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University of Sydney—Long-distance migration along Peru’s Pacific coast began at least 800 years ago, centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire and much earlier than previously thought, a new international study reveals. 

By analyzing ancient DNA (aDNA) alongside archaeological and historical data, the study* provides some of the strongest evidence to date of population movement along the Pacific coast prior to Inca rule (AD 1400 to 1532), demonstrating that pre-Inca coastal communities were far more mobile and connected at local and interregional scales than historically believed. 

Published in Nature Communications, it suggests people travelled more than 700 kilometres from Peru’s north coast to the Chincha Valley in the south. Here, they settled and intermarried with neighbouring populations, while maintaining distinctive cultural traditions – such as cranial modification and painting the dead with red pigment – for generations. The study also identified a single grave containing relatives who engaged in endogamy, or close-kin procreation.  

“Migration and kinship have long been part of the human story and the development of powerful societies,” said co-lead author Dr Jacob Bongers, digital archaeologist and member of the Vere Gordon Childe Centre at the University of Sydney, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Museum Research Institute.  

“What’s most interesting about this research is that it shows the close-knit and far-reaching social networks of pre-Inca coastal communities, as well as how people maintained cultural traditions of marking group identities for centuries, even as they intermarried with distinct groups,” he said. 

Tracing ancient movement and mating patterns through aDNA  

The research team analysed aDNA samples of 21 individuals recovered from burial sites in the Chincha Valley to reconstruct family relationships and explore genetic diversity over time.  

“The genome-wide data and radiocarbon dates suggest migrants arrived in the Chincha Valley by at least the thirteenth century AD, well before Inca expansion,” Dr Bongers said. “Their ancestry traced back to the Peruvian north coast, more than 700 kilometres away, and the aDNA of these early migrants revealed no evidence of mixing with local populations.” 

Genetic evidence revealed mixed ancestry between people from the north, central and south coasts over subsequent generations. “This likely means that, after northerners migrated to Chincha, they intermarried with groups from neighbouring coastal areas, a practice that continued during the Spanish Colonial Period (AD 1532-1825),” Dr Bongers said.  

Genetic and bioarchaeological data from the aDNA samples also indicated close-kin procreation.  

“The burial of family members together and the evidence for close-kin unions in the lower Chincha Valley highlights the importance of the familial unit for ancient Andeans,” said co-lead author Assistant Professor Jordan Dalton from the State University of New York, Oswego. 

“The close biological relationships suggest the sampled individuals were members of an ayllu or parcialidad, a traditional, kin-based group that shares common territory, resources and ancestry. Close-kin unions may have served as a strategic means of retaining control over resources within the group,” she said.  

Cultural traditions endured across centuries    

All sampled individuals had some north coast ancestry, demonstrating population continuity for at least 200 years. This coincides with persistent cultural traditions maintained in Chincha from at least the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. 

“In the sampled individuals from the lower and middle valley we observed practices such as cranial modification, a process carried out in infancy to shape the head using boards and bindings, human vertebrae strung on reed sticks, and the postmortem application of red pigment to the skull,” Dr Bongers said.  

“Postmortem red pigment application and cranial modification are cultural traditions that have long been documented on Peru’s north coast, so this evidence shows migrants may have brought their body modification traditions south to mark group identities.” 

The timing of migration from northern Peru aligned with major social and political changes along Peru’s coast, yet the precise reasons for population movement remain uncertain, Dr Bongers said. 

“Climate hazards, the expansion of powerful northern polities such as the Chimú, and access to valuable resources including seabird guano, are all possible drivers of ancient Andean migration,” he said. 

“Importantly, this research expands our understanding of how and when interregional interaction occurred along the Andean Pacific coast and makes it clear the Inca incorporated highly mobile and deeply connected coastal communities into their empire.” 

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Map of the study area. A. Locations of the Chincha Valley and other Andean sites referenced in this study that yielded ancient DNA data. B. The archaeological sites under investigation for this study. Basemaps for panels A and B were obtained from the World Imagery dataset (https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=10df2279f9684e4a9f6a7f08febac2a9) and created with ArcGIS Pro v3.6.2. Sources: ESRI, Michael Bauer Research GmbH 2022, Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI), Earthstar Geographics, Vantor.  Credit: Basemaps for panels A and B were obtained from the World Imagery dataset (https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=10df2279f9684e4a9f6a7f08febac2a9) and created with ArcGIS Pro v3.6.2. Sources: ESRI, Michael Bauer Research GmbH 2022, Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI), Earthstar Geographics, Vantor.

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Aerial view of a cemetery in the middle Chincha Valley. Photo by Jacob L. Bongers.  Credit: Photo by Jacob L. Bongers.

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Aerial view of a cemetery in the middle Chincha Valley. Photo by Jacob L. Bongers.  Credit: Photo by Jacob L. Bongers.

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Article Source: University of Sydney news release.

*Bongers, J, L., Dalton, J. A., et al., ‘Ancient DNA reveals a family ossuary and long-distance migration on the Pacific coast before the Inca Empire’ (Nature Communications, 2026). Nature Communications, 22-May-2026. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72216-y

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Universität Autonoma de Barcelona—Neanderthal populations in southern Europe collected shellfish throughout the year, with a marked preference for the colder months, according to a new international study led by researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the IsoTOPIK Lab at the University of Burgos (UBU), and the Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria at the University of Cantabria (UC).

The research, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that 115,000 years ago Neanderthal groups from Los Aviones Cave (Cartagena, Region of Murcia, Spain) were already consuming molluscs following a clearly seasonal pattern, particularly during the colder months of the year, from November to April.

For decades, the ability of Neanderthal populations to adapt to coastal environments and exploit marine resources in an organised manner has been the subject of intense debate in archaeology and human evolution. Traditionally, the regular consumption of shellfish and seasonal planning were considered traits exclusive to our species, Homo sapiens. However, this recent finding challenges that paradigm.

The study analysed marine mollusc remains (including small gastropods and limpets) recovered from Los Aviones Cave at an unprecedented resolution. The results show that these populations not only collected shellfish sporadically but also possessed a deep understanding of marine ecological cycles, anticipating by thousands of years behaviours later documented in modern humans from the region.

But how is it possible to determine the season in which a mollusc was consumed thousands of years ago? The key lies in the oxygen isotopic signal preserved in the carbonate of their shells, as the incorporation of heavier or lighter oxygen isotopes depends primarily on seawater temperature. “By reconstructing variation during shell growth, these values act as a prehistoric thermometer. This makes it possible to infer temperature changes as well as the exact time of year when a mollusc was collected, revealing new details about seasonal consumption patterns,” explains Asier García-Escárzaga, lead author of the study.

The results represent a milestone, as they are the first obtained for such early stages of human evolution. “They consumed marine resources throughout the year, but with a very clear preference for winter and autumn months. This pattern, very similar to that developed by more recent populations of modern humans in Europe and other regions, cannot be coincidental,” García-Escárzaga explains.

Winter collection coincides with periods when certain mollusc species have higher meat yield and improved sensory qualities (flavour and texture) due to their reproductive cycles. In addition, Neanderthal populations may have avoided collecting shellfish in summer to minimise health risks, such as the proliferation of toxic algae (red tides) or the rapid decomposition of shellfish due to heat, demonstrating a conscious and safe management of marine resources.

These findings suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans may have been more similar than previously thought. The study highlights that this behaviour reflects a diversified diet incorporating high-quality marine proteins (rich in Omega-3 and zinc), which are essential for brain development and reproductive health. “What we see at Los Aviones is a fully modern subsistence strategy,” the authors state. This discovery reinforces the idea that Neanderthals possessed cognitive, social and economic capacities comparable to our own, establishing the Iberian Peninsula as a key region for understanding the complexity of our closest ancestors.

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Cueva de los Aviones, Cartagena, Region of Murcia, Spain.  Credit: ICTA-UAB

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Cueva de los Aviones, Cartagena, Region of Murcia, Spain, and specimens of limpets Patella ferruginea and gastropod Phorcus lineatus. Credit: ICTA-UAB

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Asier García-Escárzaga in the laboratory.  Credit: ICTA-UAB

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Laboratory analysis of a specimen of the gastropod Phorcus turbinatus.  Credit: ICTA-UAB

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Article Source: Universität Autonoma de Barcelona news release.

*Seasonal shellfish exploitation by Neanderthals 115,000 years ago, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 10.1073/pnas.2531880123 

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PLOS—Neanderthals had the know-how to identify a tooth infection and the motor skills to drill out the damage, according to a study published May 13, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Alisa Zubova of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera), St. Petersburg, and colleagues.

