Newsdesk Archive
A new study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs has uncovered significant associations between naturalistic ayahuasca use and improved mental health.
A new genetic analysis of the earliest known modern human remains found in Ranis in Germany and Zlatý k?? in the Czech Republic suggests emigrant Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis mingled some time between 45,000 and 49,000 years ago. The two papers were published in Nature and Science.
The people associated with the Neolithic Cucuteni-Trypilla culture lived across Eastern Europe from approximately 5500 to 2750 BCE. With up to 15,000 inhabitants, some of their mega-sites are among the earliest and largest city-like settlements in prehistoric Europe.
The Bering land bridge that spanned between Siberia and Alaska during the Ice Age was more of a Bering land bog, new research finds.
Around 900,000 years ago stone tech 2.0 was released into Spain. University of Santiago de Compostela anthropologist Diego Lombao and colleagues found the earliest known European example of advanced stone tool techniques. This research was published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology.
The archaeological site could shed light on the region's history, with its oldest human settlement potentially dating back 14,000 years.
The team’s detection method, which identified 138 space rocks ranging from bus- to stadium-sized, could aid in tracking potential asteroid impactors. In a paper appearing in the journal Nature, the researchers report that they have used their approach to detect more than 100 new decameter asteroids in the main asteroid belt.
Homo sapiens groups assembled at the cave to hold torchlit ceremonies, probably inspired by mythological or religious beliefs, as early as around 37,000 years ago, researchers report December 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A fertile stretch of the Nile River, flanked by arid deserts to the east and west, has supported human life for over a million years. The Middle Nile Valley has a history of diverse subsistence strategies, including pastoralism, hunting, fishing, and plant foraging, made possible by unique features underground.
Our earliest studies of Neanderthals were fundamentally flawed.
Interdisciplinary research of archaeological remains found in the Cave of Los Murciélagos in Albuñol, Granada, has revealed the sophistication of Ancient Neolithic archery in the Iberian Peninsula (5300–4900 BCE)...The study was led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and was published in Scientific Reports.
A discovery deep within a cave in Spain has challenged the history of human artistic expression. Researchers have determined that hand stencils in Maltravieso Cave are more than 66,000 years old, suggesting that Neanderthals, not modern humans, were the world's first artists. The study is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
In a new study, researchers found that participants consumed the psychedelic substance in a therapeutic context reported reduced depression and improvements in their sleep quality. The findings were published in Current Psychiatry Reports.
The Earth was struck by 2 huge asteroids 35 million years ago – but it managed to shrug off the impacts, according to a new study. The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment finds that – other than 2 massive craters – there’s little evidence of long-term effects caused by the asteroids.
Newly analyzed 5,000-year-old clay bowls unearthed in Iraq may be evidence of early government-like rule, a new study finds.
Excavations by the Kuwaiti-Polish Archaeological Mission at a site in Northern Kuwait's Al-Subiyah desert have uncovered a bizarre-looking clay head representative of the culture of a prehistoric people who flourished in the region between 5500 and 4900 BCE.
New research published in Nature Mental Health indicates that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy may offer comprehensive mental health benefits for individuals experiencing cancer-related distress.
A "provocative" new piece in Nature has proposed a whole new group of ancient humans – cousins of the Denisovans and Neanderthals – that once lived alongside Homo sapiens in eastern Asia more than 100,000 years ago. The commentary was published in Nature Communications.
Hunter-gatherers constructed these complex networks about 4,000 years ago, during the Archaic period, a time before people in the region were practicing agriculture on a large scale, scientists wrote in the study, published Nov. 22 in the journal Science Advances.
Ancient footprints reveal that a thriving landscape 1.5 million years ago in what is now Kenya was able to accommodate two different species of hominin, living side by side...The research has been published in Science.
Researchers at the University of Helsinki performed acoustic impulse response measurements in front of 37 rock painting sites and found that the same vertical rock surfaces that have the painted elks, humans and boats, are also effective sound reflectors. Their study is published in the journal Sound Studies.
Earth and Mars are the only two rocky planets in the Solar System to have moons. Based on lunar rock samples and computer simulations, we are fairly certain that our Moon is the result of an early collision between Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia.
DMT might be the vehicle behind dreams, spiritual awakenings, and even wild visions during near-death experiences.
Fossils found in a cave in northern Spain might be an example of humans – in this case, Neanderthals – collecting things for fun.
In a new study, US researchers shed light on what they call an "explosion" of animal color signals over the past 100 million years – with novel insights about the timing and possible triggers of this evolutionary innovation.
