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According to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, a new study of the 2,400-year-old Hjortspring boat, discovered with a cache of weapons in the early twentieth century on Denmark's island of Als, suggests that it may have been constructed in the Baltic Sea region. First, Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University and his colleagues radiocarbon dated cording and caulk found with the boat to the fourth or third century B.C. Then, they used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine that the caulk had likely been made of animal fat and pine pitch. At the time, there were...

...The facial reconstruction was done by Caroline Wilkinson from Dundee University, one of the country’s foremost reconstructors... Caroline said, ‘oh my, you realise you’ve got a sub-Saharan African here?’ Our osteo hadn’t picked that up, but Caroline subsequently had it looked at by two more experts who agreed, without being prompted, that this individual showed so many traits of being a sub-Saharan African person... The radiocarbon dating came back with a firm Roman date – around 200 or 250 AD. That was a relief. It’s not without precedent to find Africans from this date in Britain, such as the famous...

A woman long believed to be the 'first Black Briton' was in fact white and had local ancestry from southern England, according to a new genetic study that overturns more than a decade of public perception.For years, scientists believed the woman, known as the Beachy Head Woman, came from sub-Saharan Africa. Her remains were discovered near the cliffs of Beachy Head in East Sussex and were widely presented as early evidence of African presence in Roman Britain...Her remains were first rediscovered in 2012 in Eastbourne Town Hall, stored in a box suggesting they were originally excavated in the 1950s. At...

Scientists in Italy’s Dolomite mountains have unveiled what they believe to be the world’s oldest snowshoe. Carbon-dating has shown that the rudimentary snow shoe, made of birch wood and twine, was made in the late Neolithic age, between 3,800 and 3,700 BC. “It is the oldest snowshoe in the world so far discovered, dating to around 5,800 years ago,” scientists said in a statement. It was discovered by chance at an altitude of 3,134 metres (10,280ft) on the Gurgler Eisjoch glacier, close to Italy’s border with Austria. The ice and freezing temperatures of the glacier had provided “ideal conditions for...

Texas researchers have now definitively dated a distinctive rock art tradition, a profound discovery shared across multiple ancient Mesoamerican cultures.For thousands of years, ancient forager societies across southwest Texas and northern Mexico painted these stunning murals, known as the "Pecos River Style," inside remote limestone rock shelters.These colossal murals stretch up to 100 feet long and soar 20 feet tall...Though the desert climate perfectly preserved these significant American works, researchers only recently attempted to date the tradition...To pinpoint the art's origin, researchers employed 57 radiocarbon dating analyses across 12 sites, utilizing plasma oxidation and accelerator mass spectrometry, which firmly placed...

The southern coast of the French region of Brittany is home to one of Europe's highest concentrations of mysterious megalithic standing stones. More than 10,000 are strewn around a six-mile stretch in the Carnac region, from La Trinité-sur-Mer to Erdeven. Unlike other megalithic monuments, such as Stonehenge, these do not typically form a circle, but are linear or curvilinear in nature. In the past, it has been difficult for archaeologists to accurately ascertain their age. According to a statement released by the University of Gothenburg, new research suggests that that not only are they even older than expected, but they...

The discovery consists of three burial chambers, each accessed through a central shaft, characteristic of Punic and Roman period tombs. Remarkably, the entrance to each chamber was sealed with original slabs, and the contents inside included human remains and grave goods... The human remains and artefacts have since been carefully transferred to the SCH laboratory for further analysis.The findings, which include skeletal remains, cremation urns, and other funerary artefacts, provide a valuable insight into the ancient community that once inhabited the region.Preliminary analysis indicates a Punic timeline, although some artefacts suggest an extended period of use into the early Roman...

The Shatt al-Arab floodplain outside of Basra is marked with thousands of manmade earthen ridges and canals. Archaeologists have long suspected that these may have been part of an ancient agricultural system, but they did not know when or by whom it was built. New research has demonstrated that not only is this theory true, but that the massive infrastructure was dug by a huge labor force of enslaved Africans. The Associated Press reports that researchers identified more than 7,000 features spread across 300 square miles that formed an extensive farming network. Using radiocarbon dating and a technique called optically...

This multidisciplinary work merges radiocarbon dating, ancient handwriting analysis, and machine learning. In a recent development, AI has been deployed to date the Dead Sea Scrolls with astounding accuracy, radically challenging misconceptions regarding their age and the historical timelines they fall under. The results show that several of the Scrolls might actually be much older than what is assumed, and in some cases, could be from the era of the biblical figures that supposedly wrote them. Pioneered by the University of Groningen, this multidisciplinary work merges radiocarbon dating, ancient handwriting analysis, and machine learning. The outcome is Enoch, the first...

The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office announced on Tuesday that they have identified the remains found in 1995 as those of a missing teen from New York. On March 22, 1995, partial remains were found in a riverbed off Highway 129 east of Rogge Lane. All investigators could determine from DNA testing was that the remains were from an unknown female. Her identity was a mystery for decades before her case was re-examined in 2019 when her remains were sent for more forensic testing, including carbon dating. The testing determined that she was likely born in the 1960s, with her...

