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In 1995, a human skull emerged from the Atlantic Ocean and landed on a beach in Longport, New Jersey. More bones followed over the next 18 years, surfacing across three different Jersey Shore towns. For three decades, investigators called the unidentified remains "Scattered Man John Doe." Now, genetic genealogy researchers have given him back his name: Captain Henry Goodsell, a 29-year-old schooner commander who died in a winter storm 181 years ago.The identification, confirmed in April 2025 and announced by the Ramapo College of New Jersey's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in May, marks one of the oldest cold cases ever...

DNA testing has finally revealed that two mysterious individuals -- a young boy and a teenage girl entombed together in a rare Anglo-Saxon double burial -- were brother and sister, according to a report by The Independent. The pair initially drew attention two years ago when they were discovered in Cherington, Gloucestershire, because of the unusual way they were laid to rest. Both children had been placed gently on their sides. The young girl faced her brother and had been propped up in a way, perhaps on pillows, that made it look like she was watching over her younger sibling...

According to a statement released by the University of York, researchers have identified rare traces of dyed purple textiles in two Roman infant burials. Known as Tyrian purple, the extremely costly colorant was manufactured by crushing thousands of murex marine sea snails and was typically reserved for use by emperors, royalty, and members of the aristocracy. However, experts were able to detect its presence on garments wrapped around two small children who died and were buried around 1,700 years ago. Their remains are held in the collections of the York Museums Trust. The dye was identifiable through chemical analysis because...

For 4,200 years, the Y chromosome of a Yakutian warrior has quietly echoed in Siberia's Arctic peoples. His extraordinary Stone Age grave was discovered in Russia's far northeast near Yakutsk in 2004 by scientists. The middle-aged hunter's skeleton was found on its back with arms at its side. Dozens of elk-bone plates were laid as a shield over the chest. Analysis of the radiocarbon data hints that the person died nearly 4,000 years ago. The person is presumed to be from the Ymyyakhtakh cultural horizon. This cultural horizon contains the nomadic hunter-gatherers who used more sophisticated bone and antler weapons......

In the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, archaeologists recently discovered a 1,600-year-old tomb with several mummies inside. Some of them were decorated with gold leaf or geometric patterns—features commonly found in burials of this kind.But one of the mummies was unearthed alongside a particularly unusual artifact: a papyrus fragment from Homer's Iliad, the epic poem set during the Trojan War. The ancient Greek text had been tucked beneath the wrappings on the mummy's abdomen during the embalming process."The fact that in this case the text, in Greek, refers to a literary text is truly novel," say Maite Mascort and Esther...

According to a statement released by the University of South Florida, a mass grave containing the remains of victims of the Plague of Justinian (A.D. 541–750) has been identified at the site of Jerash in northern Jordan by a team of researchers led by Rays H.Y. Jiang of the University of South Florida. Hundreds of people were buried within several days in this mass grave dug in the city's hippodrome. "By linking biological evidence from the bodies to the archaeological setting, we can see how disease affected real people within their social and environmental context," Jiang said. Examination of the...

According to a statement released by Antiquity, analysis of skeletal remains recovered from a seventeenth-century hospital cemetery in Basel, Switzerland, suggests that young laborers were the people most likely to die during an outbreak of plague. As a trade center that drew people in from abroad, the city of Basel was vulnerable to the spread of Yersinia pestis bacteria and outbreaks of plague. The last recorded outbreak of the disease in Basel occurred between 1665 and 1670. Researchers led by osteoarchaeologist Laura Rindlisbacher of the University of Basel examined skeletal remains recovered from the hospital cemetery dated to this period,...

According to a statement released by the University of Copenhagen, analysis of the remains of 132 individuals unearthed near a megalithic tomb in northern France suggests that the site was initially used by one group of people, but that population declined around 3000 B.C. and was eventually replaced by another group. "We see a clear genetic break between the two periods," said Frederik Valeur Seersholm of the University of Copenhagen. Genetic testing revealed that the earlier group was composed of early farmers from northern France and Germany, while the later group was linked to people in southern France and the...

Live Science reports that Joachim Burger of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and his colleagues examined more than 250 sets of human remains of people who lived in what is now southern Germany, on what was the frontier of the Roman Empire, between A.D. 400 and 700. The researchers analyzed DNA samples from the bones, performed strontium isotope analysis to look for chemical signatures in the bones, and compared the results of the tests with 2,500 ancient and 379 modern genomes. The study suggests that many people engaged in monogamy, and nearly one-quarter of the children lost at least one parent...