Archaeological discoveries have shown that Neanderthals used toothpicks to remove food from their teeth and might also have used medicinal plants, but the extent of their medical capabilities is unclear. In this study*, Zubova and colleagues describe a Neanderthal tooth which received physical alterations to treat infection.

This tooth is a single molar from Chagyrskaya Cave in Russia, around 59,000 years old. In the center of the tooth is a deep hole extending into the pulp cavity. The researchers conducted experiments on three modern human teeth to demonstrate that a hole of the same shape and same patterns of microscopic grooves can be created by drilling into the tooth with a stone point similar to tools that have been found within Chagyrskaya Cave. The hole in this damaged molar, as well as toothpick grooves along the side of the tooth, is an example of a caries lesion in the same population, which is rare among Neanderthals.

This procedure would have hurt, but it would also have ultimately alleviated the pain of a tooth infection by removing the damaged part of the tooth. These modifications provide evidence that Neanderthals had the capacity to identify the source of pain, to determine how to treat it, to apply the manual dexterity needed for an efficient operation, and to endure painful treatment to alleviate future discomfort. This is the first time such behavior has been demonstrated outside of Homo sapiens, and it is the oldest example of such behavior by more than 40,000 years.

The authors add: “This finding currently represents the world’s oldest evidence of successful dental treatment. The damage documented on the Neanderthal tooth from Chagyrskaya Cave in Siberia points not only to intentional pulp removal but also to antemortem wear – wear that could only have developed if the individual kept using the tooth while alive. We also identified areas of demineralization where remnants of carious damage were preserved, further indicating that the concavity in the tooth was associated with treatment.”

Alisa Zubova adds: “We were intrigued by the unusual shape of the concavity on the tooth’s chewing surface. It differed from the normal morphology of the pulp chamber and did not match the typical pattern of carious lesions seen in Homo sapiens. Moreover, distinctly visible scratches suggested that the concavity was not the result of natural damage but of intentional actions.”

“Computed microtomography revealed changes in dentin mineralization consistent with severe caries. Human manipulation of carious lesions has already been documented for the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and later periods. We therefore hypothesized that the damage we observed could also represent traces of such medical intervention – but from a significantly earlier period.”

Lydia Zotkina adds: “To interpret the concavity on the occlusal surface of the tooth, we conducted experimental manual drilling on a series of specimens: a modern human tooth and two Homo sapiens teeth from a Holocene archaeological collection of uncertain temporal and cultural provenance. Comparison of the microscopic traces on the original Neanderthal specimen with those produced experimentally revealed a clear match. The findings demonstrate that drilling a carious lesion using a sharp, thin stone tool is entirely effective, permitting the rapid removal of damaged dental tissue.”

Ksenia Kolobova adds: “Neanderthals arrived in this region 70–60 thousand years ago during a migration from Central and Eastern Europe and inhabited it until at least 40–45 thousand years ago. Altai became a new and suitable home for them thanks to its biological diversity, climate similar to that of Europe, abundant raw materials for stone tool production, and their usual prey – wild bison and horses. Analysis of stone tool industries and paleogenetic studies have shown that the Neanderthals from Chagyrskaya Cave are very closely related to the bearers of the so-called Micoquian industry, who also lived in the Caucasus and Crimea.”

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Chagyrskaya 64 molar tooth and its macro-features: General view of the tooth in five projections.  Credit: Zubova et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Chagyrskaya Cave, southwestern Siberia, Russia. a. cave location map (created in ArcGIS software, using open data from https://www.usgs.gov/products/maps accessed on December 15, 2021); b. stratigraphic sequence with Chagyrskaya 64 molar discovery location indicated in orange; c. general view of the cave; d. discovery location of the Chagyrskaya 64 molar in situ in Layer 6c/2.  Credit: Zubova et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release.

*Zubova AV, Zotkina LV, Olsen JW, Kulkov AM, Moiseyev VG, Malyutina AA, et al. (2026) Earliest evidence for invasive mitigation of dental caries by Neanderthals. PLoS One 21(5): e0347662. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347662

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters—Scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have uncovered new information suggesting a potential connection between Homo erectus and modern humans, while also developing new, less invasive paleoproteomics methods of fossil research.

Homo erectus, or H. erectus, was the first species within the genus Homo to leave Africa, occupying a key position in human evolutionary history. However, due to the lack of molecular evidence from H. erectus, their genetic characteristics, population diversity, and especially their potential connections to modern humans remain unresolved. As a result, the role of H. erectus represents a major mystery and a focal point of debate in human evolution.

Molecular research on H. erectus remains has been limited because ancient human fossils are irreplaceable and a precious cultural heritage. For this reason, traditional destructive sampling methods are unacceptable and have long constrained the progress of relevant molecular research.

Now, however, the research team, led by FU Qiaomei from IVPP in collaboration with multiple institutions, has overcome this bottleneck by employing a micro-destructive sampling approach based on acid etching to recover molecular information from six Homo erectus teeth without damaging their morphology.

The team’s findings were published online in Nature on May 13*.

The article was also accompanied by a concurrent commentary in Nature, which highlighted the role of enamel proteins from these six H. erectus teeth from China in providing “new insights into how ancient genetic material was eventually introduced into modern human populations.” 

The researchers identified two mutations from the fossil teeth, dating back to at least 400,000 years ago, from three different sites—Zhoukoudian (Peking Man), Hexian, and Sunjiadong. The mutations suggest genetic links between East Asian H. erectus and Denisovans, which themselves are linked to modern humans.

The first is the previously unknown AMBN-A253G mutation, which was identified as a potential molecular marker associated with these H. erectus populations. It provides the first evidence that H. erectus specimens from these three sites belonged to the same evolutionary population.

The second is the AMBN-M273V variant, previously thought to be specific to Denisovans. However, this study reveals that this variant is not unique to Denisovans but is shared by these H. erectus populations.

According to the researchers, the second variant may have entered the Denisovan lineage through admixture and was subsequently passed to some modern human populations (in Southeast Asia and Oceania) via Denisovan introgression. This provides the first insights into a possible connection between East Asian H. erectus (such as those from Zhoukoudian) and Denisovans, as well as the potential deep genetic links to some present-day modern humans.

Additionally, the study establishes a suite of new experimental and computational methodologies, including a sex determination method for ancient hominins based on the male-specific enamel protein AMELY, a cross-validation approach using tandem mass spectrometry and multiple data analysis pipelines, and DNA analysis methods linked to specific amino acid variants. Together, these tools provide a new framework for systematic paleoproteomics research.

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A cartoon illustration of the AMBN enamel protein.  Credit: Image by IVPP

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Article Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters headquarters.

*Enamel proteins from six Homo erectus specimens across China, Nature, 13-May-2026. 10.1038/s41586-026-10478-8 

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Have you ever wondered when horse racing actually started? We’re not talking about the modern horse racing world, but the moment when two humans decided that they could race their horses to see who was fastest.

It turns out that horse racing is way older than most people think. In fact, many people consider horse racing to be thousands of years old, and ancient civilizations also loved this sport.

How do we know this? Well, because of archaeology, we uncovered ruins of tracks, carvings, and ancient texts pointing to an exciting horse race. If we put all the small cues together, the story becomes crystal clear.

So, how old is horse racing? Let’s find out.

It Didn’t Start as “Sport”

If we’re trying to find horse racing events like the Kentucky Derby in the past, we’re looking at it with distorted lenses. Ancient racing wasn’t really about entertainment. At least not in the beginning.

In early civilizations like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, horses were primarily used for war, transport, and status. Yes, speed was important, but not because they would be draped in flowers or win an award, but because the horse’s speed can make a real difference in battles.

So, what does this mean? Well, early “races” were often tied to training or demonstrations. In early civilizations like the ones mentioned, we cannot find structured racing. Yes, horses were bred and trained, but nobody gathered around a racetrack to watch a race and place a bet on the horse they thought would win the race.

Modern horse racing is all about entertainment and betting. Just take a look at the Triple Crown races, including the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes. People cannot wait for big races to place some Preakness bets. It is how the sport is structured, and honestly, it works perfectly for the modern world.

But during times of war, food scarcity, and lack of transportation, horses were used for other things.

In ancient civilizations, they tested the horse’s speed just because warriors needed only the fastest and most controllable horses.

Chariot Racing Was the First Real “Spectacle”

So, when can we see the first traces of organized horse racing? Well, that would probably be the time when chariot racing became a thing. We’re talking about a time when Ancient Greece and later Ancient Rome were dominant.

This was the first time horses were used as a form of entertainment. Honestly, during these times, we can see the biggest rise in culture. We’re talking about art, philosophy, crafts, and leisure activities. In other words, they had better things to do than fight each other and conquer all the time.

