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Scientists were recently baffled by DNA evidence that revealed the existence of a genetically unknown group of early South American settlers. Archaeologists are continually adapting their models for how human populations spread from Asia through North America to South America, and this new research is bound to alter those theories once again. The Associated Press reports that the researchers analyzed ancient DNA from 21 individuals who lived in Colombia's Altiplano Cundiboyacense region thousands of years ago. Located near current-day Bogotá, this area was also close to the ancient land bridge connecting South and Central America, the route that early human...

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned eight artifacts to Peru during a ceremony at the Peruvian consulate in New York on May 15. The items returned included funerary items that were taken illegally from tombs in northern Peru during the 1960s and ’70s. The return marks the second time New York officials have repatriated a group of works to Peru. Also among the returned objects is a copper mask believed to represent a fanged Moche deity Ai Apaec, which has historically been associated with protection. The mask, which dates to approximately 300 BCE, is believed to have been taken from...

Ancient DNA from the pelt of a fluffy white dog named Mutton is revealing new details about the woolly dog, an extinct breed that was cared for and raised by the women of the Coast Salish tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest. The small dogs... were fed a special diet of fish or elk, and they were shorn like sheep, their wool woven into special blankets and textiles.For thousands of years, woolly dogs were cherished as family members and raised on islands or kept in pens to ensure they didn't interbreed with other dogs, according to Michael Pavel, an elder...

According to Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, 6,500-year-old objects found deep within a cave in West Texas may comprise the oldest nearly-intact weapons kit recovered in North America. The wooden and stone tools were collected by a team of archaeologists from Sul Ross State University and the University of Kansas over the past several years from San Esteban Rockshelter near Marfa. Several thousand years ago, an Indigenous hunter sat by a fire in the cave and evaluated the state of their weapons, making repairs to some and discarding others. Their arsenal consisted of a throwing spear, a boomerang, and several...

A team of Brazilian researchers is investigating a cave site featuring ancient paintings in Itatiaia National Park, near the border between Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. The discovery, which could reshape the understanding of early human presence in the region, has drawn the attention of leading archaeologists and cultural preservation agencies. Though the paintings were discovered in 2023 by Andres Conquista, an operational supervisor at the park, the news was kept under wraps to protect the site, which sits along a well-traveled hiking trail. While hiking during a climbing trip, Conquista was drawn to a cluster of blooming red...

A study published in the journal Antiquity [2022] suggested an ancient South American civilization spiked a beer-like drink with psychoactive drugs as a way of maintaining social cohesion and forging new bonds with surrounding communities. The findings offer some of the clearest archaeological evidence demonstrating how ancient civilizations used psychoactive substances for recreation and social cohesion...The Wari civilization flourished in the Peruvian Andes... Excavations revealed evidence the Wari were brewing large quantities of a beer-like drink known as chicha. The alcoholic beverage is common to a number of ancient civilizations in the region, however, spiking it with a hallucinogenic substance...

We have no idea who made the exquisite pieces. Image credit: J. Przedwojewska-Szymańska/PASI (CC BY 4.0) A remarkable collection of five pre-Hispanic clay puppets with rotating heads has been discovered in El Salvador. Aside from the expert craftsmanship that went into making the items, the ancient figurines are notable for the context in which they were found - atop the largest pyramid at the mysterious site of San Isidro. “They’re made of very, very fine clay without any obvious additives, so this is a very fine piece of art,” Dr Jan Szymański from the University of Warsaw told IFLScience. He...

Pre-colonial people in Brazil may have gathered in summer months to feast on migratory fish and share alcoholic drinks, a new study suggests.An international team – involving scientists from the University of York, UK; the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and the Universidade Federal de Pelotas in Brazil –analysed pottery fragments dating back to between 2300 and 1200 years ago which were discovered around the Patos Lagoon in Brazil.The shores of the Lagoon are characterised by settled earthen mounds, known as "Cerritos" which were built by pre-colonial ancestors of Pampean Indigenous groups called the Charrua and Minuano.

Science Magazine reports that Robert Kelly of the University of Wyoming and his colleagues compiled more than 60,000 radiocarbon dates for artifacts from the United States and Canada. Then, assuming that the amount of radiocarbon data collected from a given region reflects its population at that time, the researchers made comparisons between the possible size of the populations over time and between regions. The study suggests that North American populations grew for about 2,000 years and peaked around A.D. 1150, then the size of the population decreased by at least 30 percent by 1500. Yet populations grew and declined in...

According to a Live Science report, bioarchaeologist Sara Juengst of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and her colleagues uncovered the 1,200-year-old burial of a woman at the Manteño site of Buen Suceso, which is located near the coast of Ecuador. Examination of the bones revealed that the woman was between the ages of 17 and 20, and between seven and nine months pregnant, at the time of her death. It was also determined that the woman had suffered skull fractures, and that her hands and left leg had been violently removed. The head of another person between the...

