ISABELLA ZELTSER From Pontic Pharmaka to Modern Toxicology

Hegelians will admire the encapsulation of the era’s contradictions in a single individual. Most of us will be puzzled...

The first people in the Americas arrived no earlier than 21,000 years ago, but 'there are huge gaps in our genetic dataset,' a new study reports.

In 1968, the BBC broadcast extracts from JRR Tolkien's last ever recorded interview, 31 years after The Hobbit was published. In 2019, the full video was unearthed from the archive.

An illuminated Persian manuscript about customs, culture, and caste, written by an enigmatic figure of the early British Raj.

Identity-fluid particles may carry some energy out, leading to direct collapse.

A Spanish-Egyptian team uncovered a late Fifth Dynasty tomb with colorful reliefs and two funerary chapels at Saqqara in Egypt.

Archaeologists excavating a Mesolithic site in north-western Russia have found thousands of stone tools, blanks and manufacturing fragments, providing evidence of an extensive tool-making centre datin...

After coding, mathematics and chatbots, AI companies are setting their sights on the messy world of biology.

An elaborate 4,000-year-old defensive wall was discovered in Morocco, and it once protected a thriving farming hub, archaeologists say.

A newly discovered feathered dinosaur named Norellraptor barsboldi had sharply curved teeth and claws, as well as four wings, and it adds evidence to the idea that flight evolved several times in diff...

Neolithic communities that built some of Europe's largest monumental tombs more than 5,600 years ago managed their environment sustainably rather than destroying prehistoric forests, according to new ...

Tristan Hughes continues our special series on Great Disasters, journeying back to ancient Mesopotamia with Dr Paul Collins to explore the fall of the Sumerians.

A study of 460 medieval sites traces how cattle, sheep, wool, meat, milk, and horses reshaped England’s farming economy.

Archaeologists unearthed a horse burial dating back more than three millennia in an ancient Egyptian fortress.

Archaeologists in Austria have analyzed a collection of 500 iron bars that were likely lost in a Danube shipwreck 2,200 years ago.

One of my niche specialist topics is golden age Bulgaria - from Khan Krum up to the end of the Second Bulgarian Empire.

Ancient DNA from a Xiongnu cemetery in Mongolia shows wealth, status, and power shaped burials more than family ties.

Archaeologists excavating in the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha have uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest peace treaty, signed around 1269 B.C.

Two ancient genomes from Japan reveal migration, population change and starch-related genetic traits before and during the Yayoi period.

New evidence suggests a massive centuries-long drought may be part of the answer.

While conducting excavations at a hospital on the Île de la Cité, in the Seine River, researchers discovered part of a wall that may have once protected Lutetia, the Gallic precursor to France’s capit...

The flying mammals likely arose 65 million years ago in Europe, before spreading to Africa and then the rest of the world, according to the new research

For the Czechs, he is saintly duke Václav, but in the Christmas carol, he is Wenceslas – with a linguistically interesting extra N.

The expansion of the universe may not in fact be accelerating, calling dark energy into question.

An unusual gravitational wave signal has renewed hopes that primordial black holes, long considered purely theoretical, may finally be within reach of discovery. If confirmed, they could solve one of ...

Books, History, Science and more

After domesticating potatoes 10,000 years ago, the ancient people of the Andes evolved to have more copies of a key gene involved in digesting starch.

The bacteria responsible picked up some new genetic material, say experts.

The trick from Next Generation would be even more effective in real life.

Archaeologists at Loburg Castle in Germany have uncovered early medieval fortifications, pottery and other finds dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries.

Archaeologists discovered the two-sided pendant, which features a snake-slaying saint and a snake-haired woman, during an excavation in northwestern Russia.

New research suggests that a perplexing signal created by a pair of colliding black holes may have been warped by a space-time phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This theory could finally expl...

This programmable DNA computer can perform arithmetic without the continuous energy input needed by other systems.

For a new study, archaeologists attempted to answer age-old questions about Rome’s roads, including how connected the capital was and whether current motorways trace Roman routes

Scientists have puzzled over why the planet dubbed "Earth's twin" doesn't have a moon. Computer simulations hint that if Venus ever did have one, it probably would've cannibalized its companion

Opera in Verona's ancient amphitheatre, open to the night sky, is a spectacle to be savoured.

New evidence dates millet consumption in Bronze Age Poland to 1590 BCE, showing how people gradually adopted the resilient crop.

Scientists have finally confirmed the origin of the mysterious Silverpit Crater beneath the North Sea. New evidence shows that an asteroid about 160 meters wide struck the seabed roughly 43 to 46 mill...

A feather discovered inside 66-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur poop may help explain why modern birds survived the asteroid catastrophe. The extinct bird it came from had more primitive insulatin...

Researchers have uncovered evidence of a vast pre-colonial civilisation that flourished across southwestern Amazonia, identifying more than 20,000 monumental earthworks hidden beneath the rainforest c...

How should we understand the Runic inscription on a silveringot discovered in the spectacular hoard recently discovered at Rebild?

Archaeologists excavating the site of a planned data centre complex in northern France have uncovered a rare palisaded settlement dating back around 2,800 years, revealing evidence of farming, food st...

Adults first demonstrate tool use, then hand over the implements to their infants, who copy the behavior.

Archaeologists at Troy are uncovering a 2,800-year-old agora that reveals how the Bronze Age city developed into the later...

Discover how the architecture of Fatimid Cairo influenced the churches, palaces and artistic culture of Norman Sicily during the Middle Ages.