During these times, entire stadiums were built around racetracks, crowds gathered in huge numbers (maybe even more than the Kentucky Derby), and people even supported specific teams or factions.

Yes, even betting was involved, but not like placing a bet on TwinSpires through a phone, but more like trading bets where people usually bet using livestock and later silver coins.

Archeologists have found large arenas like the Circus Maximus in Rome, which could hold over 100,000 spectators. This alone is enough to give you an idea about the importance of these races. Yes, there were gladiator fights too, but chariot races were also really popular.

On top of that, chariot races have never been like a side activity but usually the main event.

Organized Racing Started Earlier Than You’d Expect

For a long time, people assumed that structured horse racing was a relatively recent development.

But archaeological evidence suggests otherwise.

In Ancient Greece, horse racing was already part of the Olympic Games as early as 648 BCE. That means there were rules, events, and recognized competition formats thousands of years ago.

This is where things start to look a lot more like modern racing.

It wasn’t random anymore. It was organized.

Breeding and Training Were Already Advanced

Most people don’t know that ancient civilizations weren’t just racing horses, but they were actually breeding them. And not in a random order, but carefully, strategically, and planned. They really understood horse genetics and found out that through breeding, they can produce faster and more endurant horses.

There are archaeological records that show that certain regions were known for producing stronger or faster horses. Why? Well, it’s all thanks to selective breeding, and that has been around for thousands of years.

Over the years, there is proof that training methods have advanced, and horses were conditioned for endurance (mainly), but also speed, control, and all depending on their purpose.

Racing Was Also About Entertainment (Eventually)

Over time, the purpose of racing shifted.

What started as a functional test, speed, and control slowly became entertainment. And all of this happened naturally. People had more time to explore things, and since horses were around them, they started to experiment, and it worked.

By the time you reach Ancient Rome, racing is no longer just about performance.

It’s about spectacle.

Crowds gather, bets are placed informally, and rivalries form. Some charioteers became famous in their own right, almost like early sports celebrities. And this is where you start to see the foundation of modern horse racing culture.

These races became competitive, the audience loved them, and most importantly, they were exciting to watch. Everything we can say about today’s horse racing culture. So, horse racing is a sport that has been around for thousands of years, and we really have to appreciate that.

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Cover Photo, Above:  by Samir Smier

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A fragment of bone. A crumbling tooth. A pressed leaf in stone. These small things carry enormous secrets — if you know how to ask the right questions. For centuries, scientists guessed ages based on rock layers and gut instinct. Today, artificial intelligence powered by advanced mathematics is changing everything about how we understand ancient fossils and remains.

The results are stunning. What once took years now takes days.

Why Dating Fossils Is So Hard

Fossils don’t come with labels. A skull pulled from a riverbank could be 10,000 years old or 2 million. Traditional methods like radiocarbon dating work well — but only up to about 50,000 years. Beyond that threshold, the math gets messy and the margins of error balloon.

Older remains require different tools entirely. Uranium-lead dating, potassium-argon analysis, thermoluminescence — each method has its own equations, assumptions, and blind spots. Getting it right demands extraordinary precision.

The Numbers Behind the Science

The scale of improvement is hard to ignore. A 2022 study published in Nature found that AI-assisted dating reduced age estimation errors by up to 40% compared to traditional methods alone. That’s not a minor tweak — that’s a fundamental leap.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute have used neural networks to analyse ancient DNA degradation patterns, dating specimens with a margin of error as small as ±200 years on remains over 100,000 years old. Numbers like these were unthinkable a decade ago.

Isotope Ratios and Pattern Recognition

Here’s what makes AI genuinely remarkable in this context. Isotope ratios — the relative amounts of certain chemical elements preserved in bone — shift in predictable ways over time. But the patterns are subtle. Noise in the data hides them easily.

AI doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t overlook a faint signal buried in 10,000 data points. Convolutional neural networks trained on verified fossil datasets can now identify isotopic signatures with accuracy that exceeds even experienced laboratory technicians.

A Quick Word on Math Solvers

The underlying all of this is raw mathematical computation – differential equations, a statistical model, matrix algebra. A picture solver will be able to do these calculations. Some researchers have even found they can develop new dating equations by using a general-purpose math picture solver to speed up their development process, reducing the development time from months to days. Human productivity can be improved and errors can be minimized with the use of a maths solver.

When Math Meets Machine

Artificial intelligence stepped in about a decade ago. Shyly.

Now it runs the show. Modern machine learning gulps data—thousands of measurements from mass spectrometers, images of microscopic wear on teeth, chemical signatures from soil. It spots patterns no human would catch. Ever.

Consider a pile of ancient fossils from a cave in France. A neural network can sift through the radiocarbon dates, the stratigraphy, the snail shells and charcoal, and produce a timeline tighter than a drum. It does in hours what took a researcher a year. Blinks, really.

Stratigraphy Gets Smarter

Stratigraphy — the study of rock and soil layers — has always been foundational to fossil dating. Older layers sit deeper. Simple in theory. Complicated in practice, because geological events shift, fold, and flip those layers constantly.

AI systems trained on regional geological data can now reconstruct likely stratigraphic histories from fragmented evidence. They model how layers moved, eroded, and redeposited over millions of years — giving fossils found in disturbed sites a far more reliable chronological home.

Ancient Human Remains: A Special Case

Dating human remains carries particular weight. It rewrites family trees. It challenges accepted timelines of migration, evolution, and civilization. The stakes are high, and errors have real consequences.

AI has already revised several key dates. Remains found in Laos, initially estimated at around 45,000 years old, were re-examined using AI-assisted isotope modelling. The revised estimate: closer to 68,000 years. That single correction shifted scientific understanding of early human migration routes through Southeast Asia.

The Data Problem

AI is only as good as the data it learns from. Early fossil databases were inconsistent — different labs used different standards, different notation systems, different error reporting conventions. That created real problems for early machine learning models trained on those records.

Efforts like the Paleobiology Database and the NEOTOMA Paleoecology Database are working to standardise this. As data quality improves, AI dating accuracy climbs with it. The two advances are inseparable.

What Comes Next

Portable AI dating tools are already in development. Field researchers may soon carry handheld devices capable of running preliminary isotope analyses on-site — giving a rough age estimate before a fossil ever reaches a laboratory. That would revolutionise how excavations are planned and prioritised.

The combination of ancient fossils and remains with cutting-edge mathematics is no longer a novelty. It is rapidly becoming the standard.

Final Thought

So how does math AI help date ancient fossils and remains? Quietly. Fundamentally. It’s not flashy. No dinosaur roar. It’s the difference between a blur and a portrait. Between somewhere around then and exactly this winter, 41,200 years ago.

A bone in the hand becomes a voice. A tooth becomes a timestamp stamped in amber. The past gets its chronology back. And we, the curious, finally get to listen.

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Archaeology used to mean years of painstaking brushwork, sun-beaten fieldwork, and mountains of paper records. That image is changing — fast. Artificial intelligence has entered the discipline, and it is reshaping every stage of the process, from choosing where to dig to making sense of what comes out of the ground.

The numbers tell a striking story. A 2023 report from the Alan Turing Institute found that AI-assisted site detection reduced survey time by up to 60% compared to traditional ground surveys. That is not a minor improvement. That is a transformation.

Seeing What Human Eyes Miss

The availability of satellite images to archaeologists has not been new in the decades. It was never a question of interpretation, a trained analyst could only look at a limited number of images in a day. The equation is completely altered by AI.

Machine learning algorithms are now able to scan thousands of square kilometers of landscape data in hours and flag anomalies which may indicate buried structures. A team utilizing deep learning algorithms in 2022 discovered more than 300 previously unknown Nazca Lines in Peru in just a few months. Researchers had been searching for almost a hundred years to locate the ones that are already known. 

Ground-Penetrating Radar Meets Neural Networks

GPR Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a long-standing non-invasive tool used to map the subsurface. In isolation, it generates complicated wave-form data which must be interpreted by an expert. Together with AI, it is transformed into something quite different.

The neural networks trained with GPR datasets are now able to recognize the likely locations of burials, walls, and voids with an accuracy of over 85% in controlled experiments. This is of utmost importance in places where excavation will result in irreversible damage. Preserve first. Dig when there is a necessity to dig.

The Excavation Site Goes Digital

Once digging begins, AI does not step back. It steps in. Photogrammetry software powered by computer vision can generate precise 3D models of an entire excavation trench in under an hour, capturing spatial relationships that once took weeks to document by hand.

These models are not just records. They are working tools. Researchers can revisit a virtual dig site years later, rotate it, slice through it, and re-examine stratigraphic layers that have long since been removed.

