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During his lifetime, the French dramatist Moliere elevated comedy to a level of respect and importance once exclusively reserved for tragedy. In 2022, the 400th anniversary of the year of his birth, his name is often mentioned in the same breath as William Shakespeare and other literary titans. Moliere was the alias of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, born in 1622 to a upholsterer who served the royal household. He wrote his numerous plays well before the French Revolution, at a time when the authority of the king and the church was intact. Yet in his plays, which are still regularly performed today,...

A foraging badger has uncovered a trove of 209 Roman coins dating as far back as the third century in a Spanish cave, scientists report. Hailed as an 'exceptional find', the coins include some 'from the distant mints' of London, Constantinople and Antioch, an ancient city once located in what is now modern-day Turkey. Researchers think they were hidden in the cave before the arrival of the Suebi, a Germanic people who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in AD 409, known for their infantry and ambush tactics.

A historic archive of Freemasonry amassed by the Nazis in their wartime purge could still reveal secrets about the society, researchers say. From insight into women's Masonic lodges to the musical scores used in closed ceremonies, the trove - housed in an old university library in western Poland - has already shed light on a little known history. But more work remains to be done to fully examine all the 80,000 items that date from the 17th century to the pre-World War II period.

...the sources of silver used to produce Roman coinage have largely been used up, making it difficult to determine which deposits Roman miners exploited...The Iberian Peninsula, which includes modern Spain and Portugal, is host to world-class silver deposits, especially in the southern region. These deposits contain galena, which is the main ore of lead and an important source of silver. To extract silver, the galena ore is smelted and purified, with refined silver for coin minting able to reach a purity of over 95%.To track the source of Roman silver, the team of researchers analyzed the silver and lead compositions...

Archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) have uncovered two objects in Oslo inscribed with Norse runic text.Excavations were being conducted in Oslo’s Medieval Park ‘Middelalderparken’ in what was once the southern part of the medieval city of Oslo. The park contains the ruins of St. Clement’s Church, St. Mary’s Church, and the former Oslo Kongsgård estate royal estate.Researchers discovered a bone inscribed in Norse and a piece of wood with inscriptions on three sides in both Norse and Latin.Professor Kristel Zilmer from the University of Oslo, who specialises in writing culture (runology) and iconography has studied...

“The clay tablet bears some signs some of which depict the types and quantity of shipped goods… it also has signs that are still unfamiliar for us.” ...The figurines include various animal designs, especially cows, as well as human statues, which are in the form of sitting women and standing men... a kiln has been unearthed... not yet determined to be a pottery oven or a metal smelting furnace......archaeologists have already discovered the remains of a prehistoric monkey... Based on surveys and scientific studies on the monkey’s skeleton, the animal was dead in captivity in a cage and it was...

Archaeologists have unearthed a number of rare finds in the Ancient Gerulata area located in Rusovce, one of Bratislava’s boroughs, in the past two years.These include coins, buckles, burners, horse harness, glass, iron objects, and ceramics from the 3rd century, as well as a single-layer comb from the 2nd century, which proves the contact of Gerulata inhabitants with Germanic tribes, the Bratislava City Museum posted on Facebook.A fresh UNESCO site, the Ancient Gerulata museum is a former Roman military camp and settlement, where a two-year-long phase of archaeological research ended several weeks ago.Medieval moatExperts explored a Roman masonry canal during...

New view of Mr Boudica RACHEL BULLER 13 February 2006 10:49 For centuries, he has remained in the shadow of his famous wife, the warrior Queen of East Anglia's Iceni tribe. But while Boudica outshines him in history, new research shows that Prasutagus was not quite the down-trodden husband previously suggested. For it was he, and not his wife, who graced the coinage of the period. Until now, Prasutagus has only existed in historical conjecture and myth as King of the Iceni, the tribe occupying East Anglia, which was ruled with Boudica under Roman authority. However, new studies on a...

The remains of a group of people who died 6200 years ago in a massacre in Croatia have been genetically analysed to reveal their ages, sex and ancestry.Mario Novak at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia, and his colleagues retrieved DNA from 38 of 41 individuals found in a mass grave in Potočani, Croatia. The other three remains didn’t contain enough genetic material to sequence...“There are at least 41 individuals of both sexes and almost all age groups – the youngest is about 2 years old and the oldest is about 50,” says Novak. Radiocarbon dating of each...

...Prof. Haak will also try to detect more plague DNA in hundreds of skeletons from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. So far, DNA evidence from a dozen skeletons points to little variability between the strains of Yersinia pestis in such remains, suggesting that the pestilence spread rapidly across the continent. The speed may owe to another human advance at this time -- the domestication of wild horses, which may literally have carried the disease into Europe. "We see the change from wild local horses to domesticated horses, which happened rapidly at the beginning of the Bronze Age," said...

