Neolithic Grinding Stone Found in Scotland A place where people with an axe to grind gathered 4,500 years ago has been uncovered by archaeologists and volunteers. An area of abrasive sandstone close to Balfron, near Stirling, has been found to have been used like a giant whetstone by Neolithic toolmakers to polish stone axes. Over …

11,000-Year-Old Carvings Uncovered in Turkey In Sayburç, Turkey, not far from the famous settlement of Göbekli Tepe, an archaeologist discovered an 11,000-year-old scene carved into a wall. It’s one of the oldest narrative depictions in the archaeological record. The narrative scene depicts five figures: two humans, a bull, and two leopards. One of the humans is holding a snake, …

New Thoughts on Prehistoric Owl Plaques Over the past century, thousands of pieces of slate engraved with images of owls have been unearthed from tombs and pits across the Iberian Peninsula, in what’s now Portugal and Spain. The artifacts date from around 5,000 years ago, and for more than a century their function has flummoxed …

DNA Offers Clues to Medieval Ashkenazi Jewish Communities A rare look at the genetics of Ashkenazi Jews who lived in medieval Germany reveals this group had more genetic diversity 600 years ago than today, and reaffirms a recent finding that a “genetic bottleneck” in the Ashkenazi population occurred before the Middle Ages. Religious laws usually …

Medieval Woman’s Life-Sized Model Created in Norway A life-size 3D model of a grinning old woman holding a walking stick looks like a contemporary elder on a stroll through her neighborhood. In reality, this woman lived nearly 800 years ago in Norway, and the model is a sculpted life-sized reconstruction based on her skeleton. On …

Hoard of Medieval Silver Coins Discovered in Scotland Metal detectorists have unearthed what may be one of the largest hoards of coins ever discovered in Scotland, in a field in the southwest of the country. The hoard is made up of more than 8,400 silver coins that date from the medieval period, mostly from the …

This rare battle sword just found in Sweden is ‘an evolutionary leap’ A basement at the intersection of Kungsgatan and Västerlånggatan in Gamla stan turned out to harbor a secret. A weapon lay in the racial mᴀsses from the warlike events in the summer of 1611. During the past week, we have investigated a stone …

Early Dog Identified in Spain’s Basque Country A humerus analyzed by the UPV/EHU’s Human Evolutionary Biology group belonged to a specimen that lived in the Paleolithic period, 17,000 years ago. The dog is the first species domesticated by humans, although the geographical and temporal origin of wolf domestication remains a matter of debate. In an …

Roman Colosseum’s Sewers Investigated With Robots Spectators at Rome’s ancient gladiator arena, the Colosseum, may have enjoyed snacks of olives, fruit and nuts, archaeologists have found. Food fragments of figs, grapes, cherries, blackberries, walnuts and more have been unearthed at the site. Archaeologists also found the bones of bears and big cats that were probably …