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Research Highlight |
‘Sceptres’ found in ancient tomb were actually beer straws
Metal tubes dating back millennia are the oldest surviving drinking straws.
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Where I Work |
Preserving the legacy of Indigenous tattoos
Anthropologist Lars Krutak finds meaning in markings that are more than skin-deep.
- Chris Woolston
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Research Highlight |
Drug-fuelled parties helped ancient Andean rulers to hold power
Guests quaffed beer infused with hallucinogenic seeds, according to the detritus from a feast in what is now Peru.
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Article
| Open AccessAge of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa
Geochemical analyses correlating the stratum that overlies the sediments containing the Omo fossils with material from a volcanic eruption suggest that these fossils (the oldest known modern human fossils in eastern Africa) are over 200,000 years old.
- Céline M. Vidal
- , Christine S. Lane
- & Clive Oppenheimer
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Research Highlight |
Tomb reveals warrior women who roamed the ancient Caucasus
Dagger and arrows interred in a grave 3,000 years ago provide evidence of female warriors.
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News & Views |
A grave matter of ancient kinship in Neolithic Britain
An investigation into the nature of genetic connections between individuals interred in the same chambers of an ancient tomb in Britain about 5,700 years ago sheds light on kinship in an early society.
- Neil Carlin
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News & Views |
A radiocarbon revolution sheds light on the Vikings
Advances in the precision of radiocarbon dating can offer year-specific data. Analyses of archaeological sites in Denmark and Canada provide insights into the chronology of the global networks of the Viking Age.
- James H. Barrett
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News & Views |
Bronze Age genomes reveal migration to Britain
The genomes of hundreds of individuals who lived in Great Britain and in continental Europe during the Bronze Age provide evidence for a migration of people from the continent to southern Britain between 1000 and 875 bc.
- Daniel G. Bradley
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Article |
A high-resolution picture of kinship practices in an Early Neolithic tomb
Archaeological and ancient DNA analyses of 35 individuals entombed at Hazleton North long cairn approximately 5,700 years ago are used to reconstruct kinship practices in Early Neolithic Britain.
- Chris Fowler
- , Iñigo Olalde
- & David Reich
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News & Views |
Beads reveal long-distance connections in early Africa
Beads made from ostrich eggshells, produced by people over the past 50,000 years, provide evidence for a long period of social connection between eastern and southern Africa, followed by isolation and then reconnection.
- Benjamin R. Collins
- & Amy Hatton
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Article
| Open AccessOstrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa
By tracing the changing size of ostrich eggshell beads, climate is shown to have an important role in influencing when and where regional African populations interacted.
- Jennifer M. Miller
- & Yiming V. Wang
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Research Highlight |
Silk Road tech transfer: this ancient lyre went global
A stringed instrument more than 1,000 years old found in what is now Kazakhstan is nearly identical to one from the Sutton Hoo ‘ship burial’ in Britain.
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Research Highlight |
What fuelled an ancient empire’s rise? Potatoes and quinoa
The Andean superpower Tiwanaku developed with the help of a stable source of nutrients, including llama meat.
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News Round-Up |
Pandemic mental health and Eurasia’s oldest jewellery
The latest science news, in brief.
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News & Views |
Hominin footprints at Laetoli reveal a walk on the wild side
Bipedalism is a defining feature of the human lineage, but not all hominin species walked in the same way. New data from a famous palaeoanthropology site reveal that at least two differently bipedal hominins roamed eastern Africa.
- Stephanie M. Melillo
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Article
| Open AccessFootprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania
Reanalysis of bipedal trackways from Laetoli site A in Tanzania suggest that the footprints were made by a hominin that coexisted with at least one other hominin species.
- Ellison J. McNutt
- , Kevin G. Hatala
- & Jeremy M. DeSilva
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News |
Is this mammoth-ivory pendant Eurasia’s oldest surviving jewellery?
Radiocarbon dating suggests 41,500-year-old carved tusk fragment could be the region’s earliest known example of jewellery decorated by humans.
- Tosin Thompson
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Research Highlight |
Neutron beam sheds light on medieval faith and superstition
Hidden inside a leaden amulet, researchers find words of magic and Christian creed side by side.
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Research Highlight |
Ancient mud bricks show adobe’s foundations 5,000 years ago
The oldest known monumental adobe structure in the Americas provides clues to the origins of this versatile material.
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News & Views |
Tracking the origin of Transeurasian languages
A triangulation of linguistic, archaeological and genetic data suggests that the Transeurasian language family originated in a population of grain farmers in China around 9,000 years ago, and that agriculture underpinned its spread.
- Peter Bellwood
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Research Highlight |
Maps reveal surprising details of Mongols’ ancient capital
Sensors that peer underground chart the unexpected sprawl of Karakorum, established by the heir to Genghis Khan.
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Research Highlight |
Enigmatic Falklands ‘fox’ might have hitched a ride with humans
Findings suggest that people lived on the islands earlier than thought — and could have imported the canid called the warrah.
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News & Views |
The unexpected ancestry of Inner Asian mummies
The genomes of Bronze Age mummies from the Tarim Basin in northwest China suggest that these individuals were descended from an ancient Asian population that was genetically isolated, despite extensive cultural interactions in the region.
- Paula N. Doumani Dupuy
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Outlook |
Lessons from the ancient oral microbiome
Christina Warinner explains what the microorganisms that lived in our ancestors’ mouths reveal about human evolution and health.