The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed. The fossil, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset. Intense speculation has built up around Cheddar Man’s origins and appearance because he lived shortly after the first settlers crossed from continental Europe to Britain at the end of the last ice age. People of white British ancestry alive today are descendants of this population. It was initially assumed that Cheddar Man had pale skin and...

Geneticists from the University of Leicester have discovered that most European men descend from just a handful of Bronze Age forefathers, due to a 'population explosion' several thousand years ago. The project, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust, was led by Professor Mark Jobling from the University of Leicester's Department of Genetics and the study is published in the journal Nature Communications. The research team determined the DNA sequences of a large part of the Y chromosome, passed exclusively from fathers to sons, in 334 men from 17 European and Middle Eastern populations. This research used new methods for...

A DNA study of Britons has shown that genetically there is not a unique Celtic group of people in the UK. According to the data, those of Celtic ancestry in Scotland and Cornwall are more similar to the English than they are to other Celtic groups. The study also describes distinct genetic differences across the UK, which reflect regional identities. And it shows that the invading Anglo Saxons did not wipe out the Britons of 1,500 years ago, but mixed with them. Published in the Journal Nature, the findings emerge from a detailed DNA analysis of 2,000 mostly middle-aged Caucasian...

The blood in Irish veins is Celtic, right? Well, not exactly. Although the history many Irish people were taught at school is the history of the Irish as a Celtic race, the truth is much more complicated, and much more interesting than that ... Research done into the DNA of Irish males has shown that the old Anthropological attempts to define 'Irish' have been misguided. As late as the 1950s researchers were busy collecting data among Irish people such as hair colour and height, in order to categorise them as a 'race' and define them as different to the British....

By comparing DNA from ancient bone specimens to DNA obtained from modern animals, the researchers discovered that the Kerry red deer are the direct descendants of deer present in Ireland 5000 years ago. Further analysis using DNA from European deer proves that Neolithic people from Britain first brought the species to Ireland. Although proving the red deer is not native to Ireland, researchers believe that the Kerry population is unique as it is directly related to the original herd and are worthy of special conservation status. Fossil bone samples from the National Museum of Ireland, some up to 30,000 years...

To see the DNA results of some of the ancient people click here. You'll have to scan around to find this exact page but it contains many links of interest. A compilation of DNA haplotypes extracted from ancient remains Cheddar ManIn 1903, skeletal remains were found in a cave in Cheddar, England. The remains of a 23 year-old man, who was killed by a blow to the face, were discovered to be at least 9,000 years old. Ninety-four years after the discovery of "Cheddar Man", scientists were able to extract mitochondrial DNA from his tooth cavity. Name Haplo Haplotype Cheddar...

Irish, Scots and Welsh not Celts - scientists September 09 2004 at 08:15PM Dublin - Celtic nations like Ireland and Scotland have more in common with the Portuguese and Spanish than with "Celts" - the name commonly used for a group of people from ancient Alpine Europe, scientists say. "There is a received wisdom that the origin of the people of these islands lie in invasions or migrations... but the affinities don't point eastwards to a shared origin," said Daniel Bradley, co-author of a genetic study into Celtic origins. Early historians believed the Celts - thought to have come from...

Y chromosomes rewrite British historyAnglo-Saxons' genetic stamp weaker than historians suspected 19 June 2003 HANNAH HOAG Some Scottish men's Y's are remarkably similar to those of southern England. © GettyImages A new survey of Y chromosomes in the British Isles suggests that the Anglo-Saxons failed to leave as much of a genetic stamp on the UK as history books imply1. Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans invaded Britain repeatedly between 50 BC and AD 1050. Many historians ascribe much of the British ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons because their written legacy overshadows that of the Celts. But the Y chromosomes of...

SUNDAY DECEMBER 02 2001 Genetic survey reveals hidden Celts of England JOHN ELLIOTT AND TOM ROBBINS THE Celts of Scotland and Wales are not as unique as some of them like to think. New research has revealed that the majority of Britons living in the south of England share the same DNA as their Celtic counterparts. The findings, based on the DNA analysis of more than 2,000 people, poses the strongest challenge yet to the conventional historical view that the ancient Britons were forced out of most of England by hordes of Anglo-Saxon invaders. It suggests that far from being ...

Scientists have uncovered evidence for a large-scale, prehistoric migration into Britain that may be linked to the spread of Celtic languages. The mass-movement of people originated in continental Europe and occurred between 1,400 BC and 870 BC. The discovery helps to explain the genetic make-up of many present-day people in Britain. Around half the ancestry of later populations in England and Wales comes from these migrants. ...When the newcomers arrived, the existing British population traced most of its ancestry to people who arrived at the end of the Neolithic, around the time Stonehenge was being built. They were part of...