Meilan Solly

Meilan Solly

 

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history.

An 8,000-year-old skull found in Gua Cha, Malaysia, provided DNA used in the study

Ancient DNA Offers Insight on Origins of Southeast Asia's Present-Day Population

Researchers sequenced 26 genomes using DNA samples dating as far back as 8,000 years

The unusual placement of the victims' limbs (the right humerus, or upper arm bone, in yellow, is tossed across the right femur, or thigh bone, in red) suggests they were strewn haphazardly across the burial pit rather than carefully buried.

7,000-Year-Old German Grave Shows New Side of Neolithic Brutality

The eight men and one woman bear signs of precisely inflicted blunt force cranial trauma, suggesting they were victims of mass execution

Only 17 percent of the more than 130,000 frames have been previously printed

Thousands of Unseen Photos Featuring Andy Warhol and Celebrity Pals to Be Digitized

The trove of the pop artist’s personal snapshots includes 130,000 frames, which will also be featured in an upcoming show and monograph

Obscured by tarnish and miscellaneous defacements, the plates offered no trace of the images they had once held

Particle Accelerator Reveals Hidden Faces in Damaged 19th-Century Daguerreotype Portraits

Using an experimental X-ray fluorescence process, researchers mapped contours of the plates and produced digital copies of images previously lost to time

No calves have been born over the past three years, and the current orca population is only 75

Pacific Northwest Orca Population Hits 30-Year-Low

Declining salmon population, pollution and noise disturbance pose largest threats to the killer whales’ survival

Archaeologists discovered evidence of an array of foods, including herring, eel, cod, apples, raspberries, cherries and rye bread

Archaeologists Unseal 17th-Century Danish Latrines to Discover Copenhageners' Dietary Habits

The Danish finds reveal their owners’ rich diet of fish and meat, fruits, spices—and the presence of parasites, including tapeworms and roundworms

Photographer Harry Burton spent eight years documenting the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb

Rare Photographs Put Focus on Egyptians Who Worked Alongside Carter to Excavate Tutankhamun's Tomb

Harry Burton’s 3,400 snapshots document rich array of artifacts, unseen Egyptians who contributed to the Egyptologist Howard Carter's great discovery

A dog buried in Western Illinois 10,000 years ago is one of the oldest dogs known in the Americas, and the oldest dog burial in the world. These native American dogs were almost entirely wiped out when European colonists arrived.

European Dogs Devastated Indigenous American Pup Populations

Disease, cultural change wiped out pre-contact populations, leaving no trace of ancient dogs’ DNA in modern counterparts

Gentile de Fabriano’s gold-encrusted 1423 “Adoration of the Magi” altarpiece features Arabic script on the Virgin Mary’s and Saint Joseph’s haloes

Two Florence Museums Are Tracing the City's 500-Year Connection to Islamic Art

The Uffizi explores East-West interactions between the 15th and 17th centuries; the Bargello features donations from 19th- and 20th-century collectors

The two surviving northern white rhinos, a mother and daughter, are both infertile

With Hybrid Embryo, Scientists Are One Step Closer to Saving the Northern White Rhino

Hybrid embryos were created using northern rhinos’ frozen sperm, southern rhinos’ eggs

Koala populations are expected to drop by 50 percent over the next 20 years

Newly Mapped Koala Genome Unlocks Secrets of Marsupial’s Diet, Susceptibility to Chlamydia

The cuddly creatures can survive on a diet of high-toxin eucalyptus leaves thanks to detoxifying genes

“A great deal of slow poisoning is going on in Great Britain,” Birmingham doctor William Hinds wrote in 1857, as widespread coverage of arsenic-related deaths began to turn the public away from the toxin

Arsenic-Laced Books Discovered in University Library

During the Victorian era, the toxin was commonly found hidden in wallpaper, paints and dyes

Fabergé Silver Elephant Automaton Royal Collection Trust

Automata History Comes Alive in the 'Marvellous Mechanical Museum'

The new exhibition at Compton Verney features a Fabergé elephant with swinging trunk and a gigantic kinetic sculpture by Rowland Emett

An interactive timeline details about 20,000 of the archaeologists’ finds, complete with images and descriptions of the wide array of objects

New Website Unearths Amsterdam’s History Via 700,000 Artifacts Spanning 5,000 Years

The recovered items span thousands of years, and include coins, cell phones, dentures and more

The continent is now losing 219 billion tons of ice a year, a staggering figure scientists say could raise sea levels six inches by 2100.

Antarctic Ice Loss Has Tripled Over the Past Decade

Since 1992, the continent has lost more than 3.3 trillion tons of ice, triggering a quarter-inch rise in global sea levels

The goal, Ruth Jarman says, is to “transcend the data so that it becomes something else"

'HALO' Makes Art Out of Subatomic Particle Collisions at Art Basel

The site-specific installation by British artist duo Semiconductor revisits the universe’s first moments

Researchers examined 400 photographs and 100 paintings dating between 1500 and 2015

Why Artists Have so Much Trouble Painting Lightning

A new study compares painted versus photographed depictions of lightning bolts' offshooting branches

Recordings are available via Soundcloud and the Google Arts & Culture platform

How to Hear the Met’s Historic Instruments' Singular Sounds

New audio recordings by the museum feature roughly 40 instruments, from Ming dynasty lute to the world’s oldest surviving piano

The hoard of £1 and £5 notes has a face value of about £30,000—or £1.5 million (roughly $2 million) in today’s currency

$2 Million in World War II-Era Cash Found Under Floor of Churchill's Tailor

The 30 bundles of £1 and £5 notes were likely stashed away amidst wartime uncertainty

Works by artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde and Ernest Kirchner were featured in both the 1937 "Degenerate Art" exhibition and the 1938 British show

How the Brits Refuted Nazi Germany’s ‘Degenerate Art' Exhibition

The 1938 show celebrated works by German Expressionists, defended artists on world stage

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