The idea comes from the discovery in Denmark of a bronze metalworking die or stamp that depicts a warrior on horseback.

Examinations show the design on the rectangular stamp is remarkably similar to the horse-and-rider motifs stamped into the metal of the ceremonial helmet, which was unearthed in 1939 from an Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo in the east of England.

Similar motifs have been found on helmets from Sweden and jewelry from southern Germany, and scholars have suggested that the Sutton Hoo helmet may have been an heirloom or diplomatic gift from those regions.

The latest discovery confirms that the motif of a horse and riding warrior was indeed widespread throughout Northern Europe at that time.

"It's definitely connected to the aristocracy," archaeologist and prehistorian Peter Pentz, a curator at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, told Live Science. He noted that nobles from these times and places were expected to ride horses into battle.

The stamp was found on the Danish island of Taasinge roughly two years ago, amid the ruins of a metal workshop, and it is now on display in the museum.

Related: Photos: Snapshots of mysterious Sutton Hoo burial excavation revealed

Horseback-riding warrior

The Sutton Hoo helmet is a curious mixture of Northern European and Roman styles. It was rebuilt from hundreds of fragments found at the Sutton Hoo site, which also yielded ornate grave goods — including musical instruments, jewelry, tableware, weapons and armor — from a burial chamber built on the deck of the buried ship.

The helmet and its distinctive face mask are now icons of the Anglo-Saxon culture, which was established in eastern Britain during the early medieval period by migrants from what are now the coasts of Germany and Denmark.

Although Anglo-Saxon smiths were certainly capable of crafting such a helmet, the new discovery adds strength to the idea that it originated overseas, Pentz said. The horse-and-warrior motifs on the Sutton Hoo helmet are not identical to the ones on the stamp, but they show many similarities, including their depictions of the ears, manes, noses and tails of the horses, he said. He added that the stamp is also exactly the same size as the horse-and-riding-warrior motifs stamped onto metal panels on the Sutton Hoo helmet, which is now housed at the British Museum in London.

Anglo-Saxon England

Experts in England are excited about this new support for the idea that the iconic Anglo-Saxon helmet may have originated overseas. The similarity between the motifs on the stamp and the helmet "adds to the sense of quite how interconnected were the military elites of this period in north-western Europe," Helen Gittos, a medieval historian at the University of Oxford, told Live Science in an email.

Gittos was not involved in the discovery at Taasinge, but she recently published a paper that suggested the helmet and other finds indicate some Anglo-Saxon nobles fought as mercenaries for the Byzantine Empire.

University of Chester archaeologist Howard Williams, who was also not involved, said the design on the stamp is the closest parallel yet found to the horse-and-warrior motifs on the Sutton Hoo helmet.

It now seems likely that the helmet was made in southern Scandinavia in the late sixth or early seventh century, or that it had been heavily influenced by the artistic style of that area, Williams told Live Science in an email.

"The motifs from Taasinge and Sutton Hoo are similar but not identical, reflecting a popular design used on helmets across a wide region," he said.

However Egyptian civilization existed long before this period, and it has survived and flourished since. While the civilization's rulers, language, writing, climate, religion and borders have changed many times over the millennia, Egypt still exists as a modern-day country.

Ancient Egypt was closely connected with other parts of the world, bringing in and exporting goods, religions, food, people and ideas. At times ancient Egypt ruled territory outside the modern-day country's border, controlling territory in what is now Sudan, Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Palestine.

The country was also occupied by other powers in ancient times — the Persians, Nubians, Greeks and Romans all conquered Egypt at different points.

A number of names were used for Egypt. A popular ancient name for Egypt was "Kemet," which means the "black land." Scholars generally believe that this name derived from the fertile soil that was left over when the Nile flood receded in August.

The Nile flooded between June and August each year, and the fertile soil it created was vital to ancient Egypt's survival, with fertility playing an important role in Egyptian religion. The burial of Tutankhamun — in which his penis was mummified — is but one example of how important fertility was in the rituals and beliefs of the ancient Egyptians.

The country's ancient rulers are referred to today as "pharaohs," although in ancient times they each used a series of names as part of a royal titular, wrote Ronald Leprohon, a professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, in his book "The Great Name: Ancient Egyptian Royal Titulary" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2013). The word pharaoh originates from the Egyptian term "per-aa," which means "the Great House," Leprohon wrote. The term was first incorporated into a royal title during the rule of Thutmose III (reign circa. 1479 to 1425 B.C.), Leprohon wrote.

Egypt's prehistory

When exactly early hominids first arrived in Egypt is unclear. The earliest migration of hominids out of Africa took place almost 2 million years ago, with modern humans dispersing out of Africa about 100,000 years ago. Egypt may have been used to reach Asia in some of these migrations.

Villages dependent on agriculture began to appear in Egypt about 7,000 years ago. The civilization's earliest written inscriptions date back about 5,200 years and reveal information about the early rulers of Egypt. These early rulers include Iry-Hor, who, according to the inscriptions, founded Memphis, a city that served as Egypt's capital for much of its history. The inscriptions also document a queen named Neith-Hotep, who ruled as a regent for a young pharaoh named Djer sometime In the late predynastic period.

Related: How old is ancient Egypt?

How and when ancient Egypt was united into one kingdom is a matter of debate among archaeologists and historians. One possibility is that a number of smaller states coalesced into two kingdoms — Upper and Lower Egypt — and then these two kingdoms united. After Egypt was united pharaohs were often depicted wearing two crowns — one for Lower Egypt and another for Upper Egypt.

Egypt's climate was much wetter in prehistoric times than it is today, and some areas that are now barren desert were once fertile. One famous archaeological site where this can be seen is at the 6,000- to 9,000-year-old rock art at the "cave of swimmers," as it is called today, on the Gilf Kebir plateau in southwest Egypt. The cave is now surrounded by miles of barren desert; however, it has rock art showing what some scholars interpret as people swimming. After this wet period ended around 5,000 years ago, the deserts of Egypt have remained pretty similar to how they are now, Joseph Manning, the William K. and Marilyn Milton Simpson professor of classics at Yale University, previously told Live Science.

Egypt's dynasties and pharaohs

Ancient Egypt's history has traditionally been divided into 30 (or sometimes 31) dynasties. However, "the 'dynasties' of Egypt are really just retrospective constructs," Michael Dee, an associate professor of isotope chronology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, previously told Live Science in an email.

The Egyptian priest Manetho, who lived during the third century B.C., started the dynasty construct. His accounts of ancient Egyptian history were preserved by ancient Greek writers and, until hieroglyphic writing was deciphered in the 19th century, were among the few historical accounts that scholars could read.

Modern-day scholars often group these dynasties into several periods. Dynasties one and two date back around 5,000 years and are often called the "Early Dynastic" or "Archaic" period. The first pharaoh of the first dynasty was a ruler named Menes (or Narmer, as he is called in Greek). He lived over 5,000 years ago, and while ancient writers sometimes credited him as being the first pharaoh of a united Egypt, however archaeological research suggests that this is not true. Recently found inscriptions tell of rulers — such as Djer and Iry-Hor — who appear to have ruled earlier and other finds have been made which suggest that there were pharaohs before Menes who ruled a united Egypt. Scholars sometimes refer to these pre-Menes rulers as being part of a "dynasty zero."

Dynasties three to six date from roughly 2650 to 2150 B.C. and are often grouped together into a time period called the "Old Kingdom" by modern-day scholars. During this time pyramid-building techniques were developed and the pyramids of Giza were built. Papyri that are still being deciphered suggest that groups of professional workers — sometimes translated as "work gangs" — played a major role in the construction of the pyramids, as well as other structures.

From 2150 to 2030 B.C. (a time period that encompassed dynasties seven to 10 and part of 11) the central government in Egypt was weak and the country was often controlled by different regional leaders. Why the Old Kingdom collapsed is a matter of debate among scholars, with research indicating that drought and climate change played a significant role. During this time, cities and civilizations in the Middle East also collapsed, with evidence at archaeological sites indicating that a period of drought and arid climate hit sites across the region.

The 12th, 13th and part of the 11th dynasties are often called the "Middle Kingdom" by scholars and lasted from around 2030 to 1640 B.C. At the start of this dynasty, a ruler named Mentuhotep II (who reigned until about 2000 B.C.) regained control of the whole country. Pyramid building resumed in Egypt, and a sizable number of texts of literature and science were created. Among the surviving texts is a document now known as the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus, which records a variety of medical treatments that modern-day medical doctors have hailed as being advanced for their time.

Dynasties 14 to 17 are often grouped together as the "Second Intermediate Period" by modern-day scholars. During this time, the central government again collapsed in Egypt, and a group called the "Hyksos" rose to power, controlling much of northern Egypt. While the Hyksos may have originally been from the Levant (an area that encompasses modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria), research indicates that they were already in Egypt at the time the government collapsed. One gruesome find from this time period is a series of severed hands, which were found at a palace at the city of Avaris, the capital of Hyksos-controlled Egypt. The severed hands may have been presented by soldiers to a ruler in exchange for gold.

Scholars often refer to dynasties 18 to 20 as encompassing the "New Kingdom," a period that lasted around 1550 to 1070 B.C. This period took place after the Hyksos had been defeated by a series of Egyptian rulers and the country reunited. Perhaps the most famous archaeological site from the New Kingdom is the Valley of the Kings, which holds the burial sites of many Egyptian rulers from this period, including Tutankhamun (reign circa 1336 to 1327 B.C.), whose rich tomb was found intact in1922. The pharaohs stopped building pyramids during the New Kingdom for a variety of reasons — one of which was to provide better security against tomb robbers.

The 21st to 24th dynasties (a period from around 1070 to 713 B.C.) are often called the "Third Intermediate Period" by modern-day scholars. The central government was sometimes weak during this time period, and the country was not always united. During this time cities and civilizations across the Middle East had been destroyed by people from the Aegean, whom modern-day scholars sometimes call the "Sea Peoples." While Egyptian rulers claimed to have defeated the Sea Peoples in battle, it didn't prevent Egyptian civilization from collapsing. The loss of trade routes and revenue may have played a role in the weakening of Egypt's central government.

Dynasties 25 to 31 (from around 712 to 332 B.C.) are often referred to as the "Late Period" by scholars. Egypt was sometimes under the control of foreign powers during this time. The rulers of the 25th dynasty were from Nubia, an area located in modern-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan. The Persians and Assyrians also controlled Egypt at different times during the Late Period.

In 332 B.C. Alexander the Great drove the Persians out of Egypt and incorporated the country into the Macedonian Empire. After Alexander the Great's death, a line of rulers descended from Ptolemy Soter, one of Alexander's generals, came to power. The last of these "Ptolemaic" rulers (as scholars often call them) was Cleopatra VII, who died by suicide in 30 B.C after the defeat of her forces by Octavian, who would later be named the Roman emperor Augustus, at the Battle of Actium. After her death, Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Empire.

Although the Roman emperors were based in Rome, the Egyptians treated them as pharaohs. One excavated carving shows the emperor Claudius (reign A.D. 41 to 54) dressed as a pharaoh, Live Science reported. The carving has hieroglyphic inscriptions saying that Claudius is the "Son of Ra, Lord of the Crowns," and "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands."

Neither the Ptolemaic or Roman rulers are considered to be part of a numbered dynasty.

Ancient Egyptian Religion and Gods

Throughout much of Egypt's ancient history its people followed a polytheistic religion in which a vast number of gods and goddesses were venerated. One of the most important was Osiris, god of the underworld. Abydos was an important cult center for him, and numerous temples and shrines were constructed at the site in his honor.

Amun-Ra — a god associated with the sun — became particularly important during the New Kingdom and was associated with the city of Luxor (ancient Thebes). The Karnak Temple complex was built near Luxor in honor of this god.

Navigating the underworld was vital to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that the dead could reach a paradise of sorts, where they could live forever. Egyptian dead were sometimes mummified, preserving the body, and were sometimes buried with spells to aid them in navigating the underworld. These spells included excerpts from what are sometimes called the "Book of the Dead" — a 52-foot-long (16 meters) copy of which was recently found in a tomb at Saqqara.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, one of the first steps in navigating the underworld was to weigh a person's deeds against the feather of Maat, who was a god associated with truth, justice and order. If the person had committed a great deal of wrong, the person's heart would be heavier than the feather and the person's soul would be obliterated. On the other hand, if their deeds were generally good, they passed forward and had the opportunity to successfully navigate the underworld.

Figurines called shabti were often buried with the deceased. Their purpose was to do the deceased's work in the afterlife for them.

Egyptian religion did not remain static but changed over time. One major change occurred during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten (circa 1353 to 1335 B.C.), a ruler who unleashed a religious revolution that saw Egyptian religion become focused around the worship of "Aten" the sun disk. Akhenaten built an entirely new capital in the desert at Amarna and ordered the names of some of Egypt's deities to be defaced. After Akhenaten's death his son, Tutankhamun, denounced him and returned ancient Egypt to its previous polytheistic religion.

When Egypt came under Greek and Roman rule, the new rulers' gods and goddesses were incorporated into Egyptian religion. Another major change occurred after the first century A.D. when Christianity spread throughout Egypt. At this time Gnosticism, a religion that incorporated some Christian beliefs, also spread throughout Egypt, and a large corpus of Gnostic texts were discovered in 1945 in southern Egypt near the city of Nag Hammadi.

