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Only around 5% of the world’s population have hazel eyes. Yet a 2009 study found that 55.2% of their Spanish cohort had hazel-green eyes. This eye color is also more common in Portugal than the global average. But why is there such a concentration of hazel eyes in the Iberian peninsula compared to most other parts of the world? And is the evolution of hazel eyes connected to the genetic history of Iberia? Now there are a two main types of hazel eyes. Iberian DNA and the Evolution of Hazel Eyes... | 15:00 Celtic History Decoded | 48.5K subscribers |...

Archaeological research carried out at the La Peña del Castro site, located in the municipality of La Ercina, in the province of León (Spain)... Researchers from the University of León have identified an inscription belonging to the Celtiberian alphabet, engraved on a small object linked to the textile activities of the settlement. This object is a spindle whorl, a counterweight used in spinning spindles, dating back to the 1st century BC.This finding is significant because it represents one of the earliest examples of alphabetic writing documented in the province of León and in the northern Iberian Peninsula. One of the...

The practice of the nailed heads ritual varied among Iberian communities in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, rather than representing a uniform symbolic expression. In some settlements, the display of external individuals served as a symbol of power and intimidation, while others may have prioritized the veneration of their own community members.This conclusion comes from a study led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), which analyzed the mobility patterns of Iron Age human communities from the last millennium BCE. Researchers examined seven skulls with embedded nails, belonging to men from two archaeological sites: the ancient city of Ullastret...

A re-analysis of more than 300 sets of 5,000-year-old skeletal remains excavated from a site in Spain suggests that many of the individuals may have been casualties of the earliest period of warfare in Europe, occurring over 1,000 years before the previous earliest known larger-scale conflict in the region...Teresa Fernández‑Crespo and colleagues re-examined the skeletal remains of 338 individuals for evidence of healed and unhealed injuries. All the remains were from a single mass burial site in a shallow cave in the Rioja Alavesa region of northern Spain, radiocarbon dated to between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago. 52 flint arrowheads...

Stalin Kicked The Bucket: Ray Anderson [1953] Old Joe kicked the bucket, he's long gone. He won't worry us from now on. He lived in a place they call Moscow. His number came up and he had to go Yes, old Joe's dead and gone. He stayed around too long. And nobody now can save his hide, 'Cause old Joe lay right down and died. Old Joe won't worry us no more. He killed the helpless by the score. Now I hope he's satisfied, Since old Joe's taken his last ride Yes, old Joe's dead and gone. He stayed around...

A team of researchers from Sweden and Spain have conducted a comprehensive archaeogenetic study on a community that lived on the border between the northern Christian kingdoms and Al-Andalus during the early Medieval period. This dynamic era, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, was marked by religious competition, power struggles, and significant human mobility—factors that shaped the foundation of modern Europe.In the study, published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers focused on Las Gobas, a rural site in northern Spain's Burgos province, near the village of Laño. The community existed from the mid-6th to the 11th century and is notable...

Researchers from the University of Cádiz in Spain focused on settlements in the areas surrounding Arcos de la Frontera, Bornos, Villamartin and Puerto Serrano which would have all been interconnected by the Guadalete River, leading them to believe that they were part of a hidden empire.The team said they used geo radar - a tool that sends radar pulses underground to detect any hidden objects.They used geo radar technology to locate the wall structures from ancient residences that weren't visible from the surface...The researchers discovered that the villa had walls separating the residential and work areas while they were trying...

WASHINGTON (AP) — When archaeologists first discovered the 5,000-year-old ornate tomb in Spain, they assumed it was for a man. It held a rock crystal dagger, ivory tusks and other lavish items. But now they’ve determined the remains are those of a woman, and all it took was two teeth. The researchers used a new method of determining sex that analyzes tooth enamel. This technique, developed about five years ago, is more reliable than analyzing skeletal remains in poor condition, according to their study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. Most details about the life of the “Ivory Lady,”...

Throughout history, archaeologists have uncovered countless tools from early civilizations. The majority are made of stone, but a group of Spanish experts discovered incredible rock crystal weaponry. One of the most spectacular crystal daggers, dating back to at least 3,000 BC, demonstrates the extraordinary ability of the sculptor.The incredible find occurred at the Montelirio tholos, a megalithic tomb in southern Spain. This gigantic site, which spans 50 meters, is made up of massive slate slabs. The place was excavated between 2007 and 2010. Scholars from the University of Granada, Seville, and the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research published a...

