History
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A wealth of fossil evidence has pinpointed humanity’s homeland as somewhere in Africa, where Homo sapiens first diverged from earlier species about 300,000 years ago. Scientists have now identified the oldest known Homo sapiens footprints in South Africa.
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Archeologists are great at determining what life looked like in ancient days, but not necessarily how it smelled. Now, though, a 2,000-year-old crystal container has shed light on the scent you might have encountered on the streets of ancient Rome.
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It’s hard to construct a building without a plan, but when did humans first start doing that? Archeologists have discovered the oldest known blueprints, with a 9,000-year-old rock carving in Jordan depicting a to-scale plan for a nearby megastructure.
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A pair of researchers have delved into the ancient past, referring to Mesopotamian texts and paleogenomics to discover when romantic kissing was first practiced and the pathogens that have followed the practice from then until now.
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Fossilized plants can provide much information about the planet’s geography and evolution. Researchers have discovered an ancient chili pepper from Colorado that may upend our understanding of when and where the plant originated.
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Six incredible ancient Egypt animal coffins have been examined for the first time. To do so, scientists used pioneering neutron imaging, which meant the mummified lizards' stories could be pieced together without the sealed sarcophagi being opened.
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What do medieval monks and volcanic eruptions have in common? According to a team of researchers, chronicles from the 12th and 13th century are helping volcanologists to precisely date ancient eruptions based on descriptions of lunar eclipses.
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One of the first computer mouses and a coding keyset created by computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart have sold for US$178,936 at auction, with the value finally beginning to reflect the historical status of the pioneering device.
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Horses were likely the first “vehicle” humans used to travel faster and farther, but when exactly did we start riding them? Scientists have now found archeological evidence that suggests horseback riding started some 5,000 years ago.
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A new archeological discovery has confirmed that tempered steel was used by artisans in the Iberian Peninsula to carve intricate motifs into hard rock stelae during the Final Bronze Age, earlier than previously thought.
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A mummified body discovered over a century ago has been digitally unwrapped using CT technology, revealing the body of a teenage boy decorated with nearly 50 amulets highlighting a variety of different ancient Egyptian burial rituals.
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Over the past 150 years, researchers have seen the average human body temperature drop by more than half a degree Fahrenheit (0.3 °C). Now, researchers are speculating microbiome changes could be driving these long-term body temperature variations.
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