Evidence is growing that Mars was once sloshy and wet, draped with lakes and oceans, which lapped at shorelines and deposited sediments that are, even as you read these words, being scrutinized by robots rolling across the now dry and dusty surface.
Two newly discovered stone circles, built about 5,000 years ago in what is now the southwest of England, are the latest to show that Stonehenge was not the only Stone Age circle built in the region.
"The structure that has revealed a hitherto unknown way by which Neanderthals managed and used fire," the researchers wrote in the new study, published Nov. 12 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
What appears to be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history is etched onto finger-length, clay cylinders excavated from a tomb in Syria by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers.
A new quantum theory explaining how light and matter interact has also provided the first-ever depiction of the shape of a single light particle, a photon. The research is published in the Physical Review Letters.
Research led by the Universidad de Burgos has uncovered evidence suggesting Neanderthals engaged in collecting activities based on discoveries at the Prado Vargas Cave in Burgos, Spain...The research is published in the journal Quaternary.
Lucy lived in a wide range of habitats from northern Ethiopia to northern Kenya. Researchers now believe she wasn't the only australopithecine species there.
A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Los Angeles, has revealed new insights into how ancient Europeans adapted to their environments over 7,000 years of European history. The study was published last week in the journal Nature Communications.
The analysis, which looked at nearly 6 million galaxies and quasars spanning 11 billion years of cosmic time, found that even at colossal scales, the force of gravity behaves as predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.
An ancient inscription decorated with lions and sphinxes is finally deciphered, and it involves the "mother of the gods."
A new study by Dr. Linda Evans and her colleagues from Macquarie University, Australia, published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, has recently identified what may be an Egyptian petroglyph depicting the zodiac sign Capricornus, a hybrid creature with the forequarters of a goat and body of a fish.
Brain scans suggest the whistle's tones may do more than create a scary ambience. This research was published in Communications Psychology.
Famously known for its extensive ring system, Saturn is one of four planets in our solar system that have the distinctive feature. And now, scientists hypothesize that Earth may have sported its own ring some 466 million years ago.
The VA is stepping up with its first psychedelic research study in decades, aiming to determine if MDMA-assisted therapy can offer real relief for veterans struggling with PTSD.
Ancient pollen and charcoal remains uncovered from islands north of Tasmania (Lutruwita) suggest that human fire management practices were happening in the region 41,600 years ago. The study, published in Science Advances, draws on 2 sediment records collected from islands in the Bass Strait.
A University of South Florida professor found the first-ever physical evidence of hallucinogens in an Egyptian mug, validating written records and centuries-old myths of ancient Egyptian rituals and practices. Published in Scientific Reports, the study sheds light on an ancient Egyptian mystery...
A collection of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel may be spindle whorls, representing a key milestone in the development of rotational tools, including wheels, according to a study published November 13, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Imagine a time machine that could whisk you back to the age of the dinosaurs. Suddenly, you find yourself in a dense, swampy forest, with insects buzzing between flowers, ferns, and conifers. Believe it or not, you're standing in West Antarctica. The study was published in Antarctic Research.
More than 700 million years ago, the entire globe was covered in ice in a period called “Snowball Earth”. At least, that’s what scientists think. Now geologists believe they’ve found the best evidence that the “Snowball Earth” was really a global event.
A team of archaeologists from LSU and the University of Texas at Tyler has excavated the earliest known ancient Maya salt works in southern Belize, as reported in the journal Antiquity.
Along a stream in Tajikistan, archaeologists have discovered a rock-shelter that may have been a migration site for Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans over a span of 130,000 years. See the study here.
Scientists believe individuals of the most recently discovered hominin group (the Denisovans) that interbred with modern day humans passed on some of their genes via multiple, distinct interbreeding events that helped shape early human history. The paper was published in Nature Genetics.
An enigmatic stone and turf structure on Bodmin Moor that was previously thought to be a medieval animal pen has been found to be 4,000 years older – and unique in Europe.
The Ice Age campsite of Gönnersdorf on the banks of the Rhine has revealed a groundbreaking discovery that sheds new light on early fishing practices. The work is published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought — and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life.
Ai-Da’s works were “ethereal and haunting” and “continue to question where the power of AI will take us, and the global race to harness its power”...
Ancient DNA taken from the Pompeii victims of Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago reveals that some people's relationships were not what they seemed, according to a new study..."These findings challenge traditional gender and familial assumptions."