Talking Through Discoveries in Real Time

Archaeological fieldwork is often remote, isolated, and logistically complicated. Teams working in separate locations on the same project need fast, reliable ways to share findings and debate interpretations. Increasingly, researchers use anonymous group chats to discuss sensitive pre-publication discoveries without risking intellectual exposure. This matters more than it might seem. A premature leak about an important find can trigger looting. 

But there’s another reason to use video chat: familiarizing people with important facts. For example, if it’s been established that ancient tribes lived in a certain area, it’s quite easy to find people from that location. People are now actively using the CallMeChat platform, which connects people from different locations. This allows for consultations, explaining the importance of paying attention to antiquities, and for archaeologists themselves, identifying promising excavation sites in real time.

Artifact Classification at Scale

A single excavation season can produce tens of thousands of ceramic sherds, lithic fragments, and bone samples. Traditional classification is slow, inconsistent, and dependent on the expertise of whoever happens to be available. AI does not get tired.

Computer vision models trained on catalogued museum collections can now classify ceramic types, identify manufacturing techniques, and even suggest regional origin — all from a photograph. A 2021 study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science showed that a convolutional neural network matched expert human classification accuracy at 91% on a dataset of over 20,000 pottery fragments. One system. Consistent results. Every time.

Reading the Unreadable

Some of archaeology’s most tantalizing material is also its most inaccessible. Damaged manuscripts, corroded inscriptions, and fire-blackened tablets have resisted decipherment for generations. AI is beginning to crack them open.

The Vesuvius Challenge, launched in 2023, used machine learning to read carbonized papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum — scrolls so fragile they could not be physically unrolled without disintegrating. Within months, researchers had recovered hundreds of readable Greek words. A text buried since 79 AD. Recovered by an algorithm.

Bioarchaeology and the DNA Revolution

AI is not only working on objects. It is working on people — or rather, on what remains of them. Ancient DNA analysis has exploded in the past decade, but the datasets it generates are enormous and complex.

Machine learning tools now identify genetic markers, map migration patterns, and detect signs of disease across hundreds of skeletal samples simultaneously. Population movements that once took years to reconstruct from fragmentary burial evidence can now be modeled in weeks. Archaeology is becoming, in part, a data science.

The Ethical Weight of All This Power

Speed and capability bring complications. Who controls the AI models? Who owns the training data, often derived from collections held in Western institutions but originating in post-colonial contexts? These are not abstract questions.

Indigenous communities increasingly demand a voice in how AI is used to interpret their ancestral remains and cultural objects. Some researchers argue that the very efficiency of AI risks turning archaeology into an extraction industry — faster, yes, but potentially less careful about meaning, context, and community.

Predictive Modeling and the Future of Survey

Before a shovel touches earth, AI models can now estimate the probability of finding significant deposits in any given grid square. These predictive models pull from soil type data, historical land use records, topographic maps, and previous excavation results.

In the Netherlands, predictive archaeological modeling has been standard practice in urban development planning since the early 2000s. AI has made those models dramatically more accurate. Developers know where to dig carefully before a single foundation is poured.

What AI Cannot Replace

Let this be clear. AI does not understand context the way a seasoned archaeologist does. It does not feel the significance of finding a child’s toy beside a burial. It does not ask the questions that matter most: Why here? Why this? What did this mean to the people who made it?

Technology is a tool. An extraordinary one. But the intellectual and ethical work of archaeology — the interpretation, the humility, the conversation with the past — remains stubbornly, necessarily human.

A Discipline in Transition

Archaeology in 2025 looks nothing like archaeology in 2000. The pace of discovery has accelerated. The methods have multiplied. The data has exploded beyond what any individual researcher could process in a lifetime.

AI has not replaced the archaeologist. It has expanded what one person, one team, one generation can know. That is remarkable. And the best of this work is still ahead.

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POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY ON INSTAGRAM

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Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona—An international research team led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA) has documented the highest-altitude prehistoric cave with evidence of intense human occupation known to date in the Pyrenees. The site, known as Cova 338, is located at 2,235 meters above sea level in the Núria Valley (Queralbs, Ripollès – Girona) and currently represents the most significant high-mountain prehistoric site documented in the range.

The results show that the cave was repeatedly occupied between the 5th millennium BCE and the end of the 1st millennium BCE, providing new evidence on the exploitation of high-mountain resources in prehistoric times and challenging the traditional idea that these areas were used only sporadically or marginally. Dating indicates that these occupations occurred in several distinct phases, separated by periods of abandonment, suggesting a planned and recurrent use of this space.

This is the main conclusion of the article* published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, led by Carlos Tornero, professor in the Department of Prehistory at the UAB and researcher at IPHES-CERCA, with the participation of researchers from IPHES-CERCA, the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the University of Granada, the Pompeu Fabra University, and the University of the Balearic Islands, among other institutions.

Intense and organized occupation in a high-mountain environment

For decades, archaeological research has interpreted areas above 2,000 meters in altitude as marginal territories, occupied only occasionally. Cova 338 breaks with this model.

Extensive excavations carried out between 2021 and 2023 have revealed “an exceptional archaeological sequence, including numerous combustion structures, faunal remains, ceramic fragments, and a remarkable assemblage of green minerals, likely malachite, a copper-rich mineral”, explains Carlos Tornero. “For the first time in the Pyrenees, high-mountain prehistoric occupations of significant intensity have been documented, characterized by repeated activities and the direct exploitation of mineral resources within the cave.”

Among the recovered materials are also two pendants: one made from a marine shell (Glycimeris) and another from a brown bear tooth, evidencing personal ornamentation practices. The former has parallels in other Catalan sites, while the latter is much rarer and possibly linked to a specific symbolic meaning.

“Cova 338 forces us to rethink the role of high mountain environments in Pyrenean prehistoric societies”, highlights Carlos Tornero. “For a long time, these spaces were assumed to be marginal. What we document here is recurrent occupation, with complex activities and a clear exploitation of mineral resources.”

The evidence suggests that mineral fragments were brought into the cave and subsequently fragmented or processed inside, indicating systematic exploitation of copper-rich minerals in a high-mountain environment throughout the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age. These data place Cova 338 among the earliest known examples of this type of activity in Western Europe.

Spatial analysis of the site shows a clear internal organization of activities, with differentiated structures and areas. Researchers interpret the cave as a logistical site integrated within well-structured seasonal mobility systems, where human groups returned recurrently to carry out specific tasks.

“The mountain was not a barrier, but an active place within the economic and territorial organization of prehistoric communities”, notes Eudald Carbonell, researcher at IPHES-CERCA and co-author of the study.

A research project under extreme conditions

The research is part of the ARRELS project, a program promoted by the Ministry for Culture of the Government of Catalonia and led by the UAB and IPHES-CERCA, focused on studying the prehistoric roots of human mobility and occupation in the Upper Ripollès region.

Excavations at Cova 338 have posed a major logistical challenge, as access to the cave is only possible on foot from the Núria Valley, with no motorized support allowed. This has required all materials and sediments generated during the digs to be transported manually.

“Conducting an archaeological excavation to current scientific standards under these conditions is extraordinarily demanding”, explains Tornero. The work incorporated high-resolution methodologies, including 3D recording of all materials, systematic sediment sampling, and techniques such as washing and flotation, which allow even the smallest remains to be recovered and provide highly detailed information on the activities carried out in the cave.

Given its scientific importance and excellent state of preservation, the site has been protected and access restricted to ensure the conservation of the deposits and facilitate future research.

The work has also been made possible thanks to the logistical and institutional support of the Queralbs Town Council and the Ter and Freser Headwaters Natural Park, which have facilitated fieldwork in this high-mountain environment.

A key reference for European prehistory

Researchers consider Cova 338 to be a key reference for understanding human occupation of the Pyrenean high mountains and the exploitation of their resources during recent prehistory.

“This site demonstrates that the Pyrenees were not a marginal territory for prehistoric communities, but a space fully integrated into their mobility strategies and territorial exploitation”, concludes Carlos Tornero.

The results open new lines of research into the role of alpine environments in prehistoric societies and the earliest forms of mineral resource exploitation in high-mountain contexts.

Funding source:This research is funded through the project led by Carlos Tornero and Eudald Carbonell Arrels prehistòriques de la transhumància a l’Alt Ripollès: projecte arqueològic 2022–2025 (code CLT009/22/00060; AGAUR-DGPC, Departament de Cultura, Generalitat de Catalunya) and has had the logistic and institutional support of the Queralbs Town Council and the Ter and Freser Headwaters Natural Park, which have facilitated the development of the excavations in this high mountain environment.

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Archaeological excavations in the interior of Cova 338. Authorship: IPHES-CERCA.  Credit: IPHES-CERCA.

