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Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany. Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals...

Ötzi the ice mummy may have met his death in the Alps some 5300 years ago, but his descendants live on – on the Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The finding comes from an analysis of Ötzi's DNA, which also reveals he had brown eyes and hair, and was lactose intolerant. The ice mummy was found in 1991 on an Alpine glacier between Austria and Italy, where he met a violent end in the Neolithic.....

E. Matisoo-Smith from the University of Otago, New Zealand and Pierre Zalloua from the Lebanese American University, Beirut, and colleagues... looked at mitochondrial genomes... to investigate how Phoenicians integrated with the Sardinian communities they settled. The researchers found 14 new ancient mitogenome sequences from pre-Phoenician (~1800 BCE) and Phoenician (~700-400 BCE) samples from Lebanon and Sardinia and then compared these with 87 new complete mitogenomes from modern Lebanese and 21 recently published pre-Phoenician ancient mitogenomes from Sardinia. The researchers found evidence of continuity of some lineages of indigenous Sardinians after Phoenician settlement, which suggests that there was integration between Sardinians...

An Etruscan settlement that dates back to the 9th century BC has been found on the Sardinian coasts near Olbia. The presence emerged during a review of the findings of recent years by the archaeological superintendency for the Sassari and Nuoro provinces. The area of the settlement - according to a statement issued by the superintendency - is on the Tavolara isle, a position that enabled a certain degree of caution in contact with coastal inhabitants and those further inland. Archaeologists note that other settlements might be found in the Gallura area, on the opposite shore from Etruria. Etruria's cities...

Archaeologists have discovered ashes from one of the biggest ever volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Excavations in Turkey’s ancient city of Smyrna, now located in Izmir, have revealed details from a Minoan eruption that took place some 3,600 years ago. Smyrna was established about 5,000 years ago by the Greek tribe of Aeolians and later inhabited by Ionians. It was mostly abandoned after it was captured by the Anatolian kingdom of Lydia in the 6th century B.C. Archaeologists say the ashes will tell them a lot about the history. “Now that we have identified those ashes with a more extensive...

Kamal el-Mallakh, one of Egypt’s most renowned archaeologists, discovered Khufu’s ship in 1954 in a closed pit near the Great Pyramid, the oldest and largest pyramid on the Giza plateau. The vessel had fallen apart by the time el-Mallakh found it, but the wood remained well preserved because it had been tightly sealed in a 171-foot chamber, notes the National.Per PBS’ “Building Pharaoh’s Ship” portal, the archaeologist spent some 20 months excavating the boat’s 1,224 fragments. Restorers only pieced the vessel back together after roughly a decade of researching ancient Egyptian shipbuilding techniques, wrote Tim Wyatt for the Independent in...

Francis Pryor examines the relics of the Dark Ages to build a fuller picture of this much-maligned era. Popular belief has always held that the departure of the Romans led to barbarism in Britain, but archaeological finds have shed light on a cultured, literate society that embraced the growing Romanised Christian religion and embarked on a profitable trading relationship with the Byzantine Empire.Sheep-farming archaeologist, Francis Pryor, presents a brand new historical series which explores Britain A.D, the British national character and the ultimate British icon King Arthur.Finding new and previously unexplained evidence, Francis Pryor overturns the idea that Britain reverted...

Goddio has been taken aback by the latest discoveries. He told the Guardian that the fruit baskets were “incredible”, having been untouched for more than 2,000 years.They were still filled with doum, the fruit of an African palm tree that was sacred for the ancient Egyptians, as well as grape-seeds...It is within an area where Goddio and his team of archaeologists have discovered a sizeable tumulus (a mound raised over graves) – about 60 metres long by 8 metres wide – and sumptuous Greek funerary offerings.They date from the early fourth century BC when Greek merchants and mercenaries lived in...

Federico De Romanis, "Comparative Perspectives on the Pepper Trade." ...compares quantitative data and other accounts of the pepper trade in Roman and Early Modern times and finds many broad similarities. Through his reading of both Roman and Early Modern European sources, De Romanis establishes that the Romans must have used both large and small ships carrying a very high proportion of pepper in their cargoes on the voyage from India. On the basis of recent readings of the Muziris papyrus, he argues that the Hermapollon, a large Roman ship, carried about 620 tons of pepper. De Romanis also considers the...

A DOOMED ship that sank after it was hit by gigantic stone blocks following an earthquake 2,200 years ago has been found in Egypt. The wreck was discovered by archaeologists at the site of Thonis-Heracleion, a city that crashed into the water as a result of the megaquake. A ship that sank after it was clattered by falling stone blocks following a cataclysmic earthquake has been found in EgyptCredit: Hilti Foundation ================================================================================ Scattered across a series of interlinked islands off Egypt's northern coast, the metropolis was once the country's gateway to the Mediterranean. It was lost to a cataclysmic event...