Islam spread throughout the country after A.D. 641, when the country was captured by a Muslim army. Today, Islam is practiced by the majority of Egypt's inhabitants, while a minority are Christian, many being part of the Coptic Church.

Egyptian writing

The earliest inscriptions date back about 5,200 years and were written in a hieroglyphic script.

"Ancient Egyptian was a living oral language, and most hieroglyphs represent the sounds of consonants and certain emphatically expressed vowels," wrote Barry Kemp, a professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, England, in his book "100 Hieroglyphs: Think Like an Egyptian" (Granta Books, 2005). Kemp noted that the ancient Egyptians also developed "an abbreviated 'long hand' form of writing which we call 'hieratic.'" During the first millennium A.D. this abbreviated hieratic script was supplanted by a new form of short-form writing called "Demotic."

Egyptian language changed over the millennia, with scholars often subdividing the surviving writings into categories such as "Old Egyptian," "Middle Egyptian" and "Late Egyptian."

The Greek language became widely used in the time after Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great. In the late 19th century, archaeologists excavated half a million papyri fragments, most of which were written in Greek, at the ancient Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus in southern Egypt, dating to the early centuries A.D.

Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses the Greek alphabet, was widely used after Christianity spread throughout Egypt. As Greek and Coptic grew in popularity, the use of the hieroglyphic writing style declined and became extinct during the fifth century A.D. After A.D. 641 the Arabic language spread in Egypt and is widely used in the country today.

Additional resources

• In this History Channel documentary, you'll learn how the ancient Egyptians harnessed the power of engineering to build an empire. The video is about 1.5 hours long.
• The Australian Museum put together a timeline of historic and other events in ancient Egypt, including a breakdown of each dynasty and the significant dates within that dynasty.
• This DK book "Ancient Egypt: The Definitive Visual History" could be a fun way to teach kids about the marvels of ancient Egypt.

Ziv Nitzan discovered the scarab in March when her family was visiting Tel Azekah, a historical site that was inhabited as early as the Bronze Age. While strolling along a dirt path scattered with gravel, Ziv noticed an interesting rock.

"Out of the 7,000 stones around her, she picked up one stone," Omer Nitzan, Ziv's older sister, said in a translated video released by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). "Then she brushed off the sand and saw that something was different about it."

Omer called over their parents to look at the "beautiful stone," and the family reported the finding to the IAA soon after.

Archaeologists later determined that it was a Canaanite scarab from the Middle Bronze Age. According to ancient texts, Canaan included parts of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

"Scarabs were used in this period as seals and as amulets," Daphna Ben-Tor, an expert in ancient amulets and seals at The Israel Museum, said in a statement. "They were found in graves, in public buildings and in private homes. Sometimes they bear symbols and messages, that reflect religious beliefs or status."

Related: 8-year-old girl unearths Stone Age dagger by her school in Norway

The find also highlights the close cultural connections between ancient Egypt and Canaan.

Scarab amulets are small, ornate objects that are designed to look like dung beetles (Scarabaeus sacer). The practice of modeling amulets after these insects originated among the ancient Egyptians, who viewed these beetles as sacred symbols of new life.

Dung beetles are known for creating and rolling balls of dung, which the Egyptians associated with their sun god rolling the sun disk across the sky, according to The Israel Museum. The ancient misconception that dung beetles could spontaneously reproduce also prompted the Egyptians to associate these insects with Khepri, the god of creation.

Archaeologists have been excavating Tel Azekah for nearly 15 years, Oded Lipschits, a professor and director of the Tel Aviv University archaeological dig, said in the statement.

"The excavation findings show that during the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages, here in Tel Azekah, thrived one of the most important cities in the Judean Lowlands," Lipschits said. "The scarab found by Ziv joins a long list of Egyptian and Canaanite finds discovered here, which attest to the close ties and cultural influences between Canaan and Egypt during that period."

The scarab will go on public display with other artifacts from the Egyptian and Canaanite eras at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem.

Archaeologists like me are interested in the Middle Paleolithic — a period spanning 250,000 to 30,000 years ago — because it includes the first appearance of our species, our arrival into many parts of the world for the first time, and our invention of many new kinds of stone tools.

In our study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of international collaborators and I describe our discovery in China of the first complete example of a Middle Paleolithic technology previously seen only in Europe and the Middle East.

Archaeologists have thought that ancient people in East Asia completely skipped the Middle Paleolithic. Our discovery challenges the long-standing notion that while ancient people in Europe and Africa were inventing new tools during this period, people of East Asia stuck to only the most basic tools that remained unchanged for thousands of years.

Related: 150,000-year-old stone tools reveal humans lived in tropical rainforests much earlier than thought

Quina scrapers helped hunters process kills

The tool we've identified is called a Quina scraper. This type of stone tool is well known from archaeological sites in Europe and the Middle East.

Quina scrapers are typically quite thick and asymmetrical, with a broad and sharp working edge that shows clear signs of being used and resharpened multiple times. This shape results in durable cutting edges, ideal for long cycles of use followed by resharpening.

People used Quina scrapers to scrape and cut soft materials, such as meat and animal skins, and medium-hard materials, such as wood. We know this from tiny scratches and chips on the scrapers that match traces caused by working these materials in experiments using contemporary stone tools.

European archaeologists believe that Quina scrapers were invented to meet the needs of highly mobile hunters living in cool and dry climates. These hunters were focused on seasonal migratory prey such as reindeer, giant deer, horse and bison. Quina scrapers would have helped them process their kills into food and other resources — for example, to extract marrow.

First find of a Quina tool in East Asia

Our team, led by Hao Li of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research and Qijun Ruan of the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, excavated Quina scrapers and related stone tools from the Longtan archaeological site in southwest China.

Our colleague Bo Li at the University of Wollongong used optical luminescence dating methods on the layers of earth that contained the artifacts. This technique can identify how much time has passed since each individual sand grain was last exposed to the Sun. Dating many individual grains in a sample is important because tree roots, insects or other animals can mix younger sediments down into older ones.

After we identified and removed intrusive younger grains, we found the layers containing the artifacts were 50,000 to 60,000 years old. This is roughly the same time Quina scrapers were being used in Europe at Neanderthal sites.

Keliang Zhao from China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology looked at pollen grains from the Longtan excavations. He found that the Middle Paleolithic people of Longtan lived in a relatively open forest-grassland environment and a dry and cool climate. This environment is similar to that of Quina sites in Europe.

Davide Delpiano, Marco Peresani and Marie-Hélène Moncel, experts on European Middle Paleolithic tools, joined our team to help with the comparison of the Chinese and European specimens and confirm their similarities.

Hélène Monod, from Universidad Rovira i Virgili in Spain, looked at our Quina scrapers under the microscope and found traces on them from scraping and scratching bones, antlers and wood. She also found polish from using the tools on meat, hides and soft plants.

Who lived in East Asia during this period?

Our new discovery of Quina scrapers joins another recent find of a different kind of Middle Paleolithic technology in East Asia: Levallois tools from Guanyindong Cave in Guizhou Province in south-central China. Levallois tools result from a distinctive multistep sequence that efficiently produces lots of useful cutting tools, with minimal wasted stone. Taken together, these two finds make a strong case that Middle Paleolithic technologies were present in East Asia.

But why are we only just finding this Quina tool kit now, when it has been known in Europe for such a long time?

One reason is that archaeologists have been looking in Europe for longer than almost anywhere else in the world. Another reason Middle Paleolithic evidence appears rare in East Asia is because what now seem to be less typical variations of the Quina tool kit previously found in China had been overlooked, likely due to archaeologists' narrow definitions based on European examples.

The Quina tools at Longtan are among the earliest artifacts from that site, which makes it hard for researchers to determine the origins of this new technology. Was it introduced by visitors from Europe? Or did local people in East Asia independently invent it?

To answer these questions, we hope to find more Quina scrapers at sites with deeper — meaning older — layers than Longtan. If older layers hold what look like the remnants of experiments in stone toolmaking that would eventually result in Quina tools, it suggests Quina tools were invented locally. If deeper layers have dissimilar tools, that suggests Quina technology was introduced from a neighboring group.

We also hope future work will reveal who made these tools. Our excavations at Longtan did not find any human bone or DNA that could help us identify the toolmakers.

During the Middle Paleolithic, there were multiple human species that could make tools like this. It could have been modern humans like us. But it could also have been Neanderthals. Considering that the Quina technology in Europe is directly associated with Neanderthals, this seems likely. But it could also have been Denisovans, an extinct species similar to modern humans found during this time in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau and Laos, or even a new human species that hasn't been seen before.

Whoever was making and using these Quina scrapers, they were able to be inventive and flexible with their technology, adapting to their changing environment.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What it is: Sculpture of a bird carved from mammoth ivory

Where it is from: Hohle Fels cave, Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany

When it was made: Around 40,000 years ago

Related: Tumaco-Tolita gold figurine: A 2,000-year-old statue with a 'fancy nose ornament' from a vanished South American culture

What it tells us about the past:

Archaeologists excavating Hohle Fels cave in southwestern Germany over two decades ago discovered three tiny figurines carved out of mammoth ivory. Dated to around 40,000 years ago, the sculptures represent some of the oldest examples of figurative art, and the tiny carved bird is the oldest depiction of a bird anywhere in the world.

The Hohle Fels bird sculpture was discovered in two parts: the body was found in 2001, while the rest was recovered in 2002. In the space of just 1.85 inches (4.7 centimeters), someone painstakingly carved the bird's eyes, conical beak, short legs, tail and a series of lines representing feathers.

Based on the shape of the head and the extended neck of the bird, archaeologist Nicholas Conard, who described the discovery in the journal Nature in 2003, suggested that the animal was a water bird such as a diver, cormorant or duck.

The other two ivory sculptures discovered at Hohle Fels at the same time included a carved head of a horse or cave bear and a part human, part lion standing figure. Together, the three objects point to the area of the Upper Danube River as an important center of cultural innovation during the Upper Paleolithic period (50,000 to 12,000 years ago), Conard wrote in the study.

But the meaning of the Hohle Fels bird is uncertain. One argument is that these sorts of ivory figurines are a kind of "hunting magic" that a shaman might use to help ensure a successful hunt. Water birds were not typically food, though, and Conard suggested instead that these people simply depicted animals they admired.

The cave site of Hohle Fels was occupied during the Aurignacian period of prehistory (43,000 to 28,000 years before present), when early humans — once known as Cro-Magnons — thrived in Europe following the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

These groups created an explosion of art, some of which had never been seen before in human history, including so-called Venus figurines, musical instruments, elaborate jewelry and cave paintings. Much of this art involved drawing and carving animals that the Aurignacian people would have seen on a day-to-day basis.

The Hohle Fels bird is not the oldest figurative sculpture in Europe. That title has been taken by another discovery from the same cave in 2008: the Venus of Hohle Fels, a sculpture of a woman with exaggerated breasts and thighs, which was created 41,000 years ago.

But the entire collection of ivory carvings at Hohle Fels suggests that something very new was happening around 40,000 years ago in the south German mountains, as the people who created the Aurignacian culture invented types of figurative art and music akin to what we have today.

Many of the Hohle Fels objects are on display at the Urgeschichtliche Museum (Museum of Prehistory) in Blaubeuren, Germany, and a 3D scan of the water bird can be accessed online.

According to Nicholas Brown, a postdoctoral associate in Egyptology at Yale University, this is the earliest evidence for the use of the rite on a pharaoh.

"The whole burial chamber seems to be set up to recreate a funerary rite known from later times called 'the Awakening of Osiris,'" Brown, who described the findings in a paper published Feb. 22 in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, told Live Science in an email.

Osiris was an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, who, according to mythology, was brought back to life after he was murdered by his brother Seth. At one point in the story, his son Horus waves a staff at Osiris and commands him to awaken.

The rite recreates this story in some ways. While reexamining excavation records of Tutankhamun's tomb, Brown noticed that four clay troughs and four staffs were found in Tutankhamun's burial chamber. These four troughs would have held libations, likely of water, that could have been poured on or near Tutankhamun's mummy, while the four staffs would have represented the staff used by Horus.

The water libations hold great symbolic value. In the Pyramid Texts, a series of funerary texts written onto the walls of some Egyptian pyramids, "liquid libations are said to be fluid derived from the corpse of the deceased, or from the corpse of Osiris," Brown wrote in the journal article. "These fluids are necessary in order to rejuvenate the decaying corpse and restore its life-giving fluid to the body."

He also noted that water used for libations, retrieved from the Nile River, was known as the "Eye of Horus" and was "a powerful symbol of regeneration and overcoming evil, including death," Brown wrote in the article.

The four troughs and four staffs would have represented the cardinal directions and would "symbolically surround the deceased for protection," Brown said in the email.

Son of a heretic

Tutankhamun's father, the pharaoh Akhenaten, brought about a revolution that tried to focus Egyptian religion around the worship of the Aten, the sun disk. He even ordered an iconoclasm that saw the destruction of the names and images of other deities.

