Humans

The Vikings were notorious raiders, but they were traders too, establishing vast trade routes that flourished from the 8th to 11th centuries. A new study reveals some of those connections spanned surprisingly long distances, linking large urban trading centers with rural outlands where many natural resources originated. Researchers from the UK and Europe illustrate the

There’s a line of thinking that says you can mentally manifest your way to financial success through believing it will happen – but this kind of aspirational mind trick is actually more likely to be linked to risky investments and bankruptcy, new research has found. Across three studies and a total of 1,023 participants from

Virtually every animal on Earth can thank their mother for the energy that fuels each of their cells. The power is generated in a part of the cell known as the mitochondria, and this organelle is made entirely from a genetic recipe laid out in your mother’s DNA. A father’s mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, plays

Generative AI – which encompasses large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT but also image and video generators like DALL·E 2 – supercharges what has come to be known as “digital necromancy“, the conjuring of the dead from the digital traces they leave behind. Debates around digital necromancy were first sparked in the 2010s by advances

Neolithic humans were apparently big on reuse. According to an analysis of bones from Cueva de los Marmoles, or Marmoles Cave in Southern Spain, it wasn’t necessarily uncommon for living humans to repurpose the deceased, and recycle their bones into tools. Amongst a collection of bones dating back thousands of years ago, archaeologists led by

A pair of interlocking logs that haven’t seen sunlight in half a million years could challenge some fundamental assumptions about the technology and culture of our Stone Age ancestors. Uncovered in 2019 at the Kalambo Falls in Zambia, the objects provide archaeologists with an exceptionally rare look at wooden technology from mid-Paleolithic Africa, a time

From the oxygen-carrying corpuscles in our blood to the branching neurons that govern our thoughts, our body is built of a dazzling variety of cells. Researchers from institutions in Germany, Canada, Spain, and the US have published a comprehensive study of how many individual cells of each type there are in typical bodies. Based on

Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind. Take the experience of déjà vu, when we wrongly believe have experienced a novel situation in the past – leaving you with an spooky sense of pastness. But we have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system. Our research

Every once in a while, a high reading of radioactivity off the coast of Tybee Island, Georgia, sends the US government scrambling to look for a nuclear weapon that’s likely hidden 13 to 55 feet below the ocean and sand, buried in the seafloor. On February 5, 1958, two Air Force jets collided in mid-air

For the past 24,000 years or so, a hidden sanctuary of Paleolithic rock art has endured on the walls of a cave near Valencia in eastern Spain, holding clues about the ancient artists and the world they inhabited. The cave itself is well-known to locals and spelunkers yet more than 110 paintings and engravings went

A recent mission from the American spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, is facing public backlash after it carried the remains of two extinct hominins into space. The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, is custodian of the fossils and its researchers are celebrating the event as a “historic first” and “a tribute to science

The human brain is super sensitive to any sort of pattern that resembles a face, which is why we so often ‘catch the eye’ of inanimate objects glaring, grinning, or gaping back at us. Now, psychologists in Australia have shown that the tendency to see faces that aren’t really there, called face pareidolia, may be

When and where did our ancestors first fashion footwear? We cannot look to physical evidence of shoes for the answer, as the perishable materials from which they were made would no longer be evident. Ichnology, the study of fossil tracks and traces, can help to answer this unresolved question through a search for clear evidence

Heart in your throat. Butterflies in your stomach. Bad gut feeling. These are all phrases many people use to describe fear and anxiety. You have likely felt anxiety inside your chest or stomach, and your brain usually doesn’t hurt when you’re scared. Many cultures tie cowardice and bravery more to the heart or the guts

You’re running, but you’re not going anywhere. You’re falling, but you never hit the ground. You’re watching your loved one waste away, but there’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re like most people, then you might be covered in a cold sweat by now, recalling a nightmare. Though our dreams are highly personal,

Researchers have identified living relatives in Tanzania of people whose skulls were pillaged and taken to Germany during the colonial era, Berlin’s museum authority said on Tuesday, a discovery hailed as a “small miracle”. Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History has been carrying out research on around 1,100 skulls from what was known as