...Dubbed the "Lapedo Child" after its discovery in the Lapedo Valley in central Portugal in 1998, the skeleton of the child, who was likely no more than five years old at the time of death, has fascinated scientists due to its combination of features from these two distinct human lineages...When scientists first studied the skeleton of the Lapedo Child, they noted the unusual combination of physical characteristics that seemed to indicate the child could be the offspring of one Neanderthal parent and one anatomically modern human parent.According to the researchers who performed the initial analysis, the temporal bone, mandible, teeth,...

Circular mammoth bone structures have been recovered across western Russia and the Ukraine. Most have been dated to around ~26,000–14,000 cal BP (calibrated years before present) and are usually found along the Desna/Dnpr river systems."The circular mammoth bone structures are from the height of the last Ice Age, a period of intense cold, and are widely considered to have been dwellings for shelter during long, full glacial winter seasons or possibly year-round," explains Dr. Lorenzen, one of the study's researchers...However, precisely what they looked like is yet unknown...Previous radiocarbon dates indicate the site was likely built around 24,000–25,000 ya. Making...

The complete game was found in a catacomb grave, but without a copy of the rules. The Royal Game of Ur, helpfully, had its rules written out on a cuneiform tablet. Image credit: Mary Harrsch/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) After thousands of years, we may finally know how to play an ancient board game, or at least a decent approximation of it. In 1977, Italian and Iranian archaeologists were excavating a cemetery in Shahr-i Sokhta in the south-eastern region of Iran when they discovered an unusual item in grave number 731. Inside the pseudo-catacomb grave was an ancient board game, coming...

Archaeologists discovered the near-complete wooden spade dating back to the Bronze Age while excavating The Moors at Arne... Archaeologists have discovered a near-complete wooden spade that was made during the Bronze Age, meaning it is one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever found in Britain.Scientific dating shows the prehistoric spade is around 3,500 years old. It was uncovered while the team from Wessex Archaeology were excavating the site of a new habitat scheme, The Moors at Arne, on the edge of Poole Harbour.According to the archaeologists, the spade would likely have been a precious tool and a...

Researchers have studied the ancient skeleton of a baby boy found in southern Italy, revealing a glimpse into life in the Ice Age, 17,000 years ago. The infant, which lived during the Ice Age, likely had brown skin, curly dark hair, and blue eyes. His remains were first discovered in 1998 in the Grotta delle Mura cave, located in Monopoli, Puglia, Italy. A recent report published in Nature Communications shared these findings. Archaeologist Mauro Calattini, who worked on the study, found the baby’s bones carefully covered with stones. There were no items buried with the child, and it was the...

Researchers propose using “wood vaults” to store carbon by burying wood to prevent decomposition, potentially sequestering up to 10 gigatons of CO2 annually. Further study is needed to assess the method’s environmental impacts and scalability. Inspired by the discovery of an ancient buried log, researchers have developed a new method to capture and store atmospheric carbon for centuries. The technique involves sealing woody biomass in “wood vaults,” offering a potentially cost-effective way to combat climate change. Achieving net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is crucial for combating climate change, yet reducing fossil fuel emissions alone is insufficient to meet the Paris...

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...

According to a statement released by Public Library of Science, researchers have applied updated radiocarbon calibration techniques to revise the dating of the wreck of the Kyrenia, an ancient ship that was discovered and excavated off the coast of Cyprus in the late 1960s. Based on coins and ceramics recovered from the wreck, researchers had dated the ship to the late fourth or early third century B.C., which did not align with the radiocarbon dates from decades ago. Tree-ring dating is crucial in obtaining accurate radiocarbon dates because it helps correct errors caused by variations over time in atmospheric carbon....

William Taylor, an assistant professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology in the Museum of Natural History at CU Boulder, says this research shows that the story about people and horses in the Americas is "far more dynamic" than previously thought...Juan Bautista Belardi, a professor of archaeology at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral in Argentina and Taylor's research colleague, and his team in Patagonia conducted all the field research at a canyon site called Chorrillo Grande 1 in southern Argentina. They unearthed the remains of an Aónikenk/Tehuelche campsite (people of the Indigenous Tehuelche nation traditionally used horses for...

Gezer is an ancient southern Levantine city, well known from Egyptian, Assyrian, and Biblical texts and associated with stories of power struggles and significant historical figures. It is also a rich archaeological site with abundant Bronze Age and Iron Age remains and with great potential for research into the daily lives of its denizens.Recent excavations at the site have uncovered a continuous stratigraphic sequence that allows for detailed dating and the establishment of an absolute chronology for events at the site.In this study, Webster and colleagues obtained 35 radiocarbon dates on organic materials (mostly seeds) from seven distinct stratigraphic layers...