"Akhenaten shifted the country's religious beliefs to the monotheistic religion focused on the sun-disk, the Aten; this also affected the official afterlife beliefs focused on resurrection through Osiris, which was no longer permitted," Brown said in the email.

When Tutankhamun came to power, he undid this revolution, thus returning Egypt to its polytheistic religion. "Tutankhamun and the officials acting on his behalf had the opportunity to adapt, alter, and change royal funerary practice and bring back Osiris into the picture," Brown said. The Awakening of Osiris ritual was one way to show that Osiris was back.

Paula Veiga, a doctoral student and researcher at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich who wasn't involved with Brown's paper but has studied and written extensively about Osiris, generally supported the findings. In addition to water, the troughs may have held other substances, such as ointments, she said.

Ancient Egypt quiz: Test your smarts about pyramids, hieroglyphs and King Tut

"The fact that they are mostly adolescents is fascinating and surprising," David Wengrow, a professor of comparative archaeology at University College London, told Live Science. "It highlights how little thought scientists and historians have really given to the importance of adolescence as a crucial stage in the human life cycle."

The finding may also upend assumptions about the type of government this culture practiced. Previously, it was thought to be a king-led hierarchical society, but these burials hint at a more egalitarian organization.

Ancient burials in Turkey

Wengrow and colleagues have studied a series of skeletons found at the archaeological site of Başur Höyük on the Upper Tigris River in southeastern Turkey. Once part of ancient Mesopotamia, Başur Höyük is dated to between 3100 and 2800 B.C. Several stone tombs were discovered there a decade ago, full of hundreds of copper artifacts, textiles and beads.

In a previous study, researchers identified a burial of two 12-year-old children flanked by eight violently killed people and suggested the funeral ritual indicated the rise of an early state that included "royal" tombs with "retainer sacrifice."

But in a new study, published March 17 in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, the researchers conducted ancient DNA analysis on a separate set of skeletons and presented a more nuanced view of the cemetery, focusing on the idea of adolescence as an important life stage in this society.

Related: Massive Mesopotamian canal network unearthed in Iraq

Ancient DNA analysis of nine skeletons from Başur Höyük showed that the people were not biologically related to one another. The DNA also showed that most of the people the researchers tested were female.

"So we are dealing with adolescents brought together, or coming together voluntarily, from biologically unrelated groups to carry out a very extreme form of ritual," Wengrow said. The meaning of the ritual, however, is still unclear.

Previously, researchers thought that the main burials represented young royals with their sacrificed attendants. But this interpretation was based on the idea that early Bronze Age societies had evolved into large-scale states with a king at the top of the social hierarchy.

There is now more archaeological evidence that Bronze Age political systems were more flexible. Societies in Mesopotamia could have regularly switched between hierarchical, king-based rule and a more egalitarian social organization where people collectively make decisions.

"The idea that humans evolved to live in just one form of society almost all the time is almost certainly wrong," Wengrow said. If Başur Höyük was one of these more fluid societies, the "royal" burial may be better explained as a complex and potentially age-related funeral tradition.

"Much more likely, what we see in the cemetery is a subset of a larger group, other members of which survived the ritual process and went on to full adulthood," Wengrow said. This larger group can be called an "age set," according to the study.

In general, in egalitarian societies, leadership is earned instead of inherited, but "age sets" and gender can also come into play. For instance, elders may be valued for their wisdom and experience, while adolescents may be valued for their hunting skills. In the case of the Bronze Age burials in Turkey, this "age set" of adolescents could represent initiates into an ancient cult or victims of inter-group competition or violence, the researchers note in their study.

Few researchers focus on adolescence in ancient societies, the researchers noted in their study, so the Başur Höyük burials suggest that it is important to investigate age sets in early Bronze Age states rather than assuming the society was led by kings and other royals at the top of a political hierarchy.

Further research on the skeletons is forthcoming, Wengrow said, in terms of stable isotope analysis to figure out the origins of the people buried at Başur Höyük.

"For now, all we can say is that many of the teenagers buried in the tombs were not local to the area of the cemetery," he said.

"These two human species followed different developmental trajectories for their facial bones," Alexandra Schuh, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, told Live Science.

In a study published Monday (March 24) in the Journal of Human Evolution, Schuh and colleagues analyzed the midface region of 174 skulls of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and chimpanzees. By including skulls from individuals throughout childhood and into adulthood, the researchers were able to investigate facial ontogeny — how the facial bones of the skull develop and grow.

The researchers used two techniques to closely examine the skulls. First, they created virtual 3D models of the skulls and digitized over 200 landmarks on the upper jawbone to look at patterns of growth and development. Then, they undertook microscopic analysis to look for bone formation and bone resorption, a normal process in bone remodeling that helps the tissue retain its structure and strength.

Related: 28,000-year-old Neanderthal-and-human 'Lapedo child' lived tens of thousands of years after our closest relatives went extinct

"We found that bone formation is predominant in Neanderthals — from birth on — who develop larger and more projecting faces," Schuh said. "In contrast, present-day humans exhibit significantly higher levels of bone resorption."

The new research showed that both chimpanzees and Neanderthals had larger, faster-growing faces, while modern humans have smaller faces that stop growing sometime during adolescence.

"Earlier growth cessation is a distinctive feature of our species," Schuh said. "We have identified a unique developmental pattern seen exclusively in Homo sapiens."

Experts have put forth numerous explanations for why Neanderthals had such large faces and noses, including adaptation to a cold climate, higher energy needs, the chewing of tough foods, and the use of their teeth as tools. Explanations for humans' small faces, on the other hand, include the invention of cooking and increases in brain size.

But the reason humans evolved these uniquely small faces is a particularly complex question in paleoanthropology that has not yet been solved. "However, our study addresses aspects of the 'how,'" Schuh said, "providing an important first step toward understanding these processes."

Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?

The waterway, known as the Marius Canal, was built around 2,100 years ago within the Rhône River delta. It was the first major Roman water hydraulic feature in what was then Gaul, preceding dams, watermills and aqueducts. According to historical accounts, it was built between 104 and 102 B.C. by the troops of Julius Caesar's uncle, the general Gaius Marius. Its construction was meant to aid efforts in the Cimbrian Wars, a series of conflicts between the Roman Republic and Celtic tribes, the Cimbri and Teutones, that were migrating south from Jutland, present-day Denmark.

At that time, the Roman Republic was protecting its new province in Gaul, a region that covered what is now France, Belgium and parts of western Germany. But the encroachment of the Celts put that land, as well as the rest of the Roman Republic, at risk.

"The Roman general Marius came to southern Gaul in 104 B.C. to head off the risk that the Cimbri and Teutones ravaging Gaul and Spain would reach Italy," Simon Loseby, an honorary lecturer in medieval history and an expert on southern Gaul at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. "He headed a very large force, and urgently needed to supply it by sea from Rome."

So, Marius ordered the canal be built so it could supply his troops. It bypassed the treacherous Rhône River mouths and connected the city of Arles to the Mediterranean, enabling the safe passage of large supply boats. Ultimately, the canal was a success, and the Romans defeated the Cimbri and Teutones in 101 B.C. The canal was subsequently gifted to Rome's ally in the region, the Greek settlement of Massalia, now Marseille, which is said to have gained significant revenue from its commercial use before the canal vanished from the historical record a few centuries later.

"Despite all the research carried out in recent centuries, the Marius Canal hasn't been found," study lead author Joé Juncker, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Strasbourg in France, told Live Science in an email. It was last mentioned by the Roman author Pliny the Elder in the first century A.D., but its traces have all but disappeared.

Related: 1,700-year-old Roman shipwreck was stuffed to the gills with fish sauce when it sank

Finding the canal

In 2013, a geophysical survey of a delta in the Vigueirat marshes just south of Arles revealed an underwater feature that scientists hypothesized could be an ancient canal. Subsequent excavations around the site unearthed 69 pieces of Roman ceramics, two ancient wooden stakes and two extensive cobblestone platforms. Radiocarbon dating of the stakes placed them within the first to fourth century A.D., while organic materials within the platforms dated between the first century B.C. and third century A.D. when the Marius Canal would have been used.

Since the site's discovery 12 years ago, researchers have been trying to gather evidence to confirm whether this area really hosts the long-lost Marius Canal.

In the new study, Juncker and his team drilled sediment cores from the ancient canal and its banks and took physical measurements to compare with the geophysical surveys conducted in 2013.

"The canal length, width, orientation, sediment content and the measured radiocarbon dates confirm that it was a navigable canal in Roman times, partially excavated in a former branch of the Rhône and an ancient lagoon," Juncker said.

Natural tributaries in river channels are usually around 360 to 590 feet (110 to 180 meters) wide, while the new analysis shows the putative Marius Canal is much narrower at around 98 feet (30 m) wide. This aligns with other Roman canals. This width would have enabled large Roman ships to navigate the area, the authors reported in the study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The new research strengthens the case that there was a canal here, Loseby said. "It's yet another indication of the Roman capacity to conceive of and undertake large infrastructural projects at speed, despite relative technological limitations."

Both Loseby and Juncker hope future archaeological discoveries will further establish whether the canal is the Marius Canal. Specifically, they hope excavations could lead to the discovery of quays (landing platforms for ships) or towpaths (waterways where draft animals would tow boats), which could help confirm the use of the canal and the duration of its use.

"Geoarchaeology is a science full of potential, but we must bear in mind that, without confirmation from archaeological studies, it is not possible to attribute this canal to Marius for the moment," said Juncker. Research there is ongoing.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

"The discoveries are exciting and even emotional, and their significance for archaeological and historical research is enormous," Eli Escusido, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement.

The pyramid is built from hand-cut stones, each weighing hundreds of pounds. But the structure's purpose is still unknown, according to the site's excavation directors. It may have served as a historical monument, a grave, or a guard tower protecting a commercial route from the Dead Sea to coastal ports.

The site dates back 2,200 years to the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty and Seleucid Empire. After Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., his generals divided his vast empire among themselves. His general Ptolemy took control of Egypt and the surrounding areas, including Israel, while Seleucus ruled the northern part of what is now the Middle East. By 200 B.C., the Seleucid Empire had conquered what is now modern-day Israel.

Given that the pyramidal structure dates to the time of this power switch, it's unclear if it was built under the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty or the Seleucid Empire. The Roman Empire absorbed both empires in the first century B.C.

Related: 2,800-year-old structure unearthed in Israel was likely used for cultic practices and sacrifice, archaeologists say

The archaeologists also unearthed a number of artifacts at the site. The low-moisture environment of the desert likely helped preserve the artifacts through the millennia. Low humidity deters mold and minimizes warping and cracking in organic materials like wood and fibers.

"The extreme dryness has preserved things here in an extraordinary way," archaeologist Ido Zangen, who was involved with the excavation, said in a translated video released by the Israel Antiquities Authority. "We're finding papyrus fragments, all kinds of amazing wooden artifacts, baskets and ropes that you simply don't find anywhere else in the country."

Some of the papyrus fragments contain writing in ancient Greek, one of the languages spoken by denizens of both the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires. Also among the unearthed artifacts are bronze coins and vessels, remnants of ancient furniture, beads, weapons, fabrics and seeds, all preserved by the dry climate.

Eva Balbin Brafman, a volunteer at the excavation, described finding part of a papyrus document from the upper part of the site. "You could clearly make out the letters, probably in Greek," Balbin Brafman said in the video. "It's incredibly exciting to find something in such a wonderful state of preservation."

A team of professional archaeologists and volunteers will continue to excavate the site through April 8 in hopes of learning more about the structure.

The Iron Age finding, named the Melsonby Hoard after the nearby village of Melsonby in North Yorkshire, contains more than 800 artifacts, including a cauldron, wine-mixing bowl, horse riding equipment, pieces of wagons or chariots, a large iron mirror, and ceremonial iron spearheads.

"The bowl we discovered is very interesting because it was a very unusual type — not something you'd normally find in Northern Britain," said Tom Moore, a professor and head of the Department of Archaeology at Durham University in the U.K. who helped excavate and analyze the hoard.

"Its decoration combines both Mediterranean and British Iron Age styles," Moore said in a video released by Durham University. This suggests that whoever owned it likely had "a network across Britain and across into Europe and even the Roman world," he said.

Related: 32 stunning centuries-old hoards unearthed by metal detectorists

Peter Heads, a hobbyist metal detectorist, discovered the hoard in December 2021 after he secured permission from a private landowner to survey a field. He then contacted Moore, who looped in the government and The British Museum, according to a statement released Tuesday (March 25) by Durham University.

"It was only really when we went back to excavate the hoard and we opened up a much larger area that I think Peter and I, and all of the team, realized we were on to something really exciting," Moore said in the video.

The excavation revealed that the entire find included a small hoard, as well as a large hoard "that was of a kind of scale and size that is exceptional for Britain and probably even Europe," Moore said.

From the field, the team cut out a large block of earth holding the artifacts and they then had it CT scanned so they could create a virtual, 3D model of it. An analysis revealed that much of the ironwork and copper alloy items had either been burned or broken. It's possible that these items had been placed in a funerary pyre, although no human bones were found at the site.

"Our working theory at the moment is that [the hoard had] been gathered together and maybe heated in a sort of a big bonfire or perhaps a pyre," Sophia Adams, curator of the European Iron Age and Roman Conquest Period at The British Museum who is studying the find, said in the video.

