A groundbreaking study finds evidence that land was inherited through the female line in Iron Age Britain, with husbands moving to live with their wife's community. This is believed to be the first time such a system has been documented in European prehistory ..read more

Researchers have discovered what may be the world's oldest three-dimensional map, located within a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris Basin ..read more

anthropologists have analyzed a skull that was found in the ruins of Ephesos (Turkey) in 1929. It was long speculated that it could be the remains of Arsino IV, the sister of the famous Cleopatra. However, the latest anthropological analyses show that the remains are those of a boy between the ages of 11 and 14 who suffered from pathological developmental disorders. His genes point to an origin in Italy or Sardinia ..read more

A new study has outlined the first genomic evidence of early migration from New Guinea into the Wallacea, an archipelago containing Timor-Leste and hundreds of inhabited eastern Indonesian islands ..read more

Lead exposure is responsible for a range of human health impacts, with even relatively low levels impacting the cognitive development of children. Scientists have previously used atmospheric pollution records preserved in Arctic ice cores to identify periods of lead pollution throughout the Roman Empire, and now new research expands on this finding to identify how this pollution may have affected the European population ..read more

Waves of human migration across Europe during the first millennium AD have been revealed using a more precise method of analysing ancestry with ancient DNA, in research led by the Francis Crick Institute ..read more

Analysis of the remains of at least 37 individuals from Early Bronze Age England finds they were killed, butchered, and probably consumed before being thrown down a 15m-deep shaft. It is the largest-scale example of interpersonal violence from British prehistory. The treatment of the remains was likely a means to dehumanize or 'other' the victims. This massacre was probably revenge for a perceived offense, implying a cycle of violence and questioning the idea that Early Bronze Age Britain was relatively peaceful ..read more

A new study sheds light on the lives of people who lived over 5,600 years ago near Kosenivka, Ukraine. Researchers present the first detailed bioarchaeological analyses of human diets from this area and provide estimations on the causes of death of the individuals found at this site ..read more

Neanderthal genes make up 1-2% of the genomes of non-Africans. Scientists analyzed the lengths of regions of Neanderthal DNA in 58 ancient Eurasian genomes of early modern humans and determined that the introgressed genes result from interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals about 47,000 years ago, over a single, extended period of about 7,000 years. The findings help pin down dates for out-of-Africa migration and the dispersal of Homo sapiens ..read more

A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian continent ..read more