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Article Source: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona news release.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—A study* explores foraging behavior in early humans. High-quality foods, particularly meat, were key to the cognitive and social development of early humans of the genus Homo. To explore food acquisition strategies among early humans, Frances Forrest and colleagues analyzed a 1.6-million-year-old fossil assemblage from the Koobi Fora Formation in Kenya. The assemblage, from the KBS geological layer, covers the period preceding the Okote geological layer and includes butchered animal remains associated with early Homo. Antelope remains were highly frequent in the assemblage. The remains in the assemblage were consistent with behaviors documented in the Okote layer. Such behaviors include hunting or aggressive scavenging, transporting carcass limbs to processing sites, and systematically extracting marrow. In the KBS assemblage, bones showed few carnivore tooth marks, suggesting that early Homo was able to obtain carcasses with limited carnivore competition. Transport of limbs revealed prioritization of high-reward, low-effort carcass sections. The geologic formation tied to the assemblage showed that the foraging behaviors occurred in a river-adjacent environment. The KBS assemblage also showed behavior consistent with 1.84-million-year-old sites in Tanzania and 2-million-year-old sites in Kenya. According to the authors, foraging behavior in early Homo was stable over time and may have contributed to the success and evolution of hominins.

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Hominin tooth from the Koobi Fora Formation in Kenya associated with the study assemblage. Credit Sharon Kuo.

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Fossil bone from Koobi Fora, showing cut marks linked to butchering by early Homo. Credit Sharon Kuo.

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Archaeology and academic history often seem like neighboring disciplines that speak different dialects. One studies soil layers, postholes, ceramics, bones, and ruined walls. The other studies archives, manuscripts, political change, memory, and interpretation. Yet the strongest historical scholarship often appears when these two worlds meet.

For students, early-career researchers, and even seasoned scholars, the challenge is not only collecting evidence. The harder task is turning field discoveries into meaningful historical arguments. A trench can reveal a structure, a burial, or a pattern of trade. A thesis must explain why that evidence matters within a wider human story.

Why Field Archaeology and Academic History Need Each Other

Field archaeology produces direct material evidence. It brings researchers close to the physical traces of daily life, conflict, migration, ritual, and exchange. A fragment of pottery may reveal trade links. A coin deposit may suggest instability, wealth, or political control. Soil discoloration can point to forgotten buildings, fires, or repeated occupation.

Academic history adds another layer of value. It organizes evidence into chronology, social context, and interpretation. Historians ask how objects fit into broader systems such as empire, religion, labor, gender, law, and memory. Without that analytical framework, many finds remain isolated data points instead of historical insight.

What the Trench Can Reveal That Texts Cannot

Excavation often captures voices that written records ignore. Elites produced many of the documents historians inherit. Ordinary workers, women, enslaved communities, migrants, and rural populations often appear only faintly in texts. Material culture can correct that imbalance.

A cooking pot, spindle whorl, child’s toy, bead, or animal bone offers clues about everyday routines. These traces help researchers reconstruct diet, housing, craft production, domestic labor, and consumption habits. In that sense, archaeology broadens the historical record rather than simply illustrating it.

What Academic History Contributes to Excavated Evidence

Objects do not explain themselves. A wall is never just a wall. Its date, function, symbolism, and relation to power depend on careful interpretation. Historians bring methods that help connect physical remains to political structures, cultural change, and intellectual life.

That is why historiography matters so much. A student may identify a material pattern in the field, yet still struggle to position it within existing scholarship. Academic history teaches how to engage debates, test claims, and show where new evidence confirms, complicates, or challenges accepted narratives.

Balancing fieldwork responsibilities with academic deadlines can place significant pressure on students working at the intersection of archaeology and history. Long hours on excavation sites, combined with the need to produce well-structured written analysis, often leave little time for refining arguments or polishing complex ideas. In these situations, history assignment help can support the writing process by helping organize research into a clear and academically consistent format. With additional guidance, students are able to strengthen their reasoning, improve the flow of their writing, and present their findings with greater confidence. This allows them to stay focused on both practical discoveries and their interpretation without compromising the overall quality of their work.

Where the Gap Usually Appears

The gap between trench work and thesis writing often opens during interpretation. Field schools train students to record units, read stratigraphy, bag artifacts, and follow site protocols. University seminars train them to analyze sources, compare arguments, and build literature reviews. Both skill sets matter, but they are not always taught together.

The result is a familiar problem. A student may leave the field with rich notes and strong observational skills, then feel lost when asked to produce a research question. Another student may write elegant prose about the past, yet feel uncertain about excavation data, site reports, or artifact context. Bridging this divide requires deliberate practice.

Several barriers appear again and again in archaeology and history programs. They are practical, intellectual, and methodological at the same time.

1. Students collect data before they define a strong research problem.
2. Field notes remain descriptive instead of analytical.
3. Site evidence is treated separately from textual or archival material.
4. Terminology from archaeology and historiography is not always translated across disciplines.

These problems do not mean the student lacks talent. More often, they show how academic training is divided into separate boxes. Once those boxes are opened, interpretation becomes more confident, precise, and original.

Turning Excavation Into Argument

The move from fieldwork to thesis writing begins with a shift in mindset. In the trench, the priority is accuracy, context, and documentation. In academic writing, the priority is argument, relevance, and synthesis. The evidence stays important, but its role changes.

A useful thesis does not merely report what was found. It explains what the findings reveal about a settlement, period, institution, or community. That means every artifact category, context sheet, and spatial pattern must serve a larger claim. Students who understand this shift usually write stronger dissertations, articles, and seminar papers.

Questions That Create Better Historical Interpretation

A productive project usually begins with better questions rather than more material. Instead of asking only what was uncovered, students should ask what the finds allow them to investigate. This small change creates room for interpretation.

For example, a trench with imported ceramics might support questions about trade, status, or cultural contact. A cemetery may open questions about health, kinship, violence, or identity. Burn layers could point toward war, accident, climate stress, or urban redevelopment. The same evidence can support different arguments depending on context and method.

Before moving into a longer discussion, it helps to identify the kinds of questions that most often connect field archaeology with academic history.

• local context shaped the meaning of every find;
• dating methods mattered as much as description;
• spatial relationships revealed patterns no single object could show;
• comparison with written sources sharpened interpretation;
• absence of evidence also required caution.

When students learn to ask these kinds of questions, their writing becomes more than a technical summary. It starts to sound like history rather than a storage inventory.

A Simple Comparison of Both Worlds

The relationship between archaeology and history becomes clearer when their strengths are placed side by side.

This comparison shows why neither discipline should dominate the other. Good scholarship grows when material remains and historical reasoning works together.

Practical Skills That Help Students Bridge the Divide

Many students assume the bridge must be built at the final writing stage. In reality, it starts much earlier. The habits formed during fieldwork shape the quality of the later thesis. Careful observation is important, but reflective note-taking is equally valuable.

A strong researcher learns to move between recording and interpretation without confusing the two. That balance takes repetition, especially when handling large datasets, fragmented artifacts, or complicated site phases.

Several practical habits make that transition easier during both fieldwork and academic writing.

• keep a parallel notebook for interpretive thoughts, not just technical records;
• connect each context or feature to at least one historical theme;
• review excavation notes while reading secondary scholarship;
• build a glossary of key terms from both archaeology and historiography;
• map how artifacts, texts, and chronology support the same research question.

These habits save time later. They also reduce the panic many students feel when they face a blank page after an intense field season. Instead of starting from scattered observations, they begin with patterns, questions, and possible arguments.

Building a Thesis That Honors the Evidence

A good thesis should respect uncertainty without becoming vague. Archaeological evidence is often incomplete, disturbed, or ambiguous. Historical writing must acknowledge those limits. At the same time, cautious writing should still make a clear claim.

That balance is where mature scholarship begins. A student does not need to force certainty onto every interpretation. It is often stronger to explain competing possibilities, weigh the evidence, and justify the most persuasive conclusion. Examiners usually value intellectual honesty more than exaggerated confidence.

From Site Report to Scholarly Contribution

Site reports are essential, but a thesis must go further. It should engage debates about social life, state formation, migration, religion, trade, memory, or conflict. In other words, the thesis must show why the excavation matters beyond the trench itself.

That is also where academic history sharpens archaeological writing. It helps students connect a specific case study to broader patterns across time and place. A small excavation can still support a powerful argument if the analysis is precise and well framed.

Why This Bridge Matters for the Future of Historical Research

The future of historical research depends on interdisciplinary thinking. Archaeology without historical interpretation can become overly technical. History without material evidence can become too abstract or too dependent on elite voices. Together, they offer a fuller picture of the past.

