered in 1823 at Paviland Cave on Gower. Later analysis showed the skeleton to be that of a man, probably a chieftain, but the Red Lady tag has stuck....

The remains of a man buried 3,800 years ago in a richly decorated California grave bear some unusual but unmistakable features — a protruding brow, a lantern jaw, thick leg and arm bones, and teeth so crowded together that at one point they erupt in rows three deep. According to a new study of the ancient skeleton, they are signs of acromegaly, a rare disorder of the endocrine system that’s similar to gigantism. The California man is among the very few examples of acromegaly ever found in the archaeological record, and it’s the oldest ever identified, according to Dr. Eric...

In 1981, when Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University was beginning his archaeological career, he ran across some red stains in the grayish sediments on the floodplain of the Maas River where his team was excavating. The site, called Maastricht-Belvèdère, in The Netherlands, was occupied by Neanderthals at least 200,000 years ago. Roebroeks collected and stored samples of the red stains, and 30 years later he received funding to analyze them. It became apparent that he and his team had discovered the earliest evidence of hominins using the mineral iron oxide, also known as ocher. Until now, the use of...

A once-thriving 58,000-year-old ochre powder production site has just been discovered in South Africa. The discovery offers a glimpse of what early humans valued and used in their everyday lives... also marks the first time that any Stone Age site has yielded evidence for ochre powder processing on cemented hearths -- an innovation for the period. A clever caveman must have figured out that white ash from hearths can cement and become rock hard, providing a sturdy work surface. "Ochre occurs in a range of colors that includes orange, red, yellow, brown and shades of these colors," project leader Lyn...