news

Multi-disciplinary archaeological survey at the site of Oued Beht, Morocco, reveals a previously unknown 3400-2900 BC farming society, shedding new light on North Africa's role in Mediterranean prehistory. For over thirty years I have been convinced that Mediterranean archaeology has been missing something fundamental Prof Cyprian Broodbank Archaeological fieldwork in Morocco has discovered the earliest, previously unknown 3400-2900 BC farming society from a poorly understood period of north-west African prehistory.

Political posts on social media that most frequently referenced ancient history tended to be more extreme, hostile and overwhelmingly negative in tone than average, finds a new study by researchers from UCL and the University of Edinburgh. Their study, published in PLOS One , scrutinised nearly 1.5 million posts using a combination of AI, computational and manual techniques and used a range of sentiment analysis tools to evaluate the attitudes behind those posts that reference Britain's distant past.

The largest "bluestone" at the heart of Stonehenge came from northern Scotland, not Wales, according to new research. Published in the journal Nature , the study analysed the age and chemistry of minerals from fragments of the Altar Stone. The findings show a remarkable similarity between the Old Red Sandstone of the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland and the Stonehenge Altar Stone.

A new study takes a tour of the history of research into human embryology and development to show the "cycles of attention" that led to major scientific breakthroughs. Analysing the past sheds light on the present resurgence of research on human development. That's the lesson of a new study by Professor Nick Hopwood , from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, that is published in the Journal of the History of Biology .

Water scarcity drove steam power adoption during Industrial Revolution, new research suggests A groundbreaking new reconstruction of 19th-century Britain's water resources has revealed how limited access to waterpower during the Industrial Revolution helped drive the adoption of steam engines in Greater Manchester's Cottonopolis.

Techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime detected by one of the 21st century's most sensitive pieces of scientific equipment have helped cast new light on the function of the oldest known analogue computer. Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have used statistical modelling techniques developed to analyse gravitational waves to establish the likely number of holes in one of the broken rings of the Antikythera mechanism - an ancient artifact which was showcased in the movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny .

A series of ancient South American engravings are thought to be the largest prehistoric rock art in the world, reveals a new study by an international team of archaeologists involving UCL researchers. The team co-led by researchers at Bournemouth University and Universidad de los Andes in Colombia published their results in the journal Antiquity .

Researchers have explored how the River Nile evolved over the past 11,500 years and how changes in its geography could have helped shape the fortunes of ancient Egyptian civilisation. Research published in Nature Geoscience reveals a major shift in the Nile around four thousand years ago, after which the floodplain in the Nile Valley around Luxor greatly expanded.

In The Conversation, Dr Ceri Shipton (UCL Institute of Archaeology) explores his new research that has found a large wave of migration reached the island of Timor not long after 50,000 years ago. Humans arrived in Australia at least  65,000 years ago , according to archaeological evidence. These pioneers were part of an early wave of people travelling eastwards from Africa, through Eurasia, and ultimately into Australia and New Guinea.

New archaeological evidence indicates that humans first reached the island of Timor in large numbers, challenging scientists' understanding of how ancient people migrated from Southeast Asia to Australia, according to a new study led by a UCL researcher. The study, published in Nature Communications , dated and analysed ancient sediment, artefacts, and animal remains discovered in a large rock overhang in Laili, located in north-central Timor-Leste (East Timor).

A 3,500-year-old suit of Mycenaean armour may have been used in battle - and not just for ceremonial purposes as previously thought - new research reveals. Researchers worked with a group of Greek military volunteers who wore a replica of the Dendra armour during extended simulations of the rigours of battle.

Horses crossed the Baltic Sea in ships during the Late Viking Age and were sacrificed for funeral rituals, according to research from Cardiff University. Published in the journal Science Advances , studies on the remains of horses found at ancient burial sites in Russia and Lithuania show that they were brought overseas from Scandinavia utilising expansive trade networks connecting the Viking world with the Byzantine and Arab Empires.

Researchers have found that 2023 was the hottest summer in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two thousand years, almost four degrees warmer than the coldest summer during the same period. When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is Ulf Büntgen Although 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record, the instrumental evidence only reaches back as far as 1850 at best, and most records are limited to certain regions.

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare. The team carried out the largest study to date of the global archaeological literature about preserved human brains to compile an archive that exceeds 20-fold the number of brains previously compiled.

Humans in northern Europe have been snacking on hazelnuts - a key accessible source of energy -for at least 12,000 years. Now, a study led by the University of Oxford has shown that it is possible to analyse the carbon isotope values of hazelnuts found at archaeological sites to reveal what the places humans lived in millennia ago looked like.

The first DNA study of the ancient population of Eastern Arabia sheds new light on their lives People living in ancient Eastern Arabia appear to have developed resistance to malaria following the appearance of agriculture in the region around five thousand years ago, a new study reveals. DNA analysis of the remains of four individuals from Tylos-period Bahrain (300 BCE to 600 CE) - the first ancient genomes from Eastern Arabia - revealed the malaria-protective G6PD Mediterranean mutation in three samples.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and dramatically at the end of the Last Ice Age, around 8,000 years ago. The evidence, contained within an ice core, shows that in one location the ice sheet thinned by 450 metres - that's more than the height of the Empire State Building - in just under 200 years.

An early medieval cemetery has been discovered within the grounds of Fonmon Castle, near Barry, South Wales. Archaeologists from Cardiff University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion carried out a dig in the summer, with further radiocarbon dating and analysis revealing the full extent of their find.

Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth's magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study involving UCL researchers. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , describes how changes in the Earth's magnetic field imprinted on iron oxide grains within ancient clay bricks, and how scientists were able to reconstruct these changes from the names of the kings inscribed on the bricks.

Humans have wiped out around 1,400 bird species - twice as many as previously thought - with major implications for the ongoing biodiversity crisis, a new study involving UCL researchers has found. Many of the world's islands were previously untouched paradises, but the arrival of people to places like Hawaii, Tonga and the Azores led to far-reaching impacts including deforestation, overhunting and the introduction of invasive species.