Archeologists in Italy's Pompeii have for the first time used artificial intelligence to reconstruct the appearance of one of the victims of the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city nearly 2,000 years ago. Archaeologists use AI to generate image of Pompeii victim | 0:59 Reuters | 4.18M subscribers | 12,415 views | April 27, 2026

In 2016, a routine excavation in a supermarket car park near Andover uncovered a grim secret—over 100 shallow graves filled with mostly young men, many brutally executed. Dating back to Anglo-Saxon England, the site reveals a hidden execution cemetery where individuals were hanged, beheaded, and discarded without ceremony. As archaeologists investigate, they uncover evidence of harsh medieval justice, social outcasts, and centuries of punishment stretching from Saxon to Norman times. This chilling discovery exposes a brutal world where law, power, and fear shaped life—and death—on the edges of society. Archaeologists Discover Execution Site Hidden for 1,000 Years | 43:26 Journal...

Ibiza became part of the Islamic world in the year 902, when it was conquered by the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba. Settlement followed rapidly, taking place within little more than a generation, and by the twelfth century the island had developed into a modest but active urban centre within al-Andalus.Positioned along key maritime routes, Ibiza was not an isolated outpost but part of a dynamic network linking Iberia, North Africa, and the wider Mediterranean. This broader context helps explain the striking diversity uncovered in the new study, published in Nature Communications.The research team analysed 13 individuals buried between the tenth...

According to a statement released by the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies, genetic material from Streptococcus pyogenes, the bacterium that causes throat infections, scarlet fever, and toxic shock syndrome, has been detected in a 700-year-old tooth in the collection of Bolivia's National Museum of Archaeology. It had been previously thought that the bacterium arrived in South America with Europeans. "We weren't looking for this pathogen specifically," said Frank Maizner of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies. The tooth came from the skull of a young man who lived between A.D. 1100 and 1450 in the arid Bolivian highlands....

Ancient Egyptian mummified remains in the collection of the MNMKK Semmelweis Museum of Medical History were examined with a CT scanner equipped with a photon-counting detector, according to a statement released by Semmelweis University. The remains in the study include two heads, two left lower limbs, a mummy bundle containing a foot, and a hand. The oldest artifacts in the collection are some 2,300 years old. The resulting images revealed the internal structure of the body parts, said team physician Ibolyka Dudás, providing a highly detailed view of abnormalities and preservation techniques used in antiquity. The new images of the...

Archaeologists working on a Flanders construction site carefully excavate the remains of British soldiers lost in the battlefield mud during World War I. By analyzing personal items like regimental badges, coins, and equipment found near the site, the team searches for clues that might provide a name to those who vanished in combat. During the past 25 years, only one body of an unknown British Soldier has been identified. These diggers have an important and delicate task to complete, identifying these WW1 soldiers. This clip is from Meet the Ancestors (2002). Fragile Traces of the Fallen WW1 Soldiers | 5:48...

Human remains discovered during an excavation near Burden Lake Road in Sand Lake have been determined to be historical, according to New York State Police.On April 15, 2026, a property was being excavated in the area of Burden Lake Road when remains were discovered and reported, according to State Police.The site has been turned over to the New York State Museum's Department of Anthropology.According to the NYS Museum, museum's archaeologists were alerted in accordance with the New York State Unmarked Burial Site Protection Act of 2023.We're told the NYS Museum crew at the scene can confirm the remains are believed...

Archaeologists have analyzed a mass grave in southeastern Europe that held the remains of women and children who were violently murdered 2,800 years ago...The grave was unearthed at the archaeological site of Gomolava, located near the modern town of Hrtkovci in northern Serbia. Originally founded as a settlement on the Sava River in the sixth millennium B.C., both settled and mobile cultural groups used Gomolava repeatedly over the centuries. By the ninth century B.C., semisedentary groups in the Carpathian Basin were consolidating around sites like Gomolava, creating tension over land use and ownership...Archaeologists discovered postholes around the burial pit that...

According to a statement released by the University of Tübingen, an international team of researchers who evaluated a fossil femur unearthed at the site of Azmaka in southern Bulgaria suggests that it could belong to a human ancestor. “At 7.2 million years old, this ancestor, which we classify as belonging to the genus Graecopithecus, could be the oldest known human,” said paleoanthropologist David Begun of the University of Toronto. Graecopithecus was first identified by a fragment of a lower jaw unearthed near Athens. The researchers examined the shape of the tooth roots from the jaw and concluded that Graecopithecus could...

La Brújula Verde reports that the excavation of a necropolis in southwestern Italy by researchers from the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape for the Provinces of Salerno and Avellino has revealed 34 Samnite burials dated to between the fourth and third centuries B.C. The graves were grouped by family, and most of them consisted of a pit covered with tiles arranged like a small roof. Two of the burials had chambers lined with travertine blocks, while another had a tufa chamber. Graves holding the remains of men also contained spearheads or javelin points. Rings and brooches for fastening...

According to a La Brújula Verde report, eight burials at the Childrey Warren site in southeastern England have been analyzed. In all, the rural cemetery contained more than 30 burials. The eight burials in the study, including the remains of newborns and adults who were more than 45 years old at the time of death, have been dated to the fourth century A.D. One of the individuals had been beheaded, with the skull placed beneath the feet. Ancient DNA samples taken from these remains show that six of the eight people were closely related—sisters, paternal first cousins, and paternal and...