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The reevaluation of 16 flint and radiolarite tools found among bear remains in a cave in the Alps suggests that traveling Neanderthals carried the stone tools with them, according to a Phys.org report. Microscopic examination of the tools by Davide Delpiano of the University of Ferrara and his colleagues detected evidence of retouching, indicating that tools had been sharpened repeatedly, yet no stone flakes or chips were uncovered in Caverna Generosa. Analysis of the chemical makeup of the stone used to make the tools revealed that it had come from a few miles away, much further down the mountain. The...

Who were the Celts really? Mythical druids of legend or feared warriors of antiquity? Deep inside the European Alps, sealed salt mines have preserved astonishing evidence of a powerful civilisation that flourished more than 3,000 years ago. These people were neither barbarians nor island dwellers -- they were the rulers of a vast Kingdom of Salt, enriched by one of the most valuable resources of the ancient world. Now, a remarkable discovery raises new questions. Inside a 2,400-year-old Celtic tomb, the remains of an aristocratic woman and two unusually large men are uncovered. Were they relatives, ritual sacrifices, or part...

Swiss police say they've identified two bodies found among an Alpine glacier as a couple missing for nearly 75 years. Valais canton police said Wednesday that forensic experts using DNA analysis identified them as Marcelin Dumoulin and his wife, Francine. They were 40 and 37, respectively, when they disappeared on Aug. 15, 1942. The couple's daughter, now 79, has said her parents set off on foot to feed their animals but never returned. Police were alerted on Friday to the bodies on the Tsanfleuron glacier at 2,615 metres above sea level. Regional police have a list going back to 1925...

he daughter of a couple who disappeared in the Swiss Alps more than 70 years ago has said the discovery of two bodies emerging from a melting glacier has brought her a "deep sense of calm" after so long without an answer. Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, now 79, told the Le Matin newspaper of Lausanne, Switzerland, that she and her siblings "spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day." Udry-Dumoulin is the youngest of seven children born to Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin. The couple went to milk their...

Someone's lunch was full of whole grains.Up in the high passes of the Bernese Alps, a team of researchers found a box. It was about 8 inches in diameter and made of pine, willow, and larch. It was 4,000 years old.Now, the scientists report in a new paper, published in Scientific Reports, they have discovered traces of what was once held in the box -- someone's lunch (or dinner or breakfast).The team thought that the box might have held porridge and looked for traces of milk. But they found nothing. Instead, using a newly developed technique, they were able to...

Researchers have identified the oldest known glacier ice in the European Alps, originating from the last Ice Age.US-based Desert Research Institute (DRI) conducted a detailed analysis of a 131 feet (40-meter) ice core extracted from Mont Blanc's Dôme du Goûter glacier in the Alps.This ice core provides the oldest known record of aerosols and climate in the European Alps, stretching back at least 12,000 years to the last Ice Age...The ice core showed a 3-degree Celsius temperature disparity between the last Ice Age and the current Holocene Epoch.The phosphorus record in the ice core also unveiled a 12,000-year history of...

A stunning fossilized world containing remnants of amphibians, skin prints, plants, and seeds was discovered in the melting glacier ice of the Italian Alps.Experts date the now-exposed lost world to about 280 million years ago.The site was found by a hiker over 5,500 feet above sea level...Scientists are learning that in real time after discovering an entire Paleozoic-era ecosystem, which had previously been hidden under snow and glacier. The paleontological site—located in the Orobie Valtellinesi Park in the Italian Alps—is so well-preserved that researchers discovered everything from footprints of amphibians and reptiles and fossilized plants and seeds to skin prints...

Switzerland agreed to buy F-35 jet fighters to park on a remote runway. Then the U.S. zeroed in on the Wangs, who owned the rustic hotel next door. UNTERBACH, — The Hotel Rössli, a century-old lodge in this Alpine valley village, enjoys a spectacular view . ... But it is the view from the back that caught the attention of American intelligence agencies. About 100 yards from the rear of the rustic, wood-paneled inn .. cuts the runway where the Swiss military had agreed to base several F-35s, the world’s most advanced jet fighter. The airstrip, only partly fenced, is...

Italian authorities are on the hunt for a bear that killed a 26-year-old jogger in the north-eastern region of Trentino last week.

Russian scientist Dr. Dmitry Fedyanin seemed to die doing what he loved. German officials say the 34-year-old expert in ultra-violet light and a senior research fellow at the Nanooptics Department of Siegen University in Germany fell to his death Berchtesgadener Alps National Park after following his hiking app over a cliff. Fedyanin’s body was found at the bottom of Hoher Laafeld peak, which sits at about 7,000 feet. Fedyanin was using his hiking app to make his way down the mountain but the route he was taking didn’t have paths and the app “sent him over mountain precipice.” “Our investigators...