- Kristina Campbell
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Nature Podcast |
Genomics unwraps mystery of the Tarim mummies
The unexpected origins of a 4,000-year-old people, protecting your ‘digital presence’ and what to expect from COP26.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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News |
DNA reveals surprise ancestry of mysterious Chinese mummies
The genomes of 13 remarkably preserved 4,000-year-old mummies from the Tarim Basin suggest they weren’t migrants who brought technology from the west, as previously supposed.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News & Views |
From the archive
Nature’s pages feature musings about the value of studying wetlands, and a report of the excavation of an ancient city in Sicily.
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Nature Video |
Vikings were living in North America exactly a thousand years ago
An animated tale of giant solar storms, ancient sagas and the latest radiocarbon dating technology.
- Shamini Bundell
- & Dan Fox
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Article
| Open AccessEvidence for European presence in the Americas in ad 1021
Precise dating of wooden artefacts at a Norse settlement in Newfoundland establishes that the Norse were in the Americas in ad 1021.
- Margot Kuitems
- , Birgitta L. Wallace
- & Michael W. Dee
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Perspective |
Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines
In this Perspective, a group representing a range of stakeholders makes the case for a set of five proposed globally applicable ethical guidelines for ancient human DNA research.
- Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg
- , David Anthony
- & Muhammad Zahir
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Nature Podcast |
Omnimagnets move non-magnetic objects every which way
An ancient solar storm helps pinpoint when Vikings lived in the Americas, and using magnets to deftly move non-magnetic metals.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News |
Burnt seeds show people used tobacco 12,000 years ago
The earliest evidence that Stone Age hunter-gatherers chewed or smoked the plant have been discovered among the remains of an ancient fire.
- Tosin Thompson
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Article
| Open AccessLeprosy in wild chimpanzees
Monitoring of western chimpanzee populations in Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire reveals the presence of rare and different genotypes of Mycobacterium leprae, suggesting greater circulation in wild animals than previously thought.
- Kimberley J. Hockings
- , Benjamin Mubemba
- & Fabian H. Leendertz
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Research Highlight |
Cold-war spy pictures reveal a Soviet nuclear ‘cloud generator’
Declassified satellite pictures expose the catastrophic damage done by a plutonium complex in the Urals.
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Research Highlight |
A ‘spirit mirror’ used in Elizabeth I’s court had Aztec roots
Geochemical analysis suggests that an obsidian mirror owned by a confidant of the English Tudor queen was made in Mexico.
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News & Views |
From the archive
Nature’s pages feature a history of aerial photography for archaeology research, and reports of colourful auroras and magnetic storms.
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Research Highlight |
Ancient Maya capital housed a copy of a rival city’s pyramid
Archaeologists working in Tikal, Guatemala, discover a 30%-scale model of buildings in a superpower hundreds of kilometres away.
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News |
Illegal mining in the Amazon hits record high amid Indigenous protests
Satellite data confirm incursions on protected lands as Indigenous people fight for their rights — and recognition of their role in conserving forests.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Ancient footprints could be oldest traces of humans in the Americas
Children left tracks in New Mexico around 22,500 years ago — thousands of years before most scientists thought humans settled in North America.
- Ewen Callaway
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News & Views |
Modern Polynesian genomes offer clues to early eastward migrations
A genome-wide analysis of modern populations in Polynesia suggests the direction and timing of ancient Polynesian migrations. This model bears consistencies and inconsistencies with models based on archaeology and linguistics.
- Patrick V. Kirch
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Article |
Paths and timings of the peopling of Polynesia inferred from genomic networks
Analysis of genomic networks from 430 modern individuals across 21 Pacific island populations reveals the human settlement history of Polynesia.
- Alexander G. Ioannidis
- , Javier Blanco-Portillo
- & Andrés Moreno-Estrada
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News & Views |
From the archive
Nature’s pages feature a look at nautical archaeology in a museum setting and musings about the molecule anthracene.
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Research Highlight |
Life-sized camels in rock are a Stone Age masterpiece
Saudi Arabia’s Camel Site is a testimony to the dexterity of prehistoric sculptors.
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Article
| Open AccessDairying enabled Early Bronze Age Yamnaya steppe expansions
Analysis of ancient proteins suggests that Early Bronze Age dairying and horse domestication catalysed eastern Yamnaya migrations.
- Shevan Wilkin
- , Alicia Ventresca Miller
- & Nicole Boivin
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Nature Podcast |
The billion years missing from Earth’s history
A new theory to explain missing geological time, the end of leaded petrol, and the ancient humans of Arabia.
- Shamini Bundell
- , Dan Fox
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Research Highlight |
Early Americans’ huge earthworks show off their engineering might
Analysis of mysterious earth mounds reveals their rapid construction and sophisticated composition.
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News |
Busting benzene, lab-grown embryos — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key infographics from the week in science and research.
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Research Highlight |
Broken skulls of children tell of an ancient massacre
Even youngsters less than 10 years old were not spared in a spate of gruesome violence in central Europe more than 6,000 years ago.
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News & Views |
Traces of a series of human dispersals through Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula was a key migratory crossroads when humans and our hominin relatives began to leave Africa. Archaeological evidence and climate reconstructions reveal episodes when early humans inhabited Arabia.
- Robin Dennell