Archaeology Archives

DNA from elusive human relatives the Denisovans has left a curious mark on modern people in New Guinea

by History Guild | Oct 7, 2024 | Historical Sites, History News | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
An encounter with a mysterious and extinct human relative – the Denisovans – has left a mark on the immune traits of modern Papuans, in particular those living on New Guinea Island. This is a new discovery we describe in a study published in PLoS Genetics today. It further suggests that our modern human diversity didn’t just evolve – some parts of it we got from other, extinct human groups.

Cracking the Code: The Quest to Decipher the Indus Valley Script

by History Guild | Sep 17, 2024 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The Rosetta Stone laid the groundwork for our understanding of Ancient Egyptian language and culture when French scholar Jean-François Champollion cracked its code in September 1822. But the Rosetta Stone isn’t the only unsolved puzzle out there. Since the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation in the 1920s, the Indus Valley Script has remained an enigma, resisting all attempts at decipherment. From the origins of the civilisation to the reasons why the script remains undecoded, and what the future may hold, unlocking the Indus Valley Script could reveal important insights into one of history’s great ancient cultures.

We have revealed a unique time capsule of Australia’s first coastal people from 50,000 years ago

by History Guild | Jun 18, 2024 | Historical Sites, History News | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Barrow Island, located 60 kilometres off the Pilbara in Western Australia, was once a hill overlooking an expansive coast. This was the northwestern shelf of the Australian continent, now permanently submerged by the ocean.
Our new research, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, shows that Aboriginal people repeatedly lived on portions of this coastal plateau. We have worked closely with coastal Thalanyji Traditional Owners on this island work and also on their sites from the mainland.

Why the Romans weren’t quite as clean as you might have thought

by History Guild | May 15, 2024 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Prior to the Romans, Greece was the only part of Europe to have had toilets. But by the peak of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD, the Romans had introduced sanitation to much of their domain, stretching across western and southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Their impressive technologies included large multi-seat public latrines, sewers, clean water in aqueducts, elegant public baths for washing, and laws that required towns to remove waste from the streets. But how effective were these measures in improving the health of the population?

Neanderthals were no brutes – research reveals they may have been precision workers

by History Guild | Apr 29, 2024 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Neanderthals were until quite recently often seen as simple-minded savages – powerful hunters with a short attention span. But in the last few years, scientists have realised that they were a lot more refined than previously thought – capable of caring for the vulnerable, burying their dead and even adorning themselves with feathers and beads.

Ancient DNA reveals the earliest evidence of the last massive human migration to Western Europe

by History Guild | Apr 10, 2024 | Historical Sites, History News | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes

Nomadic animal-herders from the Eurasian steppe mingled with Copper Age farmers in southeastern Europe centuries earlier than previously thought. In a new study published in Nature, we used ancient DNA to gain new insights into the spread of culture, technologies and ancestry at a crucial juncture in European history.

Forget ‘Man the Hunter’ – physiological and archaeological evidence rewrites assumptions about a gendered division of labor in prehistoric times

by History Guild | Mar 27, 2024 | Advocacy, History News | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
Prehistoric men hunted; prehistoric women gathered. At least this is the standard narrative written by and about men to the exclusion of women. The idea of “Man the Hunter” runs deep within anthropology, convincing people that hunting made us human, only men did the hunting, and therefore evolutionary forces must only have acted upon men. Such depictions are found not only in media, but in museums and introductory anthropology textbooks, too.

The discovery of the lost city of ‘the Dazzling Aten’ will offer vital clues about domestic and urban life in Ancient Egypt

by History Guild | Feb 26, 2024 | Historical Sites, History News | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Built by Amenhotep III and then used by his grandson Tutankhamen, the ruins of the city were an accidental discovery. In September last year, Hawass and his team were searching for a mortuary temple of Tutankhamen.

In a first discovery of its kind, researchers have uncovered an ancient Aboriginal archaeological site preserved on the seabed

by History Guild | Feb 5, 2024 | Historical Sites, History News, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
For most of the human history of Australia, sea levels were much lower than they are today, and there was extra dry land where people lived. When people first arrived in Australia as early as 65,000 years ago, sea levels were around 80m lower than today.

How Has Our Perception of Vikings Changed due to Recent Discoveries?

by History Guild | Jan 11, 2024 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
The image of “The Viking” has always been a colourful one in the minds of society, with fear-inducing images conjured of blonde-haired, blue-eyed barbarians, and pillaging and plundering their way through Europe on a history-changing quest to conquer. This almost mythical collective interpretation of horned helmets and terrifying ships is certainly a popular one. However, recent explorations have brought to light new insights to shift these perceptions, altering the history books and allowing us to look with better clarity at the era between 750 CE and 1050 CE.

An incredible journey: the first people to arrive in Australia came in large numbers, and on purpose

by History Guild | Dec 27, 2023 | Historical Sites, History News | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The size of the first population of people needed to arrive, survive, and thrive in what is now Australia is revealed in two studies published today. It took more than 1,000 people to form a viable population. But this was no accidental migration, as our work shows the first arrivals must have been planned.

Stonehenge first stood in Wales: how archaeologists proved parts of the 5,000 year-old stone circle were imported

by History Guild | Dec 11, 2023 | Historical Sites, History News | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose History of the Kings of Britain was written in 1136, the mysterious monoliths at Stonehenge were first spirited there by the wizard Merlin, whose army stole them from a mythical Irish stone circle called the Giants’ Dance.

Tag: Archaeology