After the burning, some of the items appear to have been further damaged as they were thrown into a ditch and had stones tossed on top of them, she said.

Despite the damage, many of the artifacts are still recognizable. Some of the horse harnesses are decorated with red coral from the Mediterranean and colored glass, which hints at far-flung trade.

"The destruction of so many high-status objects, evident in this hoard, is also of a scale rarely seen in Iron Age Britain and demonstrates that the elites of northern Britain were just as powerful as their southern counterparts," Moore said in the statement.

Researchers are still analyzing the artifacts, and they hope that the finds will one day go on display in a museum, they said in the video.

"Our findings suggest that pyramid tombs, once thought to be the final resting place of the most elite, may have also included low-status high-labor staff," archaeologists wrote in a paper published in the June issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. Ancient Egypt controlled parts of Sudan at times and Tombos was established as an Egyptian colony.

Tombos is located at the third cataract of the Nile River in Sudan. In ancient times, this area was known as Nubia or Kush. Following the Egyptians' takeover of the region around 1400 B.C., they established Tombos. "Shortly after the Egyptian conquest of Nubia, Tombos was constructed by the Egyptians in what was Nubian territory to facilitate colonial control," the team wrote in the study.

Wealthy individuals were buried in tombs with small pyramids atop them. In the new study, the scientists examined about 110 skeletons at Tombos. They analyzed where the muscles and ligaments (which had long since decayed) attached to the bone — a proxy that shows how much labor people did.

"As the body is used more frequently and more intensively, the muscles and ligaments require a stronger mode of attachment," the team wrote in the study. "This can result in distinct crests and ridges on the bone at the point of attachment."

These shifts in the bone are known as entheseal changes. The team reported that people who had a low rate of entheseal change were presumably high-status individuals who worked in bureaucracy and didn't do hard labor. But the tombs also held the remains of people who had a high rate of entheseal change and presumably did a large amount of hard labor.

Put another way, the pyramids weren't just for the rich; lower-class laborers were buried alongside the elite, the study authors proposed. Previously, it was believed that pyramids were built for elite members of society.

This finding suggests that "social classes were not segregated, but instead that a hard laboring non-elite were buried alongside an elite who avoided tasks that led to entheseal wear," the team wrote in the study. "We can no longer assume that individuals buried in grandiose [pyramid] tombs are the elite. Indeed, the hardest working members of the communities are associated with the most visible monuments."

There are a few possible explanations for why non-elite individuals were buried in the pyramid tombs, said study first author Sarah Schrader, an associate professor of archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

"This practice may have been encouraged by elite individuals in order to reinforce a hierarchical social order," Schrader told Live Science in an email. "It could've also been that people of lower social economic status may have wanted to be buried next to people of higher economic status."

Study co-author Stuart Tyson Smith, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Live Science in an email that "our thinking is that elites surrounded themselves with the non-elites who worked in some capacity for them, effectively replicating the social order with burials in and around their funerary monuments." Less affluent people "may have hoped to benefit from associations with their employers in terms of status, magical protections, and the funerary cult," Smith said.

Although the work focused only on Sudan, Schrader said it's possible that elite and non-elite individuals were also buried together in pyramid tombs in Egypt, although more research needs to be done to figure that out.

Responses to the findings were mixed. Julia Budka, a professor of Egyptian archaeology and art history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, praised the study, telling Live Science in an email that "all in all, this is a great study that will have an impact on future interpretations of new and old excavations and data."

However, Aidan Dodson, an Egyptology professor at the University of Bristol in the U.K., said we should approach these findings cautiously. He noted that members of the elite also may have engaged in tasks that involved hard labor, so those with bulked-up muscles may have actually belonged to the upper class.

"The fact that Tombos was a colonial outpost might particularly mean that the elite had military and physical training," Dodson told Live Science in an email.

It is important to note that the pyramids at Tombos are different from those at Giza or Saqqara, noted Wolfram Grajetzki, an Egyptologist and honorary senior research fellow at University College London. The pyramids at those sites were built for pharaohs and their queens whereas the pyramids at Tombos were built for nonroyal individuals.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

What it is: A gold sculpture of a person

Where it is from: Near the Colombia-Ecuador border

When it was made: A.D. 1 to 300

Related: Mechanical Dog: A 'good boy' from ancient Egypt that has a red tongue and 'barks'

What it tells us about the past:

Two millennia ago, a group of people who were highly skilled in metallurgy flourished along the northern Pacific Coast of South America. Although they left no written records, the Tumaco-Tolita (also spelled Tumaco-La Tolita) people created this gold statue, a rare example of the art form in the ancient Americas.

The standing figure is missing its feet, which were once attached by gold wire, as well as the accessories and objects it once held in its hands. Only a "fancy nose ornament" remains on the figure, a clue that the figurine once donned a headdress on ritual occasions, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where the statue is located.

The gold figurine, which is roughly 9 inches (22.9 centimeters) tall, was made between the first and fourth centuries near what is now the border of Colombia and Ecuador in the Cayapas River delta area.

Known in Colombia as the Tumaco culture and in Ecuador as the Tolita culture, the Tumaco-Tolita civilization arose in an area full of rivers, swamps, forests, and natural gold and platinum deposits. They created large plazas ringed by villages and constructed earthen mounds that were both residences and burial mounds for the elite, according to Met researcher Hugo Ikehara-Tsukayama. Between 200 B.C. and A.D. 400, the Tumaco-Tolita produced one of the most refined metalwork traditions in the Americas and traded with other communities in the area.

This gold figure may represent a woman, since it was more common to mark a sculpture with nipples for female statues than for male statues, Ikehara-Tsukayama said. However, skirts were also common in female images, so the lack of one on this sculpture means the figure's gender is ambiguous.

The flattened head likely reflects the cultural practice of cranial vault modification, which involves binding a baby's head so that the skull grows in a different shape. This skull shape may have signaled that the person was high in social rank or importance.

Remains of human and animal sculptures in metal and clay have been found throughout Tumaco-Tolita settlements and in their graves, but the exact function of the sculptures is unknown.

By A.D. 500, the river island of La Tolita and its surrounding areas were abandoned, and the Tumaco-Tolita people appear to have dispersed, gradually depopulating the coastal region. But there is historical evidence that Tumaco-Tolita objects survived as heirlooms well into the 16th century, when conquistadors arrived in the area and wrote about clay and gold figurines as well as the delicate gold and platinum-plated jewelry they saw the Indigenous people wearing.

Excavations within the tomb over the past five decades have continued to reveal more chambers full of statues, weapons, and skeletons of both humans and animals. But the actual grave of Emperor Qin, who conquered six warring states and unified China, has remained untouched for over two millennia.

What else do you know about the Terracotta Army, which the Chinese often call the "eighth wonder of the world"? Time to marshal your knowledge of dynastic China and take our quiz!

Remember to log in to put your name on the leaderboard; hints are available if you click the yellow button. Keep calm and soldier on!

More science quizzes

—Ancient Egypt quiz: Test your smarts about pyramids, hieroglyphs and King Tut

—Alexander the Great quiz: How well do you know the famous king and conqueror from the ancient world?

—Stonehenge quiz: What do you know about the ancient monument?

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5, 2024, but not long into the mission helium leaks, along with a number of other issues, were discovered on their Boeing Starliner spacecraft.

Starliner had already suffered years of delays, and although it was later suggested the pair would have been fine to return home on the suspect vessel, the risk to their safety was considered too great. As such, it wasn't until 5:57 p.m. ET on Tuesday (March 18) that the astronauts finally splashed down near the coast of Florida, after hitching a lift aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

While much of the attention on them focused on the duo being "stranded" in space, it's not a sentiment the pair shared. In a conversation with CNN's Anderson Cooper, they explained how mission extensions are sometimes just part of the job.

"We come prepared, we come committed. That is what your human spaceflight program is: It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those," Wilmore told Cooper. "We don't feel abandoned. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel stranded."

Related: NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were carried away on stretchers after return from space. Here's why that's normal.

Mystery ancestors

'Mystery population' of human ancestors gave us 20% of our genes and may have boosted our brain function

In a study published Tuesday, researchers presented a new method of modeling genomic data, called "cobraa," that has enabled them to trace the evolution of modern humans (Homo sapiens).

They found that the ancestors of all modern humans split off from a mystery population 1.5 million years ago and then reconnected with them 300,000 years ago. This unknown population contributed 20% of our DNA and may have boosted humans' brain function.

"The fact that we can reconstruct events from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago just by looking at DNA today is astonishing, and it tells us that our history is far richer and more complex than we imagined," study co-author Aylwyn Scally, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.

Discover more archaeology news

—Mechanical Dog: A 'good boy' from ancient Egypt that has a red tongue and 'barks'

—European hunter-gatherers boated to North Africa during Stone Age, ancient DNA suggests

—'Not enough survives to read the king's name': Tomb discovered of unknown ancient Egyptian pharaoh

Life's Little Mysteries

What's the oldest lake on Earth?

Just like the mountains, lakes on Earth can be ancient, or more than 1 million years old. There are only 20 ancient lakes on the planet, but which is the oldest?

Largest-ever space map

Largest-ever map of space reveals we might have gotten dark energy totally wrong

Astronomers studying the largest-ever map of the cosmos have found hints that our best understanding of the universe is due a major rewrite. The analysis, which looked at nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars spanning 11 billion years of cosmic time, found that dark energy — the presumed-to-be constant force driving the accelerating expansion of our universe — could be weakening.

Or at least this is what the data, collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), suggest when combined with information taken from star explosions, the cosmic microwave background and weak gravitational lensing. If the findings hold up, it means that one of the most mysterious forces controlling the fate of our universe is even weirder than first thought — and that something is very wrong with our current model of the cosmos.

Discover more astronomy news

—James Webb telescope spots 'rogue' planet with a cake-like atmosphere barrelling through space without a star

—Scientists find evidence of 'supernova graveyard' at the bottom of the sea — and possibly on the surface of the moon

—'I was astonished': Ancient galaxy discovered by James Webb telescope contains the oldest oxygen scientists have ever seen

Also in science news this week

Also in science news this week

—Google's AI 'co-scientist' cracked 10-year superbug problem in just 2 days

—AI analysis of 100 hours of real conversations — and the brain activity underpinning them — reveals how humans understand language

—Scientists create new map showing ice-free Antarctica in more detail than ever before

—Iguanas sailed one-fifth of the way around the world on rafts 34 million years ago

—Punishing AI doesn't stop it from lying and cheating — it just makes it hide better, study shows

Science spotlight

Simple blood tests could be the future of cancer diagnosis

Around four years ago, now 77-year-old John Gormly went for what was supposed to be a routine blood test. But the results were life-changing.

The test suggested Gormly had colon cancer, which a colonoscopy later confirmed was Stage 2, meaning the cancer had spread through the wall of the colon but not to his lymph nodes.

"I thought [my doctor] was wrong," Gormly, CEO of a construction company near Newport Beach, California, told Live Science. "I go, 'Nah, I don't feel anything.' But there it was. It was real; the colonoscopy showed it."

Gormly was one of the first patients to take a newly approved test called Shield, which its makers say can detect colon cancer from a blood sample. After his diagnosis, Gormly had surgery to remove the tumor and was back at work within 10 days.

"Liquid biopsies" like the one that detected early cancer for Gormly are now coming to market. Could they lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment?

Something for the weekend

Something for the weekend

If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best long reads, book excerpts and interviews published this week.

—March 29 solar eclipse: Where and when to see the rare sunrise solar eclipse from North America (Skywatching)

—Dolphins: Facts about the intelligent marine mammals that use tools to hunt (Fact file)

—'Heat is the final boss. Heat is a different beast': The planetary peril no one will be able to avoid (Book extract)

—'We have to fight for a better end': Author John Green on how threats to USAID derail the worldwide effort to end tuberculosis (Interview)

Science in motion

Octopus spotted riding on top of world's fastest shark

An octopus has been spotted catching a ride from an unlikely marine friend: a superfast shark. Researchers captured a video showing the orange-hued octopus clinging to the back of a large shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) as it swims. This "sharktopus" was spotted in the Hauraki Gulf off the northern coast of New Zealand's North Island during a December 2023 research trip.

Follow Live Science on social media

Want more science news? Follow our Live Science WhatsApp Channel for the latest discoveries as they happen. It's the best way to get our expert reporting on the go, but if you don't use WhatsApp we're also on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Flipboard, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky and LinkedIn.

Inside the man's tomb, archaeologists found a gold ring containing the name of Ramesses III, along with bronze arrowheads.

The tomb was discovered at the site of Tell el-Maschuta (also spelled Tell el-Maskhuta) in northeastern Egypt, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities reported in a translated statement. It was built with mud bricks and contains a burial chamber and three adjoining chambers, the statement said.

In addition to the ring and arrowheads, archaeologists found a small ivory box and inscribed pottery vessels. Some of the inscriptions contain the name of Horemheb (also spelled Haremhab), a pharaoh who reigned from about 1323 to 1295 B.C. and was a military leader before becoming pharaoh. It's not clear why the inscriptions mention Horemheb, but one possibility is that pottery from an older burial was reused in this burial. The statement didn't note exactly what the inscriptions say, but the finds in the tomb convinced archaeologists that it was built for a military commander who served Ramesses III.

