Archaeology
This Castle’s Toilet Still Holds Parasites From Crusaders’ Feces
The presence of whipworm and roundworm eggs suggest that crusaders were especially predisposed to death by malnutrition
June 18, 2013 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Seeing Pictures of Home Can Make It Harder To Speak a Foreign Language
Being exposed to faces or images that you associate with your home country primes you to think in your native tongue, a new study shows
June 17, 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
Scientists Sequence DNA of Bacteria Responsible for Medieval Leprosy
Genetic information gathered from centuries-old exhumed bones reveals that the infection hasn't changed much in the past 1,000 years
June 13, 2013 |
By Marina Koren
Do Geography and Altitude Shape the Sounds of a Language?
Languages that evolve at high elevations are more likely to include a sound that's easier to make when the air is thinner, new research shows
June 12, 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
Evidence for the Oldest Ever Bone Tumor Was Just Found in a Neanderthal Fossil
A 120,000-year-old rib bone, originally found in Croatia, shows that tumors aren't always caused by exposure to pollution
June 05, 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
The First French Winemakers Learned Everything They Knew From Etruscans
New research pins the arrival of wine making in France to around 525 B.C.
June 04, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
The Ancient Egyptians Had Iron Because They Harvested Fallen Meteors
Modern chemical analysis confirms that ancient Egyptians used iron from meteorites
May 30, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
Scientists Just Found a Woolly Mammoth That Still Had Liquid Blood
From a frozen Siberian island, a well-preserved mammoth and some liquid mammoth blood
May 30, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
How Two Retirees’ Amateur Archaeology Helped Throw Our View of Human History Into Turmoil
Through decades of excavation near their cottage Anton and Maria Chobot unearthed artifacts of the Clovis people
May 28, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
Powerful Computers Are Piecing Together 1,000 Years of Jewish Chronicles
Hundreds of thousands of text fragments chronicle everything from marriage dowries to shopping lists to ancient religious texts
May 28, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
New Study Finds That King Richard III Was Buried in a Hurry
The British king's remains, discovered in a parking lot, were dropped in an awkward position in a grave that wasn't dug large enough
May 23, 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
A Bust of Richard III, 3D-Printed From a Scan of His Recently Exhumed Skull
A forensic art team reconstructed Richard III's face
May 17, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
Mayan Pyramid Destroyed to Get Rocks for Road Project
The construction company building the road appears to have extracted crushed rocks from the pyramid to use as road fill
May 14, 2013 |
By Rose Eveleth
Scientists Map Britain’s Most Famous Underwater City
Researchers have created a 3D visualization of Dunwich using acoustic imaging
May 13, 2013 |
By Rose Eveleth
The World According to Twitter, in Maps
A new geographic analysis of millions of tweets provides a remarkably broad view of humanity, by language, location and other factors
May 10, 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
You Totally Would Have Wanted This Little Dome-Headed Dinosaur as a Pet
Just 90 pounds and 6 feet tall, this newly discovered dinosaur is the oldest of its kind
May 08, 2013 |
By Colin Schultz
My Big Fat European Family: What Genomics Tell Us About Shared Ancestors
Any two modern-day Europeans, even those living on opposite sides of the continent, may be more closely related than they might think
May 07, 2013 |
By Marina Koren
U.S. Gives Mongolia Its Tyrannosauras Skeleton Back
The U.S. government is returning a Tyrannosaurus skeleton to Mongolia and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is giving two statues back to Cambodia
May 07, 2013 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Physicists to Shoot Extremely Fast-Moving Electrons at Dinosaur Skin Fossil
The actual color of dinosaur skin is still very much up for debate
May 01, 2013 |
By Rose Eveleth
Why Women Like Deep Voices and Men Prefer High Ones
We find different pitches attractive because of the body size they signal—and a touch of breathiness is crucial to take the edge off deep voices in men
April 24, 2013 |
By Joseph Stromberg