A worker at a local water company in Spain discovered two gold necklaces thought to date back 2,500 years.Sergio Narciandi was working on some pipes in the municipality of Cavandi in Asturias, northwest Spain on August 29 when he spotted a gold necklace among rocks, El País reported.Picking up the gleaming object, he realized it was a torc—an ancient neck ornament similar to necklaces that was typically worn by nobles. He then discovered another similar piece of jewelry. They are thought to be from the Iron Age.According to the newspaper ‘El País’, he picked him up and called the civil...

The Early Neolithic site of KTG, located on the North African Mediterranean coast near the Gibraltar strait (Fig. 1a), predates and partly overlaps in time with IAM2 (Table 1). At KTG a full Neolithic assemblage is found, including a diversity of cultivated cereals, domestic mammals and cardial ceramics. In contrast to the people at IAM, those at KTG are genetically similar to European Early Neolithic populations...Overall, the genetic patterns of local interaction between different groups in northwestern Africa are comparable to those found in Europe: farmers assimilated local foragers' ancestry in a unidirectional admixture process. Cases of hunter-gatherer communities adopting...

Summary: Researchers have discovered what they believe is the earliest use of steel in Europe -- on Iberian stone pillars from the Final Bronze Age... Using geochemicalanalyses, the researchers were able to prove that stone stelae on the Iberian peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age feature complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. This was backed up by metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region... that showed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel. The result was also confirmed experimentally by undertaking trials with chisels made of...

Laser scans have revealed that what was thought to be an Iron Age hillfort in northwestern Spain is, in fact, an early medieval stronghold built in the fifth century A.D. and occupied for the next 200 years...The team found the stronghold on a hilltop in northwestern Spain by using lidar — light detection and ranging — to peer beneath a forest covering the ruins... revealed an early medieval fortress covering about 25 acres (10 hectares), with 30 towers and a defensive wall about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) long. The fortress seems to have been built in the first...

Combing through the Amazon wilderness, archeologists made an amazing discovery: artifacts of ancient seafaring people from the Iberian Peninsula. They may have fled the carnage of the Roman Empire's war on Carthage, called by some historians the Roman holocaust. This documentary investigates the claim that South America was discovered and settled by Mediterranean peoples over 2,000 years ago.The Mystery Of Carthaginians In The Americas | Lost WarriorsTimeline - World History Documentaries | October 20, 2022

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.

...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...

...the new study encompasses data from nearly 300 ancient individuals and focuses specifically on the Copper to Bronze Age transition...The genomic data reveals some of the processes underlying this genetic shift. While the bulk of the genome shows that Bronze Age individuals are a mix of local Iberian Chalcolithic ancestry and a smaller part of incoming ancestry from the European mainland, the paternally inherited Y chromosome lineages show a complete turnover, linked to the movement of steppe-related ancestry that is also visible in other parts of Europe..."We also found signals of ancestry that we traced to the central and eastern...

Neanderthals lived in parts of the Middle East and Europe from 400,000 to 40,000 years ago. During that time, they left behind a lot of evidence of their existence—primarily their bones and crafted objects such as stone tools. Sometimes, though, they also left behind evidence of their activities, such as walking along a beach next to a body of water. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence of as many as 36 individuals walking along a beach—including children.The work involved studying footprints left on Matalascañas beach, in Doñana National Park, in Spain. Prior work there had involved footprints...

In the Gravettian period (33,000-25,000 years before present), hunter-gatherers ate the food available in their local surroundings. That included mammoth in central Europe, horse and reindeer in Britain; and seafood on the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts of what are now France and Italy. During the last glacial maximum (27,000-23,000 years ago), the very cold and dry climate forced people to retreat to southern regions. The Iberian, Italian and Greek peninsulas in particular were increasingly populated.The fossil remains of four individuals from Serinyà, Spain, were not scientifically investigated for a long time due to doubts about their age. Researchers at...

The work by the team involved studying skeletal remains found at a dig site of a settlement once known as La Hoya, in what is now Spain. The dig site was discovered in 1935, but only recently have the remains unearthed there been studied. In all, the researchers examined the skeletal remains of 13 people -- nine adults, two adolescent girls, a child and an infant girl, all of whom had died sometime between 365 and 195 BC. What was most striking was the means by which the people met their death. One of the adults had been decapitated --...