Ramesses III's reign (circa 1184 to 1153 B.C.) during the 20th dynasty was tumultuous at times. He fought off an invasion launched by a group known as the "Sea People." He also built an elaborate mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, near Luxor (ancient Thebes), that still stands today. Ultimately, he was assassinated by multiple individuals who used a variety of weapons.

Related: Thutmose II tomb discovery raises new mysteries: Where is his mummy, and why wasn't he buried in the Valley of the Kings?

However, outside experts' reactions to the interpretations of the new tomb were mixed.

Anthony Spalinger, a professor emeritus of classics and ancient history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, told Live Science that more information on the inscriptions is needed.

David Warburton, an Egyptologist at Northeast Normal University in China, also said more information is needed and it's not yet certain that this is a military commander. The inscriptions are important, since they may say which titles this individual held. "I have seen no titles, so I cannot judge," he wrote in an email.

Aidan Dodson, an Egyptology professor at the University of Bristol in the U.K, suspects this tomb may have originally been built during the reign of Horemheb and then reused on multiple occasions.

"It looks like the tomb was originally occupied under Horemheb, reused under Ramesses III, and again during the Twenty-second Dynasty" based on the artifacts found inside, Dodson told Live Science in an email.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

"These small early hominin individuals are reconstructed as shorter and stockier than modern human 'pygmies'," or groups of people with an average male height under 4 feet, 11 inches inches (150 centimeters), study lead author Travis Pickering, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told Live Science in an email. The newly uncovered individual, designated SWT1/HR-2, "was probably similarly built — short and stocky," he said.

The leg bones of this species are rarely found, so the new finds also provide clues about how P. robustus walked. The researchers described their findings in the April issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.

The team retrieved chunks of sedimentary rock dated between 1.7 million and 2.3 million years old from the Swartkrans limestone cave, which is located in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind — a region that encompasses 180 square miles (470 square kilometers) and includes more than a dozen major fossil sites. When researchers began to excavate the blocks in the lab, they discovered three connecting bones — the left hip, femur and tibia — all from one young adult hominin.

Based on the shape of the bones, the researchers think that this individual was a young adult female from the species P. robustus, also known as a robust australopithecine due to the large size of its teeth and face. But very few fossils of the body of P. robustus have ever been found, making the new discovery important for understanding what they looked like and how they moved.

Related: 1.4 million-year-old jaw that was 'a bit weird for Homo' turns out to be from never-before-seen human relative

"She was certainly robust in the pelvis and at the hip joint," Pickering said. "However, her leg bones are not as remarkable in this regard — and this is one of the quizzical things about the fossils."

Taken together, the robust hip bones coupled with the more slender leg bones show that this P. robustus moved through the landscape on two feet but also likely climbed trees in search of food or to evade predators, the researchers said in the study.

Close examination of the bones also revealed the probable cause of this young female's death: A leopard devoured her.

Leopards tend to hang out in trees near cave openings and prefer to pounce on prey that weighs around 55 pounds (25 kilograms), according to the researchers. This tiny P. robustus, which was found inside a cave, probably weighed about 60.4 pounds (27.4 kg). Carnivore tooth marks were also found on the hominin's bones, offering further clues about the cause of death. Other fossils at the site also have puncture marks that match leopard teeth, study co-author C.K. Brain has argued in past research.

Size is a mystery

Although the leg bones provide important new evidence for what life was like for P. robustus, the researchers are still unsure why this species was so small.

There is currently no evidence that the species was affected by insular dwarfism, study co-author Jason Heaton, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told Live Science in an email. That process — in which a species evolves to be smaller over time due to competition for resources — may be why Homo floresiensis, also called the hobbits, were very short.

Rather, for P. robustus, "it may reflect natural variation within the species, population-level differences, or environmental influences such as nutrition or developmental constraints," Heaton said.

More research into the body size of P. robustus is needed, the researchers noted in their study, and further excavation at Swartkrans could yield more bones from the same individual.

"I think that there is a good chance that much more of the SWT1/HR-2 skeleton will be recovered," Pickering said, "especially if we are correct and she was killed and eaten by a leopard, since leopards do not generally consume bones."

Human evolution quiz: What do you know about Homo sapiens?

According to the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament (which are slightly different collections of ancient Hebrew writings), the Kingdom of Judah's King Josiah confronted the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II at Megiddo in 609 B.C. Now, an analysis of ancient pottery fragments indicates that Megiddo was indeed occupied by the Egyptians at that time, Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University, told Live Science.

Finkelstein is the lead author of a study describing the finds, which was published Jan. 28 in The Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament. He said in an email that large numbers of Egyptian pottery fragments had been discovered alongside Greek pottery fragments in a layer dating to the late seventh century — a time when Egypt often employed Greek mercenaries alongside Egyptian troops. The researchers determined the origins of the fragments by examining the type of clay and their style.

The fragments support the biblical accounts that Egyptian forces were at Megiddo during Josiah's reign. However, the findings aren't direct evidence that Josiah was at the battle. If he was there, as the Bible says, it's unclear if Josiah died from wounds he'd suffered during a battle against the Egyptians at Megiddo, or if he was executed there as a vassal of the pharaoh. Josiah's death was later said to foretell the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. to the Neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II, whose forces destroyed the First Temple, also known as Solomon's Temple.

Related: 1,800-year-old 'Iron Legion' Roman base discovered near 'Armageddon' is largest in Israel

Archaeologist Assaf Kleiman of Ben-Gurion University, a study co-author, told Live Science in an email that the confrontation between the two rulers was described differently in two different places in the Bible. "The Josiah-Necho event at Megiddo in 609 BCE is described in the Bible twice: as an execution in a short chronistic verse in Kings and as a decisive battle in Chronicles," he said. The Book of Kings was written close to the time of the reported events, but the Book of Chronicles was composed centuries later, so the account in the Book of Kings was more reliable, he said.

Ancient city

The ruins of Megiddo are now in a national park about 18 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Haifa. Megiddo was a strategically important city at a crossroads on trade and military routes, and it was occupied at different times by Canaanites, Israelites, Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians. Many great battles occurred at Megiddo, and its name inspired the word "Armageddon"—the location of a final battle prophesied in the New Testament's Book of Revelation, which now refers generally to the idea of the end of the world.

Excavations at Megiddo have unearthed more than 20 archaeological layers since the 1920s. The layer with Egyptian and Greek pottery fragments described in the latest study is among several layers that date from after 732 B.C., when records indicate Megiddo was conquered by the Neo-Assyrians under their king Tiglath-Pileser III. According to the Bible, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Neo-Assyrians about 10 years later, followed by the expulsion of the "10 tribes" or "lost tribes" of Israel.

Battle or execution

There is debate among academics whether the encounter between Josiah and Necho at Megiddo in 609 B.C. was actually a battle, or if Necho had merely executed his vassal Josiah there—in other words, whether the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah was subordinate to Egypt at that time. The Bible does not record this, but history and archaeology indicate Egypt took over the region after 630 B.C. as Neo-Assyrian power declined.

Historian Jacob Wright, a professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that Josiah had probably traveled from Jerusalem to Megiddo to pay homage to Necho but was executed there for an unknown reason.

Wright and Reinhard Kratz, a historian at the University of Göttingen in Germany who was also not involved in the study, both noted that the relevant verse in the Book of Kings says only that Josiah traveled to Megiddo and was "put to death" there — and that nothing was written about a battle until more than 100 years later in the Book of Chronicles.

The authors of the new study, too, are cautious about the circumstances of Josiah's death.

Finkelstein noted that Josiah was considered an exceptionally pious king, and that the idea of "Armageddon" had only begun after his death. This suggests Josiah's death had led to prophecies that the final battle between the forces of God and the forces of evil would take place where he died, Finkelstein said.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 9:28 a.m. ET to correctly attribute a quote explaining that the Josiah-Necho event at Megiddo is described twice in the Bible. That quote was said by archaeologist Assaf Kleiman of Ben-Gurion University, not by Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University.

When researchers radiocarbon-dated artifacts from the large monument, known as Flagstones, they found that it dates to about 3200 B.C. — meaning it's about 200 years older than Stonehenge. Previously, archaeologists thought Flagstones was the same age as the earliest stages of Stonehenge, which was built and reconfigured over the centuries. The researchers published their findings March 6 in the journal Antiquity.

The discovery "makes Flagstones the earliest large circular enclosure known in Britain," said study first author Susan Greaney, a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Exeter in the U.K. "It might be that Flagstones was copied at Stonehenge, or it might be that we need to go back to our dates of Stonehenge and think again," she told Live Science in an email.

Flagstones, an ancient monument and burial site, was found in the 1980s during construction of the Dorchester bypass in Dorset, a county in southwest England. Excavations unearthed a 330-foot-wide (100 meters) circular ditch that was made with intersecting pits. The pits have at least four sets of human remains: a cremated adult and three children whose bodies were buried there. The partially cremated remains of three other adults are located elsewhere at the site, according to a statement from the University of Exeter.

Now, half of the monument is under the bypass, while the other half is under a historical home managed by the National Trust, a conservation organization. The site's artifacts are housed at the Dorset Museum.

Related: Why was Stonehenge built?

Flagstones is about 37 miles (60 kilometers) southwest of Stonehenge. Its similarity to the early stages of Stonehenge, which also includes cremated burials and a similarly sized enclosure made of intersecting pits, led archaeologists to think the two were built at the same time, around 2900 B.C. But as part of her doctoral research, Greaney put together a more detailed timeline of a cluster of Neolithic monuments in the Dorchester area whose artifacts are kept at the Dorset Museum.

"With new techniques for obtaining precise radiocarbon dates, and advanced statistical methods, we can now obtain really precise estimates for when events like monument construction took place," Greaney said.

To more accurately date Flagstones, Greaney and her colleagues radiocarbon-dated human remains, red deer antlers and charcoal found at the site. By combining these dates with those of archaeological finds from the site, Greaney and her colleagues estimated that the pits were dug around 3650 B.C. but that the circular enclosure wasn't formed until 3200 B.C. and the burials were placed there soon after. A young adult male who was buried under a large sarsen stone at the center of the Flagstones' enclosure was placed there much later — around 1,000 years after the monument was first used.

A new type of monument

At 5,200 years old, Flagstones is the oldest known large, circular enclosure of its kind in Britain. After its construction, circular monuments were built in numerous other locations.

"It is part of a shift from predominantly rectangular or linear monuments (cursus monuments, long barrows) or irregular enclosures (causewayed enclosures) towards circular forms," Greaney said.

The new study suggests that circular monuments like Flagstones "may have been influenced by practices in Ireland, where people were burying their cremated dead in circular passage tombs at this time," she said.

Although the new dates suggest that Flagstones is older than Stonehenge, Greaney thinks that scientists should reassess and redate Stonehenge. After all, some of Stonehenge's artifacts are thought to be older than the site itself.

"There are some 'curated' animal bones from near the entrances to the enclosure at Stonehenge, which do date from around 3200 BC," Greaney said. "It's been assumed that these deer bones and cattle skulls had been kept for some time before being deposited in the ditch.

"With the new dates from Flagstones, it's now possible to look at these deposits, which were in slightly deeper parts of the ditch, and ask whether there was an earlier enclosure made up of intercutting pits which only later people joined together to form the more continuous ditch, which happened in c. [circa] 2900 BC," Greaney added.

Stonehenge quiz: What do you know about the ancient monument?

The tomb was found within an ancient Egyptian necropolis in Abydos. The burial is located about 23 feet (7 meters) underground and contains a limestone burial chamber covered with mudbrick vaults, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities wrote in a statement. The burial chamber was originally about 16 feet (5 m) high.

The king's reign dates to the "Second Intermediate Period" (circa 1640 to 1540 B.C.), when northern Egypt was ruled by a group called the Hyksos and the southern part of Egypt was controlled by multiple Egyptian kings.

Abydos, in central Egypt, would have been ruled by an Egyptian king. But the name of the newfound tomb's owner is unknown.

"The king's name was originally recorded in painted scenes on plastered brickwork that decorated the underground entrance to the limestone burial chamber," said Josef Wegner, a professor of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania who led the team. "However, the hieroglyphic texts were damaged by ancient tomb robbers and not enough survives to read the king's name."

The grave robbers sacked the tomb, and didn't leave any remains of the king's mummy or sarcophagus behind, Wegner said.

Archaeologists are still investigating the area where the tomb was found, he added. The area "may yield more royal tombs of the same era [which] could shed light on identity and ownership of this new royal tomb," Wegner told Live Science in an email.

Anna-Latifa Mourad-Cizek, an assistant professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of Chicago who is not involved in the excavation called the discovery "highly significant." It "adds to a very limited body of evidence on the rulers of this region" and will provide more evidence on what the Second Intermediate Period was like in this part of Egypt, she told Live Science in an email.

This is the second discovery of a tomb belonging to an Egyptian king announced so far this year. In February 2025, another group of archaeologists reported that they had found the tomb of Thutmose II to the west of the Valley of the Kings. Pharaoh Thutmose II was the half brother and husband of Hatshepsut. Queen Hatshepsut ascended the throne after Thutmose II's death about 3,500 years ago.