Ancient rocks excavated from a site inhabited by early humans some 1.4 million years ago may represent attempts at achieving perfect geometry. Limestone spheroids from the ‘Ubeidiya prehistoric site in Israel were deliberately shaped, archaeologists say, and show signs of improvement the more they were worked. This suggests that the creators had a specific goal

A team of Peruvian and Japanese archaeologists has unearthed a pre-Hispanic archaeological site in northern Peru dedicated to ancestor worship, with burial chambers, human remains and ceramic offerings. “We have discovered an archaeological site of the Wari period with an antiquity of between 800 to 1000 years CE” in the Cajamarca region 900 kilometers (560

The discovery of an ancient ape skull may challenge the long-held belief that the ancestors of apes and humans came from Africa, a controversial new study says. The partial skull of the ape, called an Anadoluvius turkae, was found in Cankiri, Turkey, and appears to date back to 8.7 million years ago, Live Science reported.

They say a dog is a man’s best friend, but a new study has found that our pet canines may be more sensitive to the higher-pitched voices of women. An analysis of brain scans by researchers from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungry suggest dogs really do listen

Scientists have identified the aromatic ancient recipe that preserved an Egyptian noblewoman who was mummified around 1450 BCE, meticulously recreating ‘the scent of eternity’. Advances in chemical analysis technology enabled detection of individual substances in balm residue from once-sealed canopic jars that stored the mummified organs. In ancient Egypt, mummification was the ultimate art form

Nearly a million years ago, some devastating event nearly wiped out humanity’s ancestors. Genomic data from 3,154 modern humans suggests the population was reduced from approximately 100,000 to just 1,280 breeding individuals around 900,000 years ago. That’s a jaw-dropping population decline of 98.7 percent that lasted 117,000 years and could have brought humanity to extinction.

The biggest search for the Loch Ness Monster in five decades got underway in the Scottish Highlands Saturday, as researchers and enthusiasts from around the world braved pelting rain to try to track down the elusive Nessie. The expedition deployed drones with thermal scanners, boats with infrared cameras and an underwater hydrophone to try to

For the first time, researchers have been able to extract DNA fragments from an ancient clay brick, demonstrating how these building blocks from times long past could be used to catalog flora found in the environment at the time. When this brick was made some 2,900 years ago in what is now northern Iraq, the

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of unique early Neolithic burial practices in Galería del Sílex in Spain, following an analysis of ceramic vessels found with human remains in two pits. Representing an early instance of diverse Neolithic funerary customs deep within the Iberian Peninsula interior, the finding draws attention to the Atapuerca Mountains as a significant

An analysis of antibodies extracted from 800-year-old teeth has provided a new way to identify pathogens our ancestors contended with. The process could potentially help us understand how human antibodies – proteins naturally produced by our bodies in self-defense – have developed through history. Building on previous research, a team led by researchers from the

Personally witnessing the contorted forms of Vesuvius’s human and animal victims drives home the horror of their final moments like no words or footage ever could. The famous casts of Pompeii have allowed this experience to be shared by generations of people across the world, from Italy to Australia. Unfortunately, the plaster may have also

Since the sale of the platform formerly known as Twitter in October 2022, almost half of its ‘environmentalist’ users – including scientists, policymakers and activists – have stopped tweeting. US researchers compared the habits of 380,000 people who tweeted regularly about environmental issues with a control group of 458,000 users who tweeted about the upcoming

A chemical analysis of the letters of the legendary historical figure reputed to have inspired fictional vampire Dracula has revealed Vlad Drăculea (aka Vlad the Impaler) may have cried tears of blood. Traces left behind on the paper by the 15th century ruler of Wallachia suggest he was afflicted by a condition known as hemolacria,

July 2023 might go down in history as the moment when humanity finally grasped the horrific consequences of our fossil-fuel addiction. As we prepare to live in a scalding world with increasingly extreme weather events, it might be time to consider adaptations such as underground living. Surrounded by masses of rock and soil that absorb

Imagine a steamy sex scene involving a woman and a man from your favorite television show or movie. It’s likely that both parties orgasm. But this doesn’t reflect reality. Because during heterosexual sexual encounters, women have far fewer orgasms than men. This is called the orgasm gap. And it has been documented in the scientific

One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.” This information came out as part of a broader set

