Food poverty is at least 4,000 years old, suggests a new study of ancient diets in the south-east coast of Spain. Scientists found differences between the food consumption habits of the rich and poor in the Iberian Peninsula, dating back to the Bronze Age. The team studied the Spanish El Algar community, one of the … Read more
An ancient human settlement was obliterated by a comet that exploded in Earth’s atmosphere around 12,800 years ago, a study has found. The event destroyed a village found in the Abu Hureyra dig site in Syria and splattered fragments of molten glass ‘hot enough to melt cars’ to the ground. The impact is also believed to have … Read more
Traces of the ancient Mars-sized wandering planet Theia that nearly destroyed Earth and formed the Moon 4.5 billion years ago have been found in lunar rocks. This goes some way to proving a long-held theory that the Moon was formed out of material expelled after Theia collided with the Earth billions of years ago. Researchers … Read more
Days were half an hour shorter during the Late Cretaceous period 70 million years ago, an analysis of growth rings in an ancient shell has shown. Earth at this time would thus have rotated around 372 times every year — rather than the current 366.25 rotations that gives us our 365-day year with leap years. … Read more
Gozitans (as they are called) are well-schooled in accepting their lot. ‘The rest of Malta thinks we still live in caves,’ a grandmother in the capital Victoria (so named after our former queen, who, unlike her great-great-granddaughter, never actually made it here) tells me. In fact, they live mainly in two or three-storey houses (nothing … Read more
Archaeologists have discovered the 3,000-year-old remains of an Egyptian carving workshop containing several unfinished sculptures, including a ram-headed sphinx chiseled from sandstone. The ancient workshop is thought to date back to the 18th Dynasty, during the reign of Amenhotep III – King Tut’s grandfather. The Swedish-Egyptian team behind the discovery also found hundreds of hieroglyphic … Read more
Modern technology is ‘shining a light’ on what daily life was like in ancient Egypt by using lasers, X-rays, and infrared to examine the bones of mummies. A number of bone samples dating back between 2,000 and 4,000 years have been tested using the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Labs in California. It works by … Read more
The location where NASA plans to land its rover on Mars could hold signs of ancient microbial life. Scientists are set to investigate the Jezero crater in the Mars 2020 mission, which was home to a lake 3.5 billion years ago and is littered with carbonates and hydrated silica. Carbonates located in the crater’s inner rim … Read more
Evidence of a previously unknown ancient civilisation that existed for around 800 years has been found in Southern Turkey. Archaeologists stumbled across an inscribed rock which reveals the existence of the long-lost civilisation after a farmer found it in an irrigation canal. The stone was inscribed with hieroglyphs in the ancient Luwian dialect and experts translated … Read more
An ancient 3,200-year-old Canaanite temple has been discovered in Israel which was part of a biblical city destroyed by Joshua. Inside, archaeologists found various statues of different gods, including two bronze figurines said to be ‘smiting’. The temple, from about the 12th century BC, was once part of the powerful Canaanite city of Lachish. This … Read more