Students who learn to bridge this gap gain more than a better grade. They become better researchers, clearer writers, and more flexible thinkers. They learn how to move from dirt layers to debate, from field notes to historiography, and from recovered fragments to historical meaning.

In the end, the path from trench to thesis is not a leap. It is a process of translation. When field archaeology and academic history are brought into conversation, the past becomes richer, more complex, and far more human.

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Frontiers—Ever since humans have embarked on sea voyages, they needed to ensure vessels were waterproof, resistant to salty seawater, and could withstand microorganisms or sea-dwellers like worms. Until the mid-20th century, however, the study of non-wood materials used to build ships was overlooked. Even today little work has been done on materials used for waterproofing.

Now, in a new Frontiers in Materials study*, researchers in France and Croatia have examined the protective coating of the Roman Republic shipwreck Ilovik–Paržine 1 that sank around 2,200 years ago off the coast of what is now Croatia.

“In archaeology little attention is paid to organic waterproofing materials. Yet they are essential for navigation at sea or on rivers and are true witnesses of past naval technologies,” said first author Dr Armelle Charrié, an archaeometrist at the Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry of Interactions and Systems in Strasbourg. “Studying the coatings, we found two different kinds on this vessel: one made of pine tar, also called pitch, and the other of a mixture of pine tar and beeswax. Analysis of pollen in the coating made it possible to identify the plant taxa present in the immediate environment during the construction or repairs of the ship.”

Resin and wax

The wreck was discovered in 2016 and since then the ship itself and its cargo has been examined multiple times. The current study, however, is the first to combine pollen and molecular analyses to characterize the ship’s coating and vegetation present during its production and application on the hull. The work is a collaboration between the Department for Underwater Archaeology of the Croatian Conservation Institute and the ‘ADRIBOATS’ program of the Centre Camille Jullian at Aix-Marseille University in France.

“Some regions throughout the Adriatic have particular characteristics that led local populations to develop a specific shipbuilding style,” said Charrié. “Only studies like ours offer an overview into these traditions which bear witness to genuine know-how and diverse traditions.”

To examine the coatings, researchers carried out structural, molecular, and pollen analyses using techniques that identify and quantify unknown components in an organic mixture such as mass spectrometry.

Using 10 coating samples, the team identified the biological origin of natural substances used for the ship’s coating by molecular analysis. This ‘molecular fingerprint’ analysis showed molecules characteristic of pine trees, indicating that the main component of all coating samples was heated coniferous resin or coniferous tar, also called pitch. One sample, however, showed that at least some of the coating was made from a different composition of materials, namely beeswax and tar. This mixture – known to Greek shipbuilders as zopissa – improves the adhesive’s flexibility and is easier to apply when hot.

Trapped in pitch

Pitch is adhesive by nature and can trap and preserve pollen from the surrounding landscapes. Analyzing these traces and their respective abundances allowed the researchers to narrow down possible regions where the pitch could have been produced and re-applied during refurbishments.

Pollen from coating samples from the Ilovik–Paržine 1 reflected a high diversity of environments. The identified landscapes included those characteristic of the Mediterranean and Adriatic coasts and valleys, with forests of holly oak and pine as well as matorral – a kind of Mediterranean shrubland – where olive and hazel trees grow. The presence of alder and ash points to vegetation growing close to river- and seashores, which can be found near the coast or in the nearby hinterland. Fir and beech were present in small proportions, too. This vegetation is found in mountainous regions and typical of the north-eastern coastal regions of the Adriatic Sea where the mountain ranges of Istria and Dalmatia are not far.

The team’s findings also indicated that the ship likely underwent four to five distinct batches of coatings. The ship’s stern and central part was covered by the same coating, whereas three batches at the bow were distinct from one another. This, too, could indicate that the ship was patched up successively using materials sourced from various locations throughout the Mediterranean.

Previous research using the ship’s ballast identified Brundisium – today Brindisi – on the south-eastern coast of Italy as the ship’s place of construction. Pollen analysis also suggests that some of the coatings were applied close to there. Other coating layers, however, could have been applied on the north-eastern Adriatic coast, where the shipwreck was discovered.

“While it seems obvious that ships sailing long distances need repairs, it’s simply not easy to demonstrate this,” concluded Charrié. “Pollen has been very useful in identifying different coatings where the molecular profiles were identical.”

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View of the excavation of the bow area of the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck. In the foreground, the cargo of logs and amphoras can be seen. Archaeologists are working near the structure of the bow complex.  Credit Adriboats © L. Damelet, CNRS/CCJ

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Article Source: Frontiers news release.

*Adhesive coatings in naval archaeology: molecular and palynological investigations on materials from the Roman Republican wreck Ilovik– Paržine 1 (Croatia), Frontiers in Materials, 24-Apr-2026. 10.3389/fmats.2026.1758862 

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Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)—Research into human genomic diversity has a number of applications in biomedicine, evolution, and history. However, many populations have historically been underrepresented on the human genomic map. This is the case of Native American populations, whose history of adaptation and genetic diversity remains largely unknown.

For the first time, an international study led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), together with the University of São Paulo, has deciphered the genome of Indigenous American populations. With 199 genomes from individuals from North America to Patagonia, 128 of which have never been published, the research has compiled the largest genomic database to date. Its results shed light on the history of these peoples and provide new insights into human health and evolution.

The largest genetic database of Indigenous American populations

The research, part of the Indigenous American Genomic Diversity Project (IAGDP), has sequenced 128 high-coverage whole genomes from eight Latin American countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru—representing 45 populations and 28 linguistic families.

High-quality genomes from pre-existing databases were added to this data, taking the total to 199 contemporary indigenous individuals from 53 populations and 31 linguistic families. Ancient DNA data was also incorporated to enable a deeper look into certain aspects of their history and evolution.

“Until now, only two indigenous Amazonian populations had been genetically characterized, and due to the particular nature of their environment and their isolation, they were not very representative”, explains Marcos Araújo Castro e Silva, a postdoctoral researcher at the IBE and first author of the paper.

This study* brings together the largest genomic dataset of these populations, with an emphasis on their geographic and linguistic diversity.

Genetic diversity waiting to be explored: over a million new variants

The research identified over a million genetic variants not previously observed in other populations, revealing a unique genetic diversity.

The Americas span a wide variety of landscapes and ecological pressures, from the Amazon rainforests to the high altitudes of the Andes. This has favored the selection of different genetic variants that have helped adapt human populations to these environments. The researchers were able to identify genetic signals of natural selection related to immune response, metabolism, growth, and fertility.

“These results demonstrate the need to better represent these populations in genomics. From drug design to disease prevention, understanding human genomic diversity benefits both indigenous communities and the global population”, says Tábita Hünemeier, principal investigator at the IBE and leader of the study. In 2023, her team described genetic resistance to Chagas disease in Amazonian populations, and she spearheaded the “DNA do Brasil” project published in 2025.

New findings in the history of Native American peoples

The movement of Asian populations into the Americas via Beringia represented the last major continental human migration. With the exception of a few populations, most located in the Arctic, all current indigenous Americans are descended from a migration that occurred approximately 15,000 years ago.

The first expansion occurred immediately after these people entered North America. However, around 9,000 years ago, a second wave of migration took place that replaced, at least in part, the first. For the first time, this study has identified a third wave of migration. It occurred approximately 1,300 years ago, with the movement of indigenous populations from Mesoamerica to South America and the Caribbean. The team has discovered its genetic footprint in current South American populations as well as in ancient individuals from the Caribbean.

The research also confirms the profound “bottleneck” effect caused by European colonization. “Current genetic diversity is only a fraction of the original, as colonization decimated indigenous populations by 90%. Even so, we can see genetic continuity spanning more than 9,000 years in some regions”, says Hünemeier.

Ancestral genetics of Native Americans revealed

The study reveals that around 2% of the genome of some indigenous American peoples shows genetic affinity with populations in Australasia, including those in Australia, New Guinea, and the Andaman Islands. This connection, present in South American individuals dating back more than ten thousand years and in very similar proportions, suggests the influence of an ancient, unsampled Asian population, known as Ypykuéra (Y-lineage), which intermixed with the ancestors of these populations.

“We observed that the frequency of this Ypykuéra ancestry is very similar across the different populations analyzed, perhaps indicating a certain adaptive advantage in some of these genomic regions”, explains David Comas, principal investigator at the IBE and professor and a researcher in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) at the UPF, who collaborated on the study.

The study also confirms that between 1% and 3% of the genome comes from archaic hominids, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, a proportion similar to that seen in other regions, although there is a distinctive pattern. Importantly, these hominids contributed genetic variants that proved key to adaptation to the American continent, as evidenced by signs of natural selection found in the genome.