The first inhabitants of what is now the United States appeared around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago — a blip in time compared to the annals of some of the earliest places humans lived. Initially, population growth was slow due to the continent’s geographic isolation; significant increases began only after Europeans made their way to the Americas throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 20th century, the U.S. population was experiencing rapid expansion — a trend that has slowed in recent years. Here’s a look at America’s changing population through history, from early prehistoric arrivals to the decline we’re...

Archaeologists recently identified the remains of four human funerary burials from approximately 3,800 years ago in a space in northern Peru associated with a water cult. The bundled funeral remains belong to two children, a teenager, and an adult. They were buried facing the Andean mountains and interred with symbolic offerings, such as stone pendants and snail shells. The remains were found nestled between mud and stone walls near a valley in Peru’s dry, coastal Viru province by the Virú Valley Archaeological Research Project (PAVI) of the National University of Trujillo (UNT). Related Articles The ancient neolithic monument of Stonehenge...

According to a statement released by the University of Exeter, an international team of researchers, including Mark Robinson and Jose Iriarte of the University of Exeter and Javier Aceituno of the University of Antioquia, compared images of animals found in the Colombian Amazon on Cerro Azul in the Serranía de la Lindosa with animal bones uncovered in nearby archaeological excavations. The rock art images, drawn with ocher on 16 rock panels on a remote hilltop, are estimated to be about 12,500 years old. Study of the animal remains revealed that the prehistoric population consumed a diverse diet of fish, mammals,...

The mysterious, sudden abandonment of the ancient lost city of Cahokia by its inhabitants has been puzzling historians for a long time now – and experts have cast fresh doubt on one of the most popular theories to date...Around the middle of the 14th century, the 50,000 or so people who called the bustling, vibrant city home departed for other places, suggesting that something pretty dramatic and life-changing had taken place.One explanation for this mass exodus has blamed a severe drought followed by widespread crop failure – but a new investigation from the US Bureau of Land Management and Washington...

Nearly half of the world's language families are found in the Americas. Although many of them are now thought extinct, historical linguistics analysis can survey and compare living languages and trace them back in time to better understand the groups that first populated the continent.In a study published March 30 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California Berkeley, analyzed structural features of 60 languages from across the U.S. and Canada, which revealed they come from two main language groups that entered North America in at least four distinct waves.Nichols surveyed...

A rare artifact has been discovered by archaeologists at an ancient mammoth kill site near Douglas, Wyoming, which they say is the oldest of its kind ever found in the Americas. The discovery, a tube-shaped piece of bone, is likely to have been a bead dating to around 12,940 years old, potentially making it the oldest known instance of American perforated jewelry. The discovery was made by University of Wyoming archaeology Professor Todd Surovell and his team at the La Prele Mammoth site, a location first revealed to archaeologists in 1986 when mammoth remains were found eroding out of a...

Hunter-gatherers from Mexico migrated into California more than 5,000 years ago, potentially spreading distinctive languages from the south into the region nearly 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new genetic study details.The finding challenges the idea that what are known as the Uto-Aztecan languages — which include the Aztec and Toltec language Nahuatl, as well as Hopi and Shoshoni — were spread northward by prehistoric migrants from Mexico along with maize farming technologies...Nakatsuka and his colleagues studied ancient DNA extracted from the teeth and bones of 79 ancient people found at archaeological sites in central and southern California. These...

The New York Times proclaimed in a recent article that humans caused catastrophic wildfires in California, leading to a large and tragic loss of life. The author seemed to blame these fires on man-made climate change and pointed to evidence of humanity’s negative effect on the environment by citing a peer-reviewed study in a prestigious academic journal. The science is clear, the article argues: Human beings caused one of history’s great tragedies through their careless disregard for the environment.

Luzio, a 10,000-year-old skeleton from São Paulo, Brazil, has some familiar-looking DNA.He belongs to the same genetic population as all modern-day Indigenous peoples of the Americas...Luzio was previously thought to have possibly belonged to a different, older, population, who settled in modern-day Brazil around 14,000 years ago...“If there was another population here 30,000 years ago, it didn’t leave descendants among these groups.” [sic]The researchers examined the genomes of 34 fossil samples, each at least 10,000 years old, from four different places on the Brazilian coast.Luzio, among them, is the oldest human fossil found in São Paulo State. He’s named after...

Who lived at Machu Picchu at its height? A new study, published in Science Advances, used ancient DNA to find out for the first time where workers buried more than 500 years ago came from within the lost Inca Empire.Researchers, including Jason Nesbitt, associate professor of archaeology at Tulane University School of Liberal Arts, performed genetic testing on individuals buried at Machu Picchu in order to learn more about the people who lived and worked there...It was once part of a royal estate of the Inca Empire.Like other royal estates, Machu Picchu was home not only to royalty and other...