Silver sourced from the northern Mediterranean, as far away as the Iberian Peninsula, was used as a trade token throughout the region during the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods, with the supply slowing only occasionally.This, according to a team of French, Israeli and Australian scientists and numismatists who found geochemical evidence that allowed them to reconstruct the eastern Mediterranean silver trade over a period including the traditional dates of the Trojan War, the founding of Rome and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem....the researchers explained that they used high-precision isotopic analysis to identify the ore sources of minute...

New radiocarbon dates for rabbit bones excavated in the 1960s at Mexico’s Coxcatlan Cave (shown here) raise the possibility that humans lived there roughly 30,000 years ago. Andrew D. Somerville Humans may have inhabited what’s now southern Mexico surprisingly early, between 33,448 and 28,279 years ago, researchers say. If so, those people arrived more than 10,000 years before folks often tagged as the first Americans (SN: 7/11/18). Other preliminary evidence puts humans in central Mexico as early as around 33,000 years ago (SN: 7/22/20). The latest evidence comes from animal bones that biological anthropologist and archaeologist Andrew Somerville and...

A piece of textile fabric from a grave, dated to the Viking Age, has been found in southern Norway, dated to 850-950 AD. The grave of a woman was uncovered at Hestnes in southern Trøndelag county, during a spate of excavations in 2020, along with textile tools and a wool comb. The evidence suggests she was a textile worker. The dull brown 1000-year-old wool Viking embroidery fabric was found preserved on top of a turtle brooch. “Those of us who work with textiles are happy if we find a piece of fabric that’s one cm by one cm. In this...

New detailed surveys of Viking age ship settings in Hjarnø, Denmark have been completed by archaeologists examining the origins and makeup of the Kalvestene grave field, a renowned site in Scandinavian folklore.The archaeologists from Flinders University conducted detailed surveys to determine whether a 17th century illustration of the site completed by the famous Enlightenment antiquarian, Ole Worm, was accurate, as part of the first survey since the National Museum of Denmark discovered and restored 10 tombs on a small island off the eastern coast almost a century ago.The burial site is made up of monuments that, according to legend, commemorate...

The air was likely frigid as the hunter lit a small fire. The caribou would come in the morning—forced through the narrow strip of marshland where he camped. There was nowhere else to go. The land was flanked by water on both sides, and large stones had been laid out in slanting lines to funnel the animals into this bottleneck. The hunter struck his weapon to sharpen its edge in anticipation. In that moment, two glassy flakes splintered away from the point of impact and fell to his feet. They would be buried there for nearly 10,000 years.In 2013 those...

An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago – nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought. Andrew Somerville, an assistant professor of anthropology in world languages and cultures, says he and his colleagues made the discovery while studying the origins of agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. As part of that work, they wanted to establish a date for the earliest human occupation of the Coxcatlan Cave in the valley, so they obtained radiocarbon dates for several rabbit and deer bones that...

Scott Wolter gets a call from a man who has a mysterious stone on his property. He's convinced that it's the "Stone of Destiny"--the stone that Jacob from the Bible rested his head on, in Season 2, Episode 1, "Ark of the Covenant."In "America Unearthed," host Scott Wolter uses hard science and intuitive theories to explain the most mysterious artifacts and sites in America.HISTORY© is the leading destination for award-winning original series and specials that connect viewers with history in an informative, immersive, and entertaining manner across all platforms. The network’s all-original programming slate features a roster of hit series,...

Republican Rome was pushed to the brink of collapse on August 2, 216 B.C., when the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilated at least 50,000 of its legionaries at the Second Punic War’s Battle of Cannae.

The cave is located by a volcano that erupted almost 1,100 years ago...Archaeological work shows that after the lava cooled, the Vikings entered the cave and constructed a boat-shaped structure made out of rocks. Within this structure, the Vikings would have burned animal bones, including those of sheep, goat, cattle, horses and pigs, at high temperatures as a sacrifice...Near the structure, archaeologists discovered 63 beads, three of which came from Iraq, said Kevin Smith, deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, who leads the team excavating the cave. The team also found remains...

The first study to use x-rays and CT scans to detect evidence of cancer among the skeletal remains of a pre-industrial population suggests that between 9-14% of adults in medieval Britain had the disease at the time of their death.This puts cancer prevalence in a time before exposure to tumour-inducing chemicals from industry and tobacco at around ten times higher than previously thought, according to researchers.Prior research into historic cancer rates using the archaeological record has been limited to examining the bone exterior for lesions. It suggested that cancer was rare, affecting less than 1% of the population.