Imagine if one-day ChatGPT was joined by CatGPT – an AI-based machine that allowed us to communicate with our pet cats using meows, purrs, or hisses. Now that large language models have become experts at human speech, many are wondering what it would take for AI to talk with animals. Two neurobiologists discuss the answer

Humans have been intentionally changing their bodies for many thousands of years, but there’s no denying that one of the most fascinating practices is that of skull modification. Around the world, throughout history, many cultures have artificially and intentionally altered the shapes of their skulls. Although the practice appears elsewhere in Asia, evidence of individuals

A new and improved DNA analysis of the famous ‘Iceman’ mummy suggests this ancient individual is not who we thought he was. The 5,300-year-old mummy, nicknamed Ötzi (which rhymes with “tootsie”), is the oldest human body ever found intact. He has fascinated the world since his body was first unearthed in Italy’s Ötztal Alps in

Everyone knows that arithmetic is true: 2 + 2 = 4. But surprisingly, we don’t know why it’s true. By stepping outside the box of our usual way of thinking about numbers, my colleagues and I have recently shown that arithmetic has biological roots and is a natural consequence of how perception of the world

Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Ohrid, the “Pearl of the Balkans”, scientists have uncovered what may be one of Europe’s earliest sedentary communities, and are trying to solve the mystery of why it sheltered behind a fortress of defensive spikes.​ A stretch of the Albanian shore of the lake once hosted a settlement of

Our breathing patterns, and their resulting impacts on the brain, can strengthen or weaken our memory-forming powers, new research reveals – and the findings could potentially help in the treatment of brain disorders and mental health problems. The body’s natural and spontaneous breathing behavior is known as medullary respiratory activity, after the medulla oblongata –

The way your pupils react to light exercise could reveal whether you’re getting one of the key benefits of movement – the cognitive boost linked to improved mood and enhanced executive function. Researchers in Japan monitored pupil size in 24 participants during 10 minutes of light exercise and then used neuroimaging to see how participants’

Most of us can relate to that intense, spine-shuddering feeling of repulsion when hearing someone scrape their nails down a chalkboard. But for some people such intense reactions to noise can also be triggered by much more common, mundane sounds. This sensitivity is called misophonia, and a recent survey from the UK suggests more people

Researchers have unearthed the remains of what they believe to be a 17th-century “vampire” child who was buried face down and padlocked to the earth in a likely effort to assuage villagers’ fears that the child would not return from the dead, the lead archaeologist on the dig told Insider. The skeletal remains of the

For a couple of hundred years, Cahokia was the place to be in what is now the US state of Illinois. The bustling, vibrant city was at one time home to some 15,000 people, but by the end of the 14th century it was deserted – and researchers still aren’t sure why. A study published

Mathematicians at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom have worked out how many lottery tickets you need to buy to guarantee yourself a win. Even if you follow their advice to a tee, however, you’ll probably end up losing money. That’s the discouraging reality of playing a game of chance designed to favor

In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter found what he’d spent the last six years searching for: King Tutankhamun’s tomb. It was nestled in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt and its treasures are still considered one of archaeology’s most legendary finds. But Carter’s glory and fame came at a price: On the day

An international team of scientists has described an ancient human fossil in China unlike any other hominin found before. It resembles neither the lineage that split to form Neanderthals, nor Denisovans, nor us, suggesting our current version of the human family tree needs another branch. The jaw, skull, and leg bones belonging to this yet-to-be

Archaeologists are too scared to open up the 2,200-year-old tomb of China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang because they fear it might harbor deadly booby traps. The mausoleum of the emperor, who ruled from 221 to 210 BCE, is located in Lintong District, Xi’an, Shaanxi. It is guarded by the iconic Terracotta Army, sculptures meant

Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer has revived morbid curiosity in the destructive power of nuclear weapons. There are now an estimated 12,512 nuclear warheads. A war in which even a fraction of these bombs were detonated would create blast waves and fires capable of killing millions of people almost instantly. The radiation-induced cancers

One stormy Monday in March, 1827, the German composer Ludwig von Beethoven passed away after a protracted illness. Bedridden since the previous Christmas, he was attacked by jaundice, his limbs and abdomen swollen, each breath a struggle. As his associates went about the task of sorting through personal belongings, they uncovered a document Beethoven had