Adèle Milloz plummeted to her death along with a friend she was hiking with on Friday. Their bodies were discovered Friday evening, and officials believed they were roped together when they took the fatal plunge. It is unclear why they fell, and authorities have said they are investigating. Some hikes were cancelled in the aftermath of the fatal accident, according to reports. Milloz, who grew up in the Alps, won several European and world titles in ski mountaineering, a sport where players hike up a mountain and ski down, according to The Sun. She was no longer competing at the...

The Trento provincial government said rescue operations were in progress after a large "ice avalanche" involving hikers, adding that there was likely to be a "heavy toll". The avalanche took place on the Marmolada, which at more than 3,300 metres is the highest mountain in the Dolomites, a range in the eastern Italian Alps straddling the regions of Trento and Veneto.

For those who love to catch the fresh falling snow on their tongues, beware, that might actually be plastic falling from the sky! Researchers from Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands estimate that close to 43 trillion miniature plastic particles land in Switzerland every year. The research focused on determining just how much plastic is falling back to Earth from the atmosphere, with study authors concluding certain plastic nanoparticles travel over 1,200 miles through the air on their way to the ground. While study authors are still uncertain about exact numbers, they estimate that as much as 3,000 tons of nano-plastics...

Archaeologists have, for the first time, found traces of a Bronze Age lakeside village under the surface of Lake Lucerne. The find shows that the city of Lucerne area was already populated 3,000 years ago.Traces of a pile dwelling (or stilt house) village came to light while laying a pipeline in the natural harbour area. The remnants were found by underwater archaeologists around four metres below the water surface...Archaeologists had been looking for proof of settlement for some time, but had been hampered by a thick layer of mud at the bottom of the lake. Work on the pipeline however...

The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were apparently relatively advanced within this cultural group. They had metallurgical skills, which were rare in Europe. They cleverly searched the mountains for copper deposits, melted the crude ore in clay ovens and made refined, shimmering red weapons out of the metal. In dugout canoes... they paddled along the region's river networks and sold their goods in areas of present-day Switzerland and to their relatives on Lake Constance. Even Otzi the Iceman had an axe, made of so-called Mondsee copper. At approximately 3200 B.C., says Binsteiner, the master blacksmiths were struck by a...

In early August, underwater archaeologists excavating at Lake Bracciano, north of Rome (Italy), brought up a nine meter-long dugout canoe hewn from a massive oak trunk. Some 9,000 years old, buried under three meters of mud and eight meters of water, this was the fourth canoe excavated at a Neolithic colony discovered near the shores of Anguillara in 1989. Unique in Neolithic archaeology, no other sites have been discovered in central Italy, and never at the bottom of a lake. It is located in La Marmotta Bay, at the foot of Anguillara's promontory. Discovered under unusual circumstances in 1989, when...

<p>Parts of Switzerland, Austria and Germany were surprised by unseasonably early snowfall overnight, after a sharp drop in temperatures and heavy precipitation.</p> <p>The Swiss meteorological agency said Saturday that the town of Montana, in the southern canton (state) of Valais, experienced 10 inches of snowfall — a new record for this time of year.</p>

Five people from Britain, including one child, are hospitalized in France with the new virus from China after contracting it during a holiday in the Alps. Saturday’s announcement by the French health minister is the latest example of how the tentacles of the virus can spread across multiple borders. The five British citizens were staying in a chalet in the Alpine resort of Contamines-Montjoie, and were in close contact with another Briton who apparently contracted the virus in Singapore, traveled to the French Alps and then tested positive for the virus upon return to Britain, French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn...

Paleontologists have excavated a mighty meat-eating, four-fingered dinosaur from an unexpected spot: the Italian Alps. The newly identified beast — dubbed Saltriovenator zanellai — lived about 200 million years ago, and it's the first-known Jurassic dinosaur discovered in Italy, the researchers said. It's also the oldest-known ceratosaurian, as well as the largest (it weighed 1 ton), predatory dinosaur known from the earliest part of the Jurassic. S. zanellai's journey to fossilization and discovery thrilled scientists, who deduced that the dinosaur's body ended up in the sea, where marine critters nibbled on its bones before it was buried. Then, it was...

All mines need regular reinforcement against collapse, and Hallstatt, the world's oldest salt mine perched in the Austrian Alps, is no exception. But Hallstatt isn't like other mines. Exploited for 7,000 years, the mine has yielded not only a steady supply of salt but also archaeological discoveries attesting to the existence of a rich civilisation dating back to the early part of the first millennium BC. So far less than two percent of the prehistoric tunnel network is thought to have been explored, with the new round of reinforcement work, which began this month, protecting the dig's achievements, according to...