Pottery workshop

In addition to the newly discovered tomb, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a pottery and glass workshop at Banawit, a village located north of Abydos. The workshop dates to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt (30 B.C to A.D. 642), the ministry said in the statement. It contains a large number of kilns along with extensive storage areas.

Within the workshop, archaeologists found 32 ostraca — writing on pottery shards — that discuss commercial transactions and how taxes were paid, the ministry reported. The ostraca were written in Greek and Demotic, an Egyptian script.

Between the seventh and 14th centuries A.D., the workshop was reused as a cemetery, and the remains of families were found within it.

"The shackles complement an ancient text that describes the living conditions of miners in Egypt and mentions the presence of prisoners of war and common criminals in the mines," study author Bérangère Redon, an archaeologist at the History and Sources of the Ancient Worlds (HiSoMA) Laboratory in France, told Live Science in an email.

After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, dozens of mines were opened under the Ptolemaic dynasty (305 to 30 B.C.). Many of these mines included housing for the workers, but the living accommodations tended to be highly controlled and guarded. Historical and archaeological information suggests that a range of people worked as miners, including both paid laborers and people who were enslaved.

In a study published March 13 in the journal Antiquity, Redon detailed the rare discovery of shackles at Ghozza, the northernmost Ptolemaic gold mine, which was in use from around 250 to 200 B.C. The shackles are among the oldest ever found in the Mediterranean region.

Related: Shackled skeleton may be first direct evidence of slavery in Roman Britain

The Ghozza mine complex included a village with residential areas, streets and baths. Hundreds of ostraca — pottery fragments used as "scrap paper" — that were found at the site provided clues to the daily activities of the miners. Some received wages for their work, which involved processing natural ore with handheld grinding stones.

"We thought that the work of the miners must have included free people, as we found no guarded dormitories at Ghozza," Redon said. In contrast, dormitories at other ancient Egyptian mines "were guarded by a gatehouse near their narrow entrances," Redon wrote in a 2021 study.

But the discovery of two sets of shackles designed to restrict the movement of miners working on the surface revealed that there was at least some forced labor at Ghozza.

One set of shackles consisted of seven ankle rings and two links, and the other included four links and two ankle-ring fragments. Archaeologists discovered the shackles, along with a large amount of discarded slag and many iron objects, in an ancient storage building at Ghozza.

The Ghozza shackles closely resemble ones found in the silver mines of Laurion in Greece, Redon wrote in her study, suggesting the Greeks brought their technical knowledge of mine engineering to Egypt during the Ptolemaic period. The mined Egyptian gold would have helped fund Ptolemy I's military campaigns at the expense of the workers.

"These objects give us irrefutable proof of the miners' status, which we did not have until now," Redon said.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

"The fact that we can reconstruct events from hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago just by looking at DNA today is astonishing, and it tells us that our history is far richer and more complex than we imagined," study co-author Aylwyn Scally, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.

In a study published Tuesday (March 18) in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers presented a new method of modeling genomic data, called "cobraa," that has allowed them to trace the evolution of modern humans (Homo sapiens).

By applying their new method to modern human DNA data published in the 1000 Genomes Project and the Human Genome Diversity Project, the researchers discovered that there were two main ancestral groups that split around 1.5 million years ago, which they called Population A and Population B.

Just after that split, Population A experienced a bottleneck when the population plummeted and likely lost a significant amount of genetic diversity. But Population A grew over time, and Neanderthals and Denisovans branched off from it.

Related: Human ancestors arrived in Western Europe much earlier than previously thought, fossil face fragments reveal

Then, around 300,000 years ago, Population A mixed with Population B, the researchers found. Their genetic analysis suggests that 80% of the genome of all present-day humans comes from Population A, while 20% of our genome comes from Population B.

Some of the genes from Population B, "particularly those related to brain function and neural processing, may have played a crucial role in human evolution," study co-author Trevor Cousins, a postgraduate student in genetics at the University of Cambridge, said in the statement. In general, the genetic material from Population B reduced the ability of individuals to have children, Cousins told Live Science in an email, but "the genome is a complicated place, and regions outside of genes can still do important things."

The new model suggests that, around 300,000 years ago, Population A, which eventually gave rise to humans, had "deep structure," Cousins said, meaning it was formed from "two or more genetically distinct populations that mixed with each other."

Who those populations were, however, is not clear. In the study, the researchers noted that "various Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis populations that are potential candidates for lineages A and B existed both in Africa and elsewhere in the relevant period."

But "the genetic model cannot indicate which fossils should be assigned to Population A or B," Cousins said. "We can only speculate."

Some experts use the term "ghost populations" to talk about groups that branched off and then reconnected later through interbreeding resulting in gene flow, John Hawks, a biological anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved in the study, told Live Science by email.

"What is interesting about this paper is that the pattern in the model is a deep African structure that is shared by everyone living today," Hawks said. "It is not 'ghost populations' contributing to one particular group, it is one big ghost that merged in with the African source population for all modern humans."

But one of the drawbacks to the new model, according to Hawks, is that it is based on the 1000 Genomes Project, which has a low representation of African populations. "So I see this as more a proof of principle than a real guide to what ancient humans were doing," Hawks said.

The origin of modern humans is a long-standing question in paleoanthropology, and improvements in DNA and genomic analysis in the past two decades have provided new insights and raised new questions.

"What's becoming clear is that the idea of species evolving in clean, distinct lineages is too simplistic," Cousins said in the statement. "Interbreeding and genetic exchange have likely played a major role in the emergence of new species repeatedly across the animal kingdom."

Human evolution quiz: What do you know about Homo sapiens?

Ancient DNA collected from the remains of Stone Age individuals from the eastern Maghreb region, which spans Tunisia and northeastern Algeria, revealed that they may have descended, in part, from European hunter-gatherers, according to a paper published March 12 in the journal Nature.

The remains of one of the ancient humans found at a Tunisia site named Djebba was found to have about 6% of his DNA originating from European hunter-gatherer ancestry. These results represent the first clear genetic evidence of contact between early European and North African populations, indicating that Stone Age European hunter-gatherers and North Africans may have interacted more than we initially thought.

"Several decades ago, some biological anthropologists proposed that European and North African hunter-gatherers had made contact, based on morphological analyses of skeletal traits," study co-author Ron Pinhasi, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna, said in a statement.

"At the time, this theory appeared overly speculative," he added. "However, 30 years later, our new genomic data has validated these early hypotheses. This is really exciting."

Related: 7,000-year-old canoes from Italy are the oldest ever found in the Mediterranean

The Stone Age began with the use of stone tools about 3 million years ago (before modern humans existed) and ended about 5,000 years ago in parts of North Africa and Europe with the rise of metal tools and early civilizations. During the Stone Age, humans in Europe and North Africa mostly lived as hunter-gatherers, gradually transitioning to farming and more complex societies during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, which occurred between roughly 10,000 and 2,000 B.C.

Before now, archaeologists didn't know much about the transition to farming in North Africa, with most genomic data coming from sites in the far western Maghreb (modern-day Morocco).

"There's not been much of a North African story," study co-author David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School, told Nature News. "It was a huge hole."

Previous research in the western Maghreb found that people in this area had high levels of European farmer ancestry — genetically distinct from hunter-gatherers — reaching up to 80% in some populations due to the movement of farmers via the Gibraltar Strait around 7,000 years ago.

The new study reveals that the eastern Maghreb people had comparatively little European farmer ancestry, instead remaining quite genetically isolated — with the surprising exception of some earlier European hunter-gatherer influences.

The archaeologists analyzed the DNA from bones and teeth of nine people who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago in the eastern Maghreb. The DNA showed that one of the ancient humans, who lived about 8,500 years ago, shared about 6% of his DNA with European hunter-gatherers. This suggests that the hunter-gatherers may have boated across the Mediterranean, possibly aboard long wooden canoes.

Traces of volcanic glass or obsidian from Pantelleria, an island in the Strait of Sicily, was also found at one of the sites, indicating that these hunter-gatherers may have stopped off at several islands on their journey across the sea.

This DNA also revealed that there was very little European farmer ancestry in this region, only reaching around 20%. This suggests that the eastern Maghreb was very genetically and culturally resilient compared to the western Maghreb, which is supported by previous archaeological discoveries that farming was only fully adopted in the eastern Maghreb after about 1000 B.C.

What it is: A moving dog sculpture carved from ivory

Where it is from: Egypt

When it was made: Around 1390 to 1352 B.C.

Related: Onfim's doodle: A 13th-century kid's self-portrait on horseback, slaying an enemy

What it tells us about the past:

Posed as if leaping through the air, this carved ivory dog opens its mouth as a lever is pushed up and down, revealing two lower teeth and a red tongue. The dog, which was discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb, is a reminder that these domesticated canines have been beloved pets for at least 3,400 years.

The small dog sculpture, now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, is made from elephant ivory. It is 7.2 inches (18.2 centimeters) long from nose to toes and shows the very good boy in a flying gallop, legs extended in the air. According to The Met, the lever that works the dog's lower jaw, making it appear to bark, was originally held on by a piece of leather cord looped through small holes. At some point, the cord was replaced with a metal dowel secured in the dog's shoulder.

The Met obtained the dog sculpture from the personal collection of Howard Carter, the Egyptologist who famously discovered King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. It is unclear exactly where the dog was found, but The Met suggests it may have been placed in an elite tomb sometime during the reign of Amenhotep III, King Tut's grandfather, in the 14th century B.C. But its purpose is unclear; it may have been a toy or a magical ceremonial object.

Ancient Egyptians were quite fond of their dogs. While some were used for hunting, shepherding or as watchdogs, many were pets. This sculpture definitely represents a domesticated dog because the incised lines around its neck form a collar, Met curator emerita Catharine Roehrig wrote in a publication of the artifact.

During Egypt's New Kingdom (1550 to 1070 B.C.), dog collars became increasingly ornate, often inscribed with the dog's name, such as those found in the Tomb of Maiherpri. This dog sculpture does not have a name attached to its collar, but The Met notes that some common Egyptian dog names translate to Blackie, Son of the Moon and Good-for-Nothing.

The breed of this sculpted dog is also unclear. Ancient Egyptians tended to prefer energetic dog breeds, and the ones often represented in their art include the ancestors of the hunting dog basenji, the Ibizan hound and the pharaoh hound.

Dogs were also linked with the god Anubis and with the afterlife in Egyptian mythology; they were sometimes seen as a kind of intermediary between the worlds of the living and the dead. Killing a dog — particularly a collared one — was a severe crime, and a family would have mourned the death of their dog as they would a human relative: by shaving their eyebrows. However, Egyptians believed that they would meet their dogs again in the afterlife, which is likely the reason they mummified them and buried them in special pet cemeteries.

The tomb was found in fall 2024 in Chiliomodi, a town near Corinth in Greece's Peloponnese region, according to a March 10 translated statement from the Greek Ministry of Culture.

Roughly T-shaped, the funerary structure included a large burial chamber measuring 9 by 24.3 feet (2.7 by 7.4 meters). The entrance to the tomb was sealed with a door-like slab. Based on the tomb's style, experts think it was constructed during the Hellenistic period (323 to 30 B.C.).

In the main burial chamber, archaeologists discovered a large sarcophagus and five rectangular masonry boxes flanking the walls. A female skeleton was found in the sarcophagus, but the other tombs had been looted.

The monument was used for burials for several centuries, after which it became a full-time healing shrine during the late Roman period (A.D. 250 to 450).

Related: Rare 'Corinthian' helmet from ancient Greece is up for auction, and stunningly preserved

Inside the massive tomb, archaeologists found artifacts dating to the Hellenistic and Roman periods, including a gold ring with a semiprecious stone that was carved to depict Apollo, the god of healing and medicine; along with a snake, which has been a medical symbol for millennia. Additionally, objects such as coins, gold leaves from a wreath, small vases, iron and bronze items, perfume bottles and glass beads were recovered from the tomb.

Outside the tomb, excavators recovered additional artifacts that point to the monument's use as a healing shrine. Several clay fingers and part of a clay arm were unearthed in the dirt filling in the tomb. Also known as anatomical votive offerings, the clay body parts were likely left by people who sought healing at the shrine or who were grateful that their specific health issues were resolved by the gods.

Excavation has not yet been completed in the area outside the tomb, according to the Ministry of Culture. Archaeologists are working to clarify the original form of the tomb-and-shrine complex, as well as the precise times it was used and renovated. Additional research is planned in Chiliomodi to investigate its late Roman period remains, which include houses and a large kiln.

Alexander the Great quiz: How well do you know the famous king and conqueror from the ancient world?

The discovery adds new information about soldiers' lives and their gruesome deaths to a significant period in Chinese history.

"Execution by dismemberment was the most shameful form of execution," study co-author Alexey Kovalev, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email. "It was done by enemies so that the souls of these people could never be reborn."

Kovalev and a team of researchers studied more than two dozen complete and partial skeletons recovered from a mass grave at the archaeological site of Bayanbulag, a fortress built by the Han Empire in 104 B.C. just north of the Great Wall of China to protect against the encroaching Xiongnu Empire.