The results shed light on the history of these populations, expand our understanding of their past, and provide new insights for future applications in global health.

“The team is international, with a strong Latin American presence and local ties in the countries under study, and has collaborated directly with indigenous communities. The active and ongoing participation of various groups was essential not only for the study’s development but also to integrate genomic findings with traditional knowledge”, notes Hünemeier.

The study was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program/Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the “European Union NextGeneration” initiative, and a Juan de la Cierva grant from Spain’s State Research Agency, among others.

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Geographic distribution of the indigenous American individuals included in the study. Each point represents a sampling location and its size is proportional to the number of individuals in that population. Credit Hemanoel Passareli-Araujo.

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Proportions of genetic ancestry inferred from the DNA analyzed in the study (unsupervised ADMIXTURE). The average ancestry of each population is represented on a map of the Americas.  Credit Marcos Araújo Castro e Silva.

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From left to right, each panel represents one of these dispersals.
The circles indicate the approximate location of ancient individuals or current populations, and the arrows signal the dispersal routes. The left panel shows the first dispersal (>9,000 years ago) and the initial divisions among the ancestors of the indigenous Americans: Northerners (NNA) and Southerners (SNA), and, within the latter, two branches (SNA1 and SNA2). It also includes the contribution of the hypothetical Y Population. The central panel shows the second dispersal (<9,000 years), associated mainly with SNA2, which partially replaced previous populations, although some groups with contributions from the Y Population persisted. Several regions show genetic continuity over thousands of years (shaded areas).
The right panel shows the third dispersal (<1,300 years), associated with Mesoamerican populations, which contributed extensively to South America and the Caribbean. These populations mixed with groups from the first dispersal (including contributions from Population Y) and, in the Andes and the Southern Cone, primarily with populations from the second dispersal, maintaining genetic continuity for up to 9,000 years in these regions.  Credit Marcos Araújo Castro e Silva

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Article Source: Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) news release.

*10.1038/s41586-026-10406-w 

University of Bonn—What culinary practices prevailed in the South Caucasus during the Bronze Age? The cuisine was remarkably diverse. This is what an international research team from the Universities of Bonn and Bari, along with other scientific institutions such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences report. The new evidence highlights a multi-ingredient cuisine alongside the central role of dairy products, fruit, and grape-based beverages in Kura-Araxes communities. The findings have now been published in the journal PNAS*.

The Kura-Araxes culture is named after the two main rivers of the South Caucasus, the Kura and the Araxes, which flow into the Caspian Sea. This prehistoric cultural tradition emerged in the South Caucasus around the mid-4th millennium BCE and expanded to become the most widespread cultural phenomenon in Southwest Asia by the early to mid-3rd millennium BCE. It developed within small-scale, household-based communities, in sharp contrast to the contemporaneous urban trajectories of early state and hierarchical societies of Mesopotamia.

“By combining technological, morphological, use-wear, and biomolecular analyses of 52 ceramic vessels from the Kura-Araxes settlement of Qaraçinar (Azerbaijan), dated to ca. 2800–2600 BCE, and integrating these results with botanical and faunal data, we explored a wide range of material evidence to reconstruct Kura-Araxes foodways and culinary practices,” explains Maxime Rageot, biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Bonn. The scientist is also a member of the transdisciplinary research areas “Present Pasts” and “Life & Health” at the University of Bonn.

Characteristic Pottery

“Pottery, central to this research, was one of the most distinctive expressions of the Kura-Araxes tradition and a key marker of its expansion. It played a crucial role in processes of social integration and in the cultural reproduction of Kura-Araxes communities across space and time,” adds Giulio Palumbi, prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Bari and the CNRS, who leads the excavation project. Qaraçinar, located on the eastern piedmont of the Lesser Caucasus, was excavated between 2019 and 2024 in collaboration with Muzaffar Huseynov and Bakhtiyar Jalilov from the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences.

Residues in Ceramic Vessels as a Starting Point

Exceptionally well-preserved organic residues in pottery provided robust biomolecular evidence for the preparation and consumption of fruit and grape products, plant oils and waxes, conifer resins, dairy products, and other ruminant fats. The researchers also identified markers of thermal processing, consistent with repeated cooking activities. These findings demonstrate the prominent role of dairy products and ruminant fats in Kura-Araxes dietary and culinary practices, including the transformation of milk into secondary products.

The results also shed new light on the role and significance of grape-based beverages and their modes of consumption within Kura-Araxes communities. Wine may have been consumed, sometimes flavored with conifer resins. Within the non-hierarchical structure of Kura-Araxes society, this locally available product (potentially even collected from wild grapevines) does not appear to have been associated with elite or prestige consumption, in contrast to contemporaneous Mesopotamian contexts.

Diverse Uses of Grapes and Fruits

Grapes and other fruit products (fermented and non-fermented) were not only identified in drinking/serving vessels but also in numerous cooking pots as well as in some large storage jars, suggesting multiple culinary purposes, such as flavoring or sweetening dishes, and possibly acting as catalysts in biochemical processes like cheesemaking. In addition, Pinaceae resins may have been used both as flavoring agents and as preservatives for food and drink.

The identification of millet-based food or drink in Kura-Araxes pottery at Qaraçinar suggests long-distance connections with eastern regions, as millet was cultivated in Central Asia during this period but had not previously been documented so early and so far to the west. Furthermore, this research reveals for the first time a functional distinction between pottery types: Monochrome wares appear to have been used mainly for cooking, whereas Red-Black Burnished vessels were likely dedicated to the consumption of raw dairy products and fruit- or grape-based beverages, including wine.

Together, these findings provide new insights into the daily life and culinary traditions of the Kura-Araxes communities. “The diversity of the cuisine was accessible to all, as the society was characterized by low levels of social stratification,” says Rageot. The results also open new perspectives for future research, suggesting that the expansion of the Kura-Araxes tradition may have also involved the spread of distinctive culinary practices originating in the South Caucasus.

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Bottom: Red-black and black-polished vessels from Qaraçinar, Azerbaijan. Photos: A. Decaix, ANR SWEED and the Mission “Boyuk Kesik” & ANR KUR(A)GAN

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Funding and Participating Institutions

In addition to the Universities of Bonn and Bari, the international research team included the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAW), the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (MNHN), and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Lab. CEPAM, Nice). The study was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the ANR-DFG KUR(A)GAN (directed by Giulio Palumbi and Svend Hansen, ANR-DFG -0006-01) and by the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (Mission Boyuk Kesik).

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Article Source: University of Bonn news release.

*Maxime Rageot, Maria Bianca D’Anna, Muzaffar Huseynov, Bakhtiyar Jalilov, Alexia Decaix, Rémi Berthon, Qi Zeng, Jeremy Perez, Farhad Guliyev, Léa Drieu, Arnaud Mazuy, Martine Regert & Giulio Palumbi: Biomolecular analyses reveal grape-based beverages, dairy processing, and pottery function in Kura-Araxes culinary practices, PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2529600123, URL: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2529600123

Las Vegas is built on spectacle. Its skyline reaches upward with neon and glass, and nearly every acre of the valley floor has been graded, paved, or irrigated. But beneath the slot machines and resort corridors lies one of the most layered archaeological records in North America – a stratigraphic ledger spanning more than 13,000 years of human occupation. The desert hides this history well. Surface erosion and wind scour can obscure the physical markers that signal ancient habitation, leaving investigators little to see until they start digging.

What the ground contains is extraordinary. From Paleoindian hunting camps established during the Pleistocene to complex Ancestral Puebloan villages with multi-room architecture and salt mines, Southern Nevada’s subsurface preserves a story of human adaptation that predates most of the world’s monumental construction. Understanding it requires archaeology to go underground – and understanding why that matters today means recognizing how much of this record is still out there, hidden under the same desert that modern cities now sit on top of.

A Desert Floor That Hides Millennia

The earliest confirmed human presence in the Southern Nevada area dates to approximately 11,150-10,830 BC. Fluted projectile points recovered across Clark County sites place Paleoindian hunters here during the terminal Pleistocene, when the valley’s now-dry lakebeds still held water. These weren’t transient visitors passing through – there’s enough site density to indicate repeated seasonal occupation over centuries.

By the Pueblo II period (900-1,150 AD), something more organized had taken hold. Ancestral Puebloan communities in the Las Vegas Valley were practicing horticulture – cultivating squash, corn, beans, and mesquite – and constructing semi-permanent architecture. The Las Vegas Springs site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, contains a pithouse dated to approximately 700 AD. Ground-penetrating radar surveys conducted since that initial designation have identified the likely presence of at least two additional pithouses at the location, according to the Springs Preserve archaeology program.

