Peer-Reviewed Publication CELL PRESS Evidence from archaeological sites in the medieval English city of Winchester shows that English red squirrels once served as an important host for Mycobacterium leprae strains that caused leprosy in people, researchers report May 3 in the journal Current Biology. “With our genetic analysis we were able to identify red squirrels as the first ancient animal host of leprosy,” says senior author Verena Schuenemann of the University of Basel in Switzerland. “The medieval red squirrel strain we recovered is more closely related to medieval human ..read more

  Reports and Proceedings UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   IMAGE:  THE SKULL OF SHANIDAR Z, WHICH HAS BEEN RECONSTRUCTED IN THE LAB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. view more  CREDIT: BBC STUDIOS/JAMIE SIMONDS A new Netflix documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators led by the University of Cambridge. The team excavated the female Neanderthal in 2018 from inside a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where the species had repeatedly ..read more

Peer-Reviewed Publication   IMAGE:  LOCATION OF TONGTIANYAN CAVE (LIUJIANG) IN GUANGXI PROVINCE, SOUTHERN CHINA, TOGETHER WITH THE LOCATION OF OTHER KEY FOSSILS OF HOMO SAPIENS IN CHINA. FRONTAL VIEW OF THE LIUJIANG CRANIAL AND POSTCRANIAL ELEMENTS. view more  CREDIT: SPRINGER NATURE The emergence of Homo sapiens in Eastern Asia has long been a subject of intense research interest, with the scarcity of well-preserved and dated human fossils posing significant challenges.   Tongtianyan cave, located in the Liujiang District of Liuzhou City, Southern Ch ..read more

 The Tibetan plateau—the world’s highest and largest plateau—poses a challenge to the people who live there because of its extreme climate. In a new study, researchers have discovered stone artifacts that suggest that there were more cultural exchanges between those who lived on the plateau and those living on its perimeter. “The Tibetan plateau has an average elevation of more than 4500 meters, which makes Colorado seem like it is at sea level. It’s amazing that people have been able to occupy this area on and off for at least the last 40,000 years,” said Stanley Ambrose (MME), a profess ..read more

  Researchers find evidence of ceremonial offerings beneath ballcourt in Mexico   IMAGE:  UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI PROFESSOR DAVID LENTZ HOLDS UP A REPRODUCTION TILE FEATURING ANCIENT MAYA GLYPHS. RESEARCHERS DISCOVERED EVIDENCE OF CEREMONIAL OFFERINGS AT THE SITE OF AN ANCIENT MAYA BALLCOURT IN YAXNOHCAH, MEXICO. view more  CREDIT: ANDREW HIGLEY For sports fans, places like Fenway Park, Wembley Stadium or Wimbledon's Centre Court are practically hallowed ground. Archaeologists at the University of Cincinnati found evidence of similar reverence at ballcourts built b ..read more

  Peer-Reviewed Publication The Dura-Europos site in modern-day Syria is famous for its exceptional state of preservation. Like Pompeii, this ancient city has yielded many great discoveries, and serves as a window into the world of the ancient Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman periods. Yet despite the prominence of Dura-Europos in Near Eastern scholarship, there is another city, only some miles down the Euphrates river, that presents a long-neglected opportunity for study. A new paper in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, entitled "The Ancient City of Giddan/Eddana (Anqa, Ira ..read more

Bones and artifacts indicate a timeline of herding and agriculture in northern Arabia Peer-Reviewed Publication PLOS   IMAGE:  RESEARCHERS EXPLORING THE UMM JIRSAN LAVA TUBE SYSTEM. view more  CREDIT: PALAEODESERTS PROJECT, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/) A large lava tube in Saudia Arabia provided valuable shelter for humans herding livestock over at least the past 7,000 years, according to a study published April 17, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mathew Stewart of Griffith University, Brisbane and colleagues. Research in ..read more

  IMAGE:  DURING THE BRONZE AGE, HAZOR WAS ONE OF THE LARGEST CITIES IN THE REGION. THE SETTLEMENT MOUND IS LOCATED IN THE NORTH OF ISRAEL. view more  CREDIT: MARYAM MATTA The early origins of the Israelites are at the centre of a new research project at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. A team of researchers led by Hebrew Bible scholar and archaeologist Prof. Dr Benedikt Hensel will explore over a three-year period how one of the largest “megacities” of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean was abandoned and then resettled over centuries – and how the narr ..read more

 Indigenous Australian message sticks, which feature markings to convey messages over long distances, analyzed for first time at scale through new database of 1,500 artifacts ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299712 ..read more

    IMAGE:  A VIEW OF THE URBAN AREA AT MU‘A.  view more  CREDIT: CREDIT: PHILLIP PARTON/ANU. New evidence of one of the first cities in the Pacific shows they were established much earlier than previously thought, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU).   The study used aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of Tongatapu in Tonga.   Lead author, PhD scholar Phillip Parton, said the new timeline also indicates that urbanisation in the Pacific was an indigenous innovation that developed ..read more