In a study published online last month in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the researchers used genomic and isotope analyses to figure out who was buried in the grave and where they came from.

Most of the bodies were piled up in a layer in the middle of a pit, the researchers found, which was initially the result of clay mining before it was turned into a makeshift mass grave. They identified a total of 17 skulls, all of which were from adult men. Most of the skeletons also showed signs of dismemberment, decapitation or amputation by sword, and at least two men were buried in a kneeling position.

Related: Ancient DNA reveals mysterious origins of the Huns who sacked Rome

Ancient DNA analysis of 14 of the skeletons revealed that the people were more genetically similar to present-day Han and northern Chinese people rather than to the Xiongnu and other ancient Siberians. Similarly, strontium isotope analysis — which measures variations in the element to reveal where a person grew up — of the skeletons showed that the men came to Bayanbulug from elsewhere, presumably as soldiers who directly participated in a battle.

The Han-Xiongnu Wars were fought over the course of two centuries (133 B.C. to A.D. 89). Battles between the Chinese civilization and the nomadic Xiongnu erupted on the Mongolian Plateau, and the northern Chinese built fortifications against the Xiongnu incursion, some of which were eventually incorporated into the Great Wall. But this is the first study to examine a grave of Han soldiers killed by the enemy and buried by their comrades, the researchers wrote.

"It is significant that all the small pieces of severed arms and legs, severed heads and other pieces of human bodies were collected for burial," Kovalev said. "According to the beliefs of the Chinese, it is necessary to bury the body of the deceased in full integrity. Those who buried these soldiers tried to make them feel good in the afterlife."

But not everyone could be buried intact. One man was decapitated, but his head was never found; presumably, it was taken away by the Xiongnu as proof of victory over the Han. "Who exactly killed the Han soldiers buried in the mass grave, we can only guess based on the context," Kovalev said.

Michael Rivera, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the study, told Live Science by email that the research impressively combines historical context with genetic, archaeological and isotopic analyses.

"The individuals in this burial were a diverse group of men from across Northeast Asia fighting in this conflict," Rivera said, and "we can see which side of the battle these individuals represented."

Further work needs to be done to fully understand the Bayanbulag mass grave, Kovalev said, particularly in the absence of information about funeral customs for ordinary people in this time period. "Now we are studying such a grave for the first time, and for the first time, we can reconstruct this ritual," he said.

The finding reveals that Neanderthals, modern humans and related human lineages coexisted in what is now Israel for about 50,000 years. However, it's unknown which group influenced the other and in what direction.

In the new research, scientists investigated caves in the Levant — the eastern Mediterranean region that today includes Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Researchers have long thought the Levant was a key gateway for our species, Homo sapiens, and other branches of the human family tree that migrated out of Africa.

Prior work suggested that during the mid-Middle Paleolithic (80,000 to 130,000 years ago), the southern Levant was home to at least three different groups of Homo: modern humans, Neanderthals and a third lineage resembling both modern humans and Neanderthals that was unearthed at the prehistoric site of Nesher Ramla in central Israel. Although these groups were physically different from one another, researchers weren't sure how similar they were in terms of lifestyle.

Artifacts found at Nesher Ramla suggested that the site had been a temporary hunting and butchering camp, so the researchers looked nearby for the main base of operations. "Such sites are usually found in caves," study lead author Yossi Zaidner, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science.

Zaidner and his colleagues focused on Tinshemet Cave about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away from Nesher Ramla. Scientists first discovered the cave in 1940, and new excavations there unearthed five burials belonging to Homo — the first such burials from the mid-Middle Paleolithic found in this region in more than 50 years. It's currently unknown if these burials belong to early modern humans, human-Neanderthal hybrids, the mysterious other lineage or another group entirely.

Related: Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens buried their dead differently, study suggests

The researchers also uncovered stone artifacts made with the Levallois technique, meaning they are humped on one side, flat on the other and had sharpened edges. In addition, the human remains were buried in fetal positions, often with the red mineral pigment ocher, which prior research suggested was linked with funerary practices and symbolic thought. The scientists also discovered bones of large game such as aurochs (Bos primigenius, an extinct cowlike species), horses, deer and gazelles.

"The discoveries at Tinshemet Cave are probably going to be the most important finds in the region from the last 50 years," Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science.

Multiple humans at multiple caves

These findings at Tinshemet Cave were very similar to discoveries made in two other caves in Israel — Skhul Cave and Qafzeh Cave — that also date to the mid-Middle Paleolithic. However, the skeletal remains in each cave were significantly anatomically distinct from those of the other caves.

The researchers suggest that different groups of Homo not only coexisted in the mid-Middle Paleolithic in the Levant, but shared a number of key practices, exchanging innovations such as burial rites and the symbolic use of ocher for about 50,000 years. It remains uncertain in which direction these practices were exchanged — say, if modern humans adopted Neanderthal hunting strategies, or if Neanderthals embraced modern human burial rites, or if they came up with new practices together.

"Neanderthals' and Homo sapiens' interactions were not just sporadic encounters, but they had very substantial contacts which led to adoption of behaviors," Zaidner said.

The fact that groups of Homo from this time and place often share anatomical features of both modern humans and Neanderthals suggest "these are actually hybrids that are using the same culture," Zaidner said.

However, Stringer does not see a mixing of lifestyles. Instead, he suggested the burials and artifacts at the Tinshemet, Skhul and Qafzeh caves are linked only with H. sapiens, and that different behaviors discovered at later Levant sites such as the Kebara, Amud and Dederiyeh caves are linked with Neanderthals.

"That said, there is growing evidence that these populations overlapped in the region about 100,000 years ago more than has been supposed, and given what happened in Europe 50,000 years later, there was clearly potential for contact and both cultural and genetic exchanges," Stringer said. "I've tended to play down the possibility that the Skhul and Qafzeh samples show signs of hybridization with Neanderthals, but they do show a lot of morphological variation, and some of it could indeed be an indication of interbreeding with Neanderthal neighbors."

The scientists now plan to study the remains at Tinshemet Cave in greater detail to see if they are hybrids of modern humans and Neanderthals, Zaidner said.

"I eagerly await detailed descriptions of the morphology of the Tinshemet fossils," Stringer said. If interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals did happen in the Levant, "and I agree it seems increasingly likely, then somewhere there must be actual first-generation Neanderthal-sapiens hybrids waiting to be discovered or recognized," Stringer added.

The researchers detailed their findings online Tuesday (March 11) in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Nicknamed the "Mysterious Lady," the first-century-B.C. mummy was found in the Egyptian city of Luxor (ancient Thebes) but was brought to the University of Warsaw in Poland in 1826. The mummy was not scientifically studied for over a century.

In 2021, experts with the Warsaw Mummy Project concluded that, contrary to their assumption that the mummy was a male priest based on the sarcophagus, it was actually the remains of a woman in her 20s who was 6.5 to 7.5 months pregnant.

In the first published study of the mummy, researchers used X-ray imaging and CT scans to identify several bundles of mummified organs in her abdomen. They also suggested that a poorly preserved fetus, around 28 weeks in gestational age, could be seen on the scans.

In a second study, the research team proposed that the reason no fetal bones could be clearly identified was that the mother's uterus lacked oxygen and had become acidic over time, essentially "pickling" the fetus. And finally, the team suggested that they had found evidence of potentially fatal nasopharyngeal cancer in the mummy's skull.

These interpretations were controversial, however. Radiologist and mummy expert Sahar Saleem told Live Science in 2022 that the Warsaw team failed to "identify any evidence of anatomical structures to justify their claim of a fetus." Instead, Saleem was convinced the mysterious structures in the mummy's abdomen were embalming packs.

To settle the debate, a team of 14 researchers with varied expertise led by archaeologist Kamila Braulińska of the University of Warsaw studied the Mysterious Lady and published their findings in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences last month.

Related: Ancient Egyptian teenager died while giving birth to twins, mummy reveals

Members of the research team each examined more than 1,300 raw CT image slices of the mummy produced in 2015 to determine whether there was any radiological evidence of a pregnancy or of cancer.

Every expert who reanalyzed the CT scans concluded that there was no fetus and that the material assumed to be a fetus was actually part of the embalming process. Further, the suggestion that the fetus' skeleton and soft tissue did not show up on the scans because the body was "pickled" is impossible, the researchers noted in the study, because acids within the human body are insufficient to dissolve bone, especially after a body is embalmed.

Similarly, none of the experts on the new study could identify clear evidence of cancer in the mummy. Some suggested instead that the damage to the woman's skull most likely occurred when her brain was removed during the embalming process.

Given the diagnostic consensus of the international panel of experts, the researchers concluded in the study that "this should resolve once and for all the discussion of the first alleged case of pregnancy identified inside an ancient Egyptian mummy, as well as the dispute about the presence of nasopharyngeal cancer."

But given the public's intense interest in the "case of the pregnant mummy" over the past four years, the researchers suggested that, going forward, additional focus should be given to questions of maternal and pediatric health in ancient Egypt.

Mummy quiz: Can you unwrap these ancient Egyptian mysteries?

The discovery of the ritual bath, known as a mikvah, "confirms the extent of the continuous presence, role and importance of the Jewish community in Ostia throughout the Imperial age [of Rome]," Alessandro D'Alessio, director of the Archaeological Park of Ostia Antica, said in a translated statement.

In the summer of 2024, archaeologists excavating in the heart of the ancient city found a narrow, rectangular room with a small staircase leading about 3.3 feet (1 meter) down into a plaster-lined pit. In one corner of the structure, there was a hole through which a pipe carried water to fill up the mikvah. These mikva'ot are used in the Jewish tradition to purify people and objects.

During excavation of the mikvah, the archaeologists also found fragments of plaster and marble, black-and-white mosaics, statues and oil lamps. One of the lamps was decorated with the image of a menorah on the top, and on the bottom, it had a depiction of a lulav, a palm frond often used in the Jewish autumn holiday Sukkot.

The combination of the structure and artifacts means that "it is probable that this was a Jewish community center," Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of the Jewish Community of Rome, said in the statement. "The history of the Jews of Rome is enriched today by another invaluable monument that testifies to their ancient settlement."

Related: Rare fresco discovered in Pompeii shows type of woman who 'breaks free from male order to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains'

The Jewish presence in Rome dates back to the second century B.C., and by the time of the Roman Empire, the Jewish community had grown considerably. Although they were a religious minority, Roman Jews were generally accepted. This was particularly true in large and cosmopolitan cities such as Ostia, a port city just 19 miles (30 kilometers) west of Rome.

Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli said in the statement that the mikvah discovery "strengthens the historical awareness of Ostia as a true crossroads of coexistence and exchange of cultures, a cradle of tolerance between different peoples who found unity in Roman civilization."

The oldest archaeological examples of mikva'ot date back to the late first century B.C. and were widespread in the Roman province of Judaea. However, they declined in number as Rome took over the region, particularly following the Jewish-Roman wars between A.D. 66 and 135, the statement reported.

Another contender for the oldest mikvah outside the Middle East is one at an ancient temple on Russia's Taman Peninsula. However, while some argue that this temple dates to the late first century B.C. or first century A.D., others say more information is needed to securely date it. The mikvah recently found at Ostia therefore represents the earliest well-dated example of the structure outside of Judaea.

"The mikvah is the sign of a living presence that has perpetuated itself over the centuries and shows us today the demonstration of an identity that many generations of Jews have managed to preserve, defend and enhance," Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, said in the statement.

The archaeological park is currently working to make the mikvah area accessible to the public.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

Scientists found that the genes that cause lighter skin, hair and eyes emerged among early Europeans only about 14,000 years ago, during the late stages of the Paleolithic period — also known as the "Old Stone Age." But these light features were only sporadic until relatively recently, said study senior author Silvia Ghirotto, a geneticist at the University of Ferrara in Italy.

Lighter skin may have carried an evolutionary advantage for Europeans because it enabled people to synthesize more vitamin D — needed for healthy bones, teeth and muscles — in Europe's weaker sunlight. But lighter eye color — blue or green, for example — does not seem to have had major evolutionary advantages, and so its emergence may have been driven by chance or sexual selection, Ghirotto told Live Science in an email.

Ghirotto and her colleagues analyzed 348 samples of ancient DNA from archaeological sites in 34 countries in Western Europe and Asia, according to research published Feb. 12 on the preprint server bioRxiv, which hasn't been peer-reviewed.

The oldest, from 45,000 years ago, was from the Ust'-Ishim individual discovered in 2008 in the Irtysh River region of western Siberia; and another high-quality DNA sample came from the roughly 9,000-year-old SF12 individual from Sweden.

But many of the older samples were badly degraded, and so the researchers estimated those individual's pigmentation using "probabilistic phenotype inference" and the HIrisPlex-S system, which can predict eye, hair, and skin color from an incomplete DNA sample.

Related: Nearly 170 genes determine hair, skin and eye color, CRISPR study reveals

Out of Africa

Palaeoanthropologists think the first Homo sapiens permanently arrived in Europe between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, which meant they weren't that far removed from their modern human ancestors in Africa. As a result, early Europeans initially only had genetics for dark skin, hair and eyes, which rely on hundreds of interconnected genes, Ghirotto said.