Combining these Indigenous accounts with other sources of research has led them to conclude that the art speaks of ritual specialists negotiating spiritual realms, the transformation of bodies, and the intertwining of human and non-human worlds—rather than a more literal record of the environment they lived in and the species they encountered.
In a study, "Late Pleistocene exploitation of Ephedra in a funerary context in Morocco," published in Scientific Reports, researchers detail their findings in an excavation of a cave occupied by modern humans for over 100,000 years.
A skeleton buried in a fetal position is actually made of bones from at least five people who lived across a span of 2,500 years...A study published Oct. 23 in the journal Antiquity... sheds light on the meaning of the composite burial via multiple techniques, including skeletal analysis, radiocarbon dating and ancient-DNA sequencing.
Voters in Massachusetts rejected Question 4, a ballot initiative that would have decriminalized plant-based psychedelics for residents and green-lit a state-regulated psychedelic-assisted therapy system.
A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests that a single dose of psilocybin may offer hope for U.S. military veterans facing severe, treatment-resistant depression.
A recent preliminary study by Ph.D. student Leonie Hoff of the University of Oxford, published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, provides insight into how ancient fingerprints left on terracotta figurines reveal the age and sex of their makers.
According to the researchers, several symbols engraved on stone "cylinder seals" were developed into signs used in "proto-cuneiform," an early version of the cuneiform script used in southern Mesopotamia, now southern Iraq. The researchers reported their findings in a study published Tuesday (Nov. 5) in the journal Antiquity.
A recent study published in AJOB Neuroscience found that a majority of Americans support psilocybin, a psychedelic compound from certain mushrooms, for supervised medical treatment and well-being enhancement. This strong bipartisan approval highlights public openness to legalized and controlled use of the drug for both medical and personal enhancement purposes, though with caution for future policy.
Scientists say there has been an alarming lack of progress in saving nature as the UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, draws to a close...Representatives of 196 countries have been meeting in Cali, Colombia, to agree on how to halt nature decline by 2030.
The devastation of a giant meteorite impact on early Earth may have allowed life to flourish, new research suggests. The study was published Oct. 21 in the journal PNAS.
The region is known as one of the earliest places people practiced animal husbandry. The new study adds insight into how this developed. The study, published in Nature, spans nearly 6,000 years of genetic data in the region.
Prehistoric Polynesian seafarers were highly skilled and undertook some of the longest and most technically demanding voyages in prehistory—but did they ever sail into very high latitudes with landfall in Antarctica, as some scholars have argued? An international team of archaeologists and paleoecologists seeking an answer to this question...Their study is published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania.
A small 4,400-year-old town in the Khaybar Oasis of Saudi Arabia hints that Bronze Age people in this region were slow to urbanize, unlike their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, finds a new study published Wednesday (Oct. 30) in the journal PLOS One.
The discovery, led by astronomer Alexia Lopez of the University of Central Lancashire, was presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January, and has been published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
Scientists have been trying to figure out where kissing came from for a long time. New research suggests that the answer is to be found in the behaviour of ancient ape ancestors of humans...
A study published in L'Anthropologie by Professor Ella Been from Ono Academic College and Dr. Omry Barzilai from the University of Haifa sheds new light on the burial practices of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in the Levant region during the Middle Paleolithic (MP).
The city contains up to 6,674 structures, including pyramids like the ones at Chichén Itzá and Tikal, according to a study published Tuesday (Oct. 29) in the journal Antiquity. The researchers used previously created lidar (light detection and ranging) maps, which are created by shooting laser pulses at the ground, to reveal the potentially 1,500-year-old site.
According to a new study published in the journal Fungal Ecology, fungi may have their own unique measure of intelligence, making them capable of basic shape recognition and decision-making throughout the networks they build.
Palaeontologists studying fossils of corals and algae from 385 million years ago have found a symbiotic relationship between the organisms today was present in the ancient past as well. The research was published in Nature.
A new study published in iScience on October 25 describes how researchers used ancient DNA to corroborate the events of the saga and discover details about the "Well-man," blending history and archaeology with science and setting a precedent for future research on historical figures.
The largest and oldest-known impact site on the moon is the South Pole-Aitken basin. Thanks to new research, scientists have dated the basin to the period between 4.32 and 4.33 billion years ago.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be trained to see details in images that escape the human eye. Now an AI neural network has identified something unusual about a face in a Raphael painting: It wasn't actually painted by Raphael.