This record only surfaces – literally – when something disturbs the ground. That’s what makes modern subsurface work in the Las Vegas Valley so consequential. When underground companies Las Vegas take on utility installation, infrastructure repair, or construction projects in this region, they’re operating in terrain where the next shovel depth may contain material culture that has waited a thousand years to be found. The archaeology doesn’t announce itself. It waits.

Pit Houses and Cave Caches: Engineering Shelter Underground

Above: Interior of a traditional pit house with a central fire pit, wooden beams, ladder to roof opening, and woven baskets

The pithouse wasn’t just a shelter. It was a climate system. By sinking the floor one to two meters below grade and packing earthen walls around the perimeter, builders harnessed the ground’s natural thermal mass – cooler in summer, insulating in winter. Fremont, Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Puebloan cultures each developed regional variants of this principle across Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, and the underlying logic was consistent: the earth itself was a building material that no above-ground construction could replicate.

The canal engineering of the ancient Southwest made this connection between underground construction and large-scale infrastructure even clearer. The Hohokam didn’t just build pit houses – they engineered canal networks that moved water through tens of miles of hand-dug channels, rerouting the landscape’s subsurface drainage to support agriculture at a scale that would impress modern civil engineers.

Not all underground spaces in the ancient Southwest were used for habitation, though. Some were used for storage – and Hidden Cave near Fallon, Nevada, is one of the clearest examples of this strategy in the archaeological record. The cave formed roughly 21,000 years ago, carved by the waters of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan. Humans began using it as a cache site approximately 3,500-3,800 years ago, according to the Bureau of Land Management site record. The 1979-1980 excavations found that a high proportion of artifacts were unbroken and arranged in deliberate concentrations – not the scattering typical of a habitation site, but the organized layout of a storage facility. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Nearby, the Grimes Point petroglyph site carries evidence of Native American use stretching back over 8,000 years and was designated Nevada’s first National Recreation Trail in 1978, per the Bureau of Land Management’s site documentation.

The Lost City Beneath the Water

Above: Excavations at the Pueblo Grande de Nevada (Nevada’s “Lost City”) in the Moapa Valley

No story in Nevada archaeology illustrates the irreversibility of subsurface loss quite like the Pueblo Grande de Nevada. Known informally as the Lost City, this site in the Moapa Valley was occupied from roughly 300 AD to 1150 AD by Basketmaker, Hisatsinom, and Ancestral Puebloan communities. At its height, the settlement included multi-room structures – one building held more than 100 rooms – along with adjacent salt mines that almost certainly fueled a regional trade economy.

Excavations began in the mid-1920s and intensified through the 1930s, when engineers were already finalizing the design for Hoover Dam. Archaeologists working against the dam’s construction timeline recovered what they could before the Colorado River backed up and Lake Mead swallowed the site. Parts of the Lost City now sit under water permanently, according to the UNLV Special Collections manuscript archive that holds the original field documentation.

The salt mines are what distinguish this site from a purely residential settlement. Salt was a preservative, a trade good, and a ritual substance across the ancient Southwest. The fact that these communities developed the engineering knowledge to mine it at scale – tunneling into salt deposits, managing spoil extraction, and presumably storing and distributing the product – places the Lost City alongside other examples of ancient subterranean resource extraction that historians tend to underestimate. The story connects directly to how the ancient water systems beneath desert civilizations influenced the entire regional development arc of Southwest cultures, where control of underground resources shaped political power.

Modern Ground Work and the Invisible Archaeological Record

Above: Technician using ground-penetrating radar in a desert, scanning terrain with equipment and a monitoring laptop nearby

Ground-penetrating radar has transformed what’s possible at sites like the Las Vegas Springs. Instead of waiting for a backhoe to expose a pit house rim, archaeologists can now sweep a grid with GPR equipment and identify subsurface anomalies before any ground disturbance. Magnetometry and electrical resistivity surveys have added further resolution to this toolkit, allowing field teams to map buried features – walls, hearths, pits, middens – with enough accuracy to target excavations precisely or, in some cases, to certify a zone as sensitive and leave it undisturbed.

This matters because the Las Vegas Valley isn’t getting emptier. It’s getting busier. Infrastructure expansion, residential development, and utility upgrades continually push below grade in terrain that holds an archaeological record older than most of Western history. Archaeology Southwest, in its 2025 year-end preservation report, flagged ongoing development pressure in the Southwest as one of the most significant threats to unrecorded cultural heritage sites – most of which will never be excavated before ground-disturbing projects begin. This is the environment in which subsurface surveys have shifted from being optional best practice to a functional necessity.

The same principle applies at the urban scale. The underground layers of a city’s past tell a story that surface archaeology can’t access – and in cities built on top of ancient occupation, the stakes for getting that subsurface work right are unusually high. Las Vegas is an extreme version of this challenge: a city that grew from nearly nothing in the twentieth century, layered directly onto a landscape where humans had been living, caching, farming, and building for millennia.

The archaeological framework is there. Federal and state cultural resource management regulations require survey work before many classes of subsurface project, and the toolkit for non-invasive investigation keeps improving. What the record from the Las Vegas Valley shows is that the ground rewards careful attention – and that the cost of not paying it is a story permanently lost.

What Lies Beneath What We Build Above

The Paleoindians who camped along the Las Vegas Springs, the Ancestral Puebloan families who sank their floors into the desert to stay cool, the communities who moved through Hidden Cave for 3,500 years without ever living inside it – they all left material traces that survived long enough to be found. That survival wasn’t guaranteed. It required ground that stayed undisturbed.

Modern Southern Nevada doesn’t offer much undisturbed ground. But the combination of non-invasive survey technology, federal preservation law, and growing institutional awareness about the region’s archaeological depth has created at least the conditions for an informed approach to subsurface work. Archaeology and infrastructure aren’t natural enemies. The conflict comes from ignorance of what’s there – and in Southern Nevada, the record is dense enough that ignorance is no longer a defensible position.

The desert floor holds more than most people who walk across it will ever know. The pithouses are still down there. Some of the cave caches haven’t been found. And the Lost City – or at least the parts of it that didn’t survive the dam – stands as the clearest possible reminder of what happens when ground work outpaces the record of what it disturbs.

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Cover Image, Top: Aerial view of an excavation site in a desert with workers and trenches, with a distant city skyline on the horizon

University of Copenhagen—The research, published* in Nature Ecology & Evolution, is based on genetic analyses of 132 individuals buried in a large megalithic tomb near Bury, about 50 kilometers north of Paris. The site was used during two distinct periods separated by a population decline around 3000 BC.

Researchers found that the two groups buried before and after the decline were not genetically related, pointing to a major population turnover.

“We see a clear genetic break between the two periods,” said Frederik Valeur Seersholm, assistant professor at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen and one of the lead authors of the study.

“The earlier group resembles Stone Age farming populations from northern France and Germany, while the later group shows strong genetic links to southern France and the Iberian Peninsula.”

The findings suggest a sharp reduction in the local population followed by the arrival of new groups from the south.

Disease and high mortality

Using a DNA method that analyzes all genetic material preserved in bone, the researchers detected traces of ancient pathogens, including the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis and louse-bourne relapsing fever caused by Borrelia recurrentis.

“We can confirm that plague was present, but the evidence does not support it as the sole cause of the population collapse,” said Martin Sikora, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and senior author of the study. “The decline was likely driven by a combination of disease, environmental stress and other disruptive events.”

Archaeological analysis of the skeletal remains shows unusually high mortality in the earlier burial phase, particularly among children and young people.

“The demographic pattern is a strong indicator of crisis,” said Laure Salanova, research director at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Shift in social organization

The DNA data also reaffirm a marked change in social structure.

In the earlier phase, multiple generations from the same extended families were buried together, suggesting tightly knit communities. In the later phase, burials were more selective and dominated by a single male lineage, pointing to a different form of organisation.

“This indicates that the population change was accompanied by a shift in how society was structured,” Seersholm said.

A wider European pattern

The findings add to growing evidence that the so-called Neolithic decline affected much of northern and western Europe, not only Scandinavia and northern Germany.

The study also offers a possible explanation for why the construction of megalithic tombs and other large stone monuments ended across Europe around the same time.

“We now see that [the] end of these monumental constructions coincides with the disappearance of the population that built them,” Seersholm said.

Key facts

• 132 individuals analyzed
• Burial site: Bury, France
• Dating: c. 3200–2450 BC
• Journal: Nature Ecology & Evolution
• Full study: *https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-026-03027-z

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Article Source: University of Copenhagen news release

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Cover Image, Top Left: Megaliths. Shedon, Pixabay

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