‘Bricks’ of DNA, some of which have chemical tags, could one day be an alternative to storing information electronically.
A new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology reveals a surprising link between mystical experiences induced by the psychedelic compound DMT and specific patterns of heart activity.
For the first time, a black hole has been discovered with two orbiting stars, leading astrophysicists to suggest a surprising way such systems could form. The first triple system is described in a paper published in Nature...
The first-ever use of cutting-edge drone-based lidar in Central Asia allowed archaeologists to capture stunning details of two newly documented trade cities high in the mountains of Uzbekistan.
Archaeologists have discovered ancient altars and inscribed marble slabs submerged along the Italian coast near Naples....The study was published Sept. 12 in the journal Antiquity.
It's possible that the wheel was invented by copper miners in the Carpathian Mountains up to 6,000 years ago, according to a modeling study that uses techniques from structural mechanics.
Meteorites have a pretty bad reputation. The most recent major impact with our planet was – to be fair – pretty devastating, wiping out a good three-quarters of all animal species on the planet. But a much, much larger impactor, much longer ago, may have had the opposite effect. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...Over one hundred Shipibo-Conibo Onanyabo, or ancestral medicine healers, from the Ucayali region of Peru...met in July to discuss the future of spiritual tourism, the defense of traditional knowledge, and the protection of the forest and Indigenous territories. One of the main takeaways from the meeting was ayahuasca is under threat of extinction.
Elephant fossils from 300,000–400,000 years ago bear the marks of the earliest signs of ancient humans butchering animals in the Indian subcontinent... The identity of the elephant species and the interaction with ancient humans are detailed in two papers published in the Quaternary Science Reviewsand the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
One of the brightest stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse, may not be on the brink of exploding as a supernova, according to a new study of the star's brightening and dimming. Instead, recent research shows that the observed pulsing of the starlight is probably caused by an unseen companion star orbiting Betelgeuse.
New, non-hallucinogenic versions of psychedelics are blurring the boundaries of the drug trip.
A probabilistic new map of the universe surrounding the Milky Way reveals that our galaxy is likely part of an even larger "basin of attraction" than we previously assumed. See the study here.
An ability to sense and respond to the world is vital for the survival of most organisms, but methods of perception can vary significantly. We tend to think of animals as the most gifted in that regard… but a species of fungus is offering a challenge to what we think we know about intelligence. The research has been published in Fungal Ecology.
Researchers at the University of Toronto have cracked the code of plant-to-fungi communication in a new study published in the journal Molecular Cell.
East Forest’s new documentary explores how music acts as an anchor during transformative healing experiences. See the official trailer here.
Hands capable of using tools might have evolved much earlier than previously thought according to a new study of Australopithecus finger bones. Findings of the study are published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Until now, only a small fraction of meteorites that land on Earth had been firmly linked back to their parent body out in space – but a set of new studies has just given us compelling origin stories for more than 90 percent of meteorites today. The research has been published in Nature, here and here, and Astronomy and Astrophysics.
An archaeological dig of a quarry in Lincolnshire has uncovered evidence of settlements and agriculture spanning 6,000 years. Excavations of the West Deeping quarry revealed a Roman settlement as well as Neolithic and Bronze Age finds.
Active from Sept. 26 through Nov. 22, the Orionids will peak in the early hours of Monday, Oct. 21, when around 23 "shooting stars" are expected per hour, according to the American Meteor Society. The precise peak is predicted to occur at 1 a.m. EDT (0500 GMT).
Underneath the iconic and intricately carved Treasury building at the center of the renowned archaeological site Petra, excavators have stumbled upon a long-lost crypt holding 12 skeletons.
The trees, the researchers found, were able to do this despite sharp declines in population range and numbers, especially during ice ages. The results of the study are published in Nature Communications.
Ayahuasca lore celebrates serpents, jaguars, and panthers. But why do visions of these majestic jungle animals occur in the first place?
Researchers have revealed our sense of smell operates much faster than previously thought, suggesting we are as sensitive to rapid changes in odours as we are to rapid changes in colour. See the study here.
Palaeontologists report in the journal PLOS ONE that they have discovered the earliest evidence of predatory birds. At 68 million years old, the new species lived alongside T. rex and the other dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous period.
Humans seem to have been adapted to the last ice age in similar ways to wolves and bears, according to our recent study, challenging longstanding theories about how and where our ancestors lived during this glacial period.
Archaeologists have found the largest ever jade "dragon" made by the Neolithic Hongshan culture on record.