Even after lighter traits emerged in Europe about 14,000 years ago, however, they only appeared sporadically in individuals until relatively recent times — about 3,000 years ago — when they became widespread, she said.

The new study showed that the frequency of people with dark skin was still high in parts of Europe until the Copper Age (also known as the Chalcolithic period, which started about 5,000 years ago in Europe) and in some areas dark skin appeared frequently until even later, Ghirotto said.

Emerging traits

The researchers found that light eyes emerged among people in Northern and Western Europe between about 14,000 and 4,000 years ago, although dark hair and dark skin were still dominant at that time. (There are outliers, however. A 2024 genetic analysis showed a 1-year-old boy who lived in Europe about 17,000 years ago had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes.)

The genetic basis for lighter skin seems to have emerged in Sweden at about the same time as lighter eyes, but initially it remained relatively rare, Ghirotto said.

The researchers also reported a statistical "spike" in the incidence of light eye color at this time, which suggested that blue or green eyes were more prevalent at that time than earlier or later.

Carles Lalueza Fox, a palaeogeneticist at Barcelona's Institute of Evolutionary Biology, is an expert on early European pigmentation but was not involved in the latest study.

It was a "surprise" to learn that some European individuals had inherited genes for darker pigmentation up until the Iron Age, which was relatively recent in genetic terms, he told Live Science in an email.

While the new research charts the emergence of traits like lighter skin, hair and eyes, the reasons these traits could have become an evolutionary advantage are still not well understood, he added.

The bones were discovered in a cave in the Atapuerca Mountains that was already known as a spot used by Homo antecessor, the species that Neanderthals likely evolved from. But the new bones are hundreds of thousands of years older and shaped differently, suggesting that Homo erectus — an ancestor of modern humans — also lived in Europe during the Early Pleistocene (2.6 million to 800,000 years ago).

"This paper introduces a new actor into the study of human evolution in Europe," Rosa Huguet, a paleoanthropologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution and lead author of a study published Wednesday (March 12) in the journal Nature, said at a news conference ahead of publication.

Huguet and colleagues found the facial bone fragments while excavating the cave site of Sima del Elefante ("Pit of the Elephant") in 2022. When a student told Huguet they had found bones, "we were very excited," Huguet said, "and in this moment, we thought — 95% sure — that we had a human remain."

All of the fragments came from the left side of the face — specifically, the maxilla, or upper jaw and part of the cheek bone.

"We didn't know at the beginning what specifically it was," study co-author José María Bermúdez de Castro, a paleoanthropologist at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution in Spain, said at the news conference. But from the shape of the teeth, it was clear that the bones belonged to a human relative.

After more than two years of research, the team has published their analysis of the fragmentary skeleton, which they nicknamed "Pink" after Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, calling it the "earliest human face of Western Europe."

Related: 1.5 million-year-old footprints reveal our Homo erectus ancestors lived with a 2nd proto-human species

Homo erectus in Spain

This face is surprisingly different from that of H. antecessor, another early species found in Spain. H. antecessor remains have been found at several cave sites in the Atapuerca Mountains since 1994, and they date from 1.2 million years to 800,000 years ago. Similar to modern humans' faces, the face of H. antecessor is flat and vertical.

But the new, fully reconstructed facial skeleton of "Pink" from Sima del Elefante is strikingly different from the previously discovered H. antecessor remains, suggesting it does not actually belong to that species as originally thought. It has a more robust face that projects outward, making it look more like our much-older H. erectus ancestors.

Experts think the first expansion of hominins out of Africa began around 1.8 million years ago, when H. erectus moved out through the Levantine corridor, a narrow strip of land that connects Africa to Eurasia. Although sites with H. erectus remains are found throughout East Africa and Asia, finds of this age in Western Europe are few and far between.

This means the first hominin to make it to Western Europe was not H. antecessor as previously assumed, but probably H. erectus, at least 1.4 million years ago. Because "Pink" has some anatomical features that do not fit exactly with H. erectus, the team described it in their study as "H. aff. erectus," where "aff." means "affinis" or "similar to" in Latin.

Based on the worn molars, the team concluded that "Pink" was an adult. But because so little of the skeleton remains, they were unable to figure out if the individual was male or female. Future paleoproteomic analysis of the tooth enamel, which has proteins that can indicate an individual's sex, may eventually reveal this information.

This is the third time that members of this research team have discovered hominin fossils in unexpectedly deep layers in this collection of caves, said study co-author María Martinón-Torres, a paleoanthropologist at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution.

In 1997, H. antecessor was first assigned to bones found in the Atapuerca Mountains dating to about 850,000 years ago, and in 2008, a couple layers above "Pink," members of the team reported a fossil dated to 1.1 million to 1.2 million years ago as the "first hominin of Europe." Although they are separated by hundreds of thousands of years, "Pink" may be the same species as the 2008 bones, according to Bermúdez de Castro.

In addition to bones, the team discovered stone tools at Sima del Elefante. The simple tools were made out of local quartz, chert and limestone, said study co-author Xosé Pedro Rodríguez-Álvarez, a prehistoric archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, and animal bones found at the site show evidence of human-created cut marks.

"Pink" provides further evidence that the Atapuerca Mountains formed an important corridor rich in natural resources that humans and animals passed through 1.4 million years ago, likely after arriving in the area from Eastern Europe.

But there are still questions about what happened around 1.1 million years ago. Harsh and cold climatic conditions may have led to the disappearance of H. aff. erectus, Bermúdez de Castro suggested, followed by the arrival of H. antecessor.

However, if the assumption of dramatic climate change in the Atapuerca Mountains is incorrect, it is possible that a residual population of H. aff. erectus coincided with H. antecessor for a short time, meaning two hominin species overlapped in Western Europe.

"The most important take-home message is that this fossil represents the earliest human fossil found so far in Western Europe," Martinón-Torres said, "documenting a previously unknown human population in Europe."

Work at Sima del Elefante and on "Pink" continues, Martinón-Torres said, including a search for more fossils to fully understand who these hominins were, where they came from, and what interactions they had with other hominins in the area.

Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?

Cinnabar is a bright-red mineral that's made of mercury and sulfur. Although it's been used since at least the ninth millennium B.C. in religious ceremonies, art, body paint and writing, this is the first time it's been found on human teeth, according to a study published Feb. 24 in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

"This is the first and only known case of cinnabar being used to stain teeth in antiquity and throughout the world," study senior author Qian Wang, a professor of biomedical sciences at the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry, told Live Science in an email.

Archaeologists found the unusual remains while excavating a cemetery in Turpan City, in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. Based on the cultural objects found in various graves, the archaeologists concluded that the deceased were Gushi people, who followed the Subeixi culture. The Subeixi culture, a horse riding pastoralist culture in which women rode horses using saddles, flourished in the Turpan basin nearly 3,000 years ago.

The cemetery lay on the main route of the Silk Road. The site was dated to 2,200 to 2,050 years ago via radiocarbon dating, putting it in the time frame when the Silk Road was active with the trade of precious goods, including cinnabar.

Related: Earliest evidence of mercury poisoning in humans found in 5,000-year-old bones

One of the graves in the cemetery held the remains of four individuals, including a juvenile. However, one adult skeleton in the burial stood out because its teeth had traces of red pigment. An anatomical analysis revealed that this individual was female and had died between the ages of 20 and 25. Intrigued, researchers scraped off a sample of the red pigment and studied it with three different spectroscopy methods, which can reveal the makeup of chemicals in a sample.

The analysis revealed that the pigment was cinnabar, which had been mixed with an animal protein, perhaps egg yolk or egg white, so it could be painted on the woman's teeth.

The team nicknamed the woman the "Red Princess of the Silk Road" after the "Red Queen," a female Maya aristocrat from seventh-century Mexico whose corpse was found covered in cinnabar powder inside a limestone sarcophagus.

Red Princess of the Silk Road

The Red Princess's teeth are an anomaly, as the Xinjiang region is not a source of cinnabar. However, it was mined and traded along the Silk Road in antiquity, the researchers noted. China and Europe, the beginning and end of the Silk Road, were the two most significant cinnabar-producing areas along this trade route. So it's possible that the cinnabar from the Turpan cemetery came from Europe, West Asia or other areas within China, such as the southwest, which was historically mined for cinnabar.

Although it's unknown why the woman's teeth were painted red, Wang said it could be "related to cosmetic enhancements, social status, or shamanism, or some kind of combination." Other mummies with facial paintings and tattoos have been found in the region and even the newly excavated cemetery, he noted. So it's possible that the Red Princess had facial painting or tattoos, distinct hairstyles, head dressing and costumes to go with her red teeth, Wang said.

Study co-author Li Sun, a professor of geology at Collin College in Texas, emphasized the dangerous nature of cinnabar application. She pointed out that during the whole process, from the preparation of the red pigment to its application (probably multiple times) inside the mouth, the red-toothed woman and her helpers might have inhaled fine particles of cinnabar or mercury vapors. Inhaling these substances is associated with harmful neurological effects such as headaches, insomnia, tremors, and cognitive and motor dysfunction, according to the World Health Organization.

Surprisingly, Wang and his team didn't find any evidence of mercury poisoning in her bones even though there's circumstantial evidence that it was applied repeatedly during her lifetime. "No traces of mercury were detected in her mandible, ribs and femur," Wang said. "Perhaps it was not [on her teeth] long enough to allow the toxin to be concentrated to a detectable level."

Initially, the detectorists unearthed a total of 30 coins from both Scotland and England that were minted throughout the 15th century.

This rare find was discovered by Keith Young and Lisa Stephenson, who had been exploring near the village of Cappercleuch, in the Scottish Borders region.

"The hoard is the find of a lifetime," Stephenson said in a statement from Scotland's Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Some of the coins were English silver groats, minted by both Henry V (ruled from 1413 to 1422) and Edward IV (ruled from roughly 1461 to 1483), while others were Scottish gold demy and half-demys, minted by James I of Scotland (reigned from 1406 to 1437) and James II (ruled from 1437 to 1460). The coins were marked with the likeness of each monarch at the time of their minting.

Related: 32 stunning centuries-old hoards unearthed by metal detectorists

The groat was a large silver coin first introduced in England by Edward I in 1279, and was valued at four pence. The Scottish gold demy was named after the French word "démier," meaning "half," since it was roughly half the value of a noble (a gold English coin), and was typically valued at nine shillings in Scottish money. The gold half-demy was a smaller version of the demy, valued at about 4.5 shillings.

The pair reported their find to the Scottish Treasure Trove Unit, which is responsible for investigating any archeological discoveries that are unearthed around the country. An initial investigation by archaeologists at the unit revealed that the coins may have been left at this site in the early- to mid-1460s. The archaeologists then discovered five additional coins lurking nearby, bringing the hoard's total to 35 coins.

"Coin hoards containing a mix of both English and Scottish coins are not unusual, but we do not see many hoards from this period in Scotland, so it's a fascinating find," Antony Lee, who runs the Treasure Trove Unit, said in the statement.

"Keith and Lisa acted promptly and correctly in reporting it to us," Lee said. "In turn we, along with archaeologists from National Museums Scotland, were able to attend and excavate the site, finding five more coins and documenting the circumstances of the hoard alongside the finders."

After the Treasure Trove Unit has finished its analysis, the coins will be passed to the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel (SAFAP), an independent panel that will make them available for museums to display.

The SAFAP will also assign a monetary value to the coins, which will then be paid to the finders as a reward for their discovery. Any museum hoping to display the coins will be expected to raise the funds for this "ex-gratia" reward themselves.

What it is: An inscribed piece of birch bark

Where it is from: Novgorod, Russia

When it was made: Around 1260

Related: Yup'ik masks: Carvings depicting distorted spirits' faces dreamed up by shamans in Alaska

What it tells us about the past:

Around 800 years ago, a 7-year-old boy named Onfim seems to have gotten bored with doing schoolwork and instead drew himself as a horseback rider slaying an enemy. Onfim, who scrawled his name on his entertaining sketches, doodled on more than a dozen thin pieces of birch bark in the mid-13th century, and his artistic talent was preserved for centuries by the wet, low-oxygen soil of his native Novgorod, a medieval East Slavic state that later became part of Russia.

Known as Gramota No. 200, Onfim's self-portrait includes his Cyrillic alphabet exercises above a drawing of a horse, a sword-like weapon, a defeated enemy and, next to a depiction of himself, his signature: ОНѲИМЄ. The crudely drawn stick figures — a clue that he drew them at around 7 years of age — have severe expressions, round torsos, long legs and too few fingers on the hands.

In 1951, archaeologists in Novgorod discovered the first Old Russian birch-bark texts, and more than 1,200 of them have been found to date. Before the availability of paper, soft birch bark was scratched with metal or bone implements. The dimensions of the birch-bark texts vary, but most are about the size of a postcard. Russian historian Valentin Yanin has estimated that there may be more than 20,000 additional texts yet to be excavated from the wet, clay-like soils.

The city of Novgorod — located in western Russia, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of St. Petersburg — was a major trade center in the medieval period and, as such, had high rates of literacy. The Novgorod birch-bark texts largely deal with commercial transactions or transcriptions of Bible passages.

But Onfim's work is a bit different. Although he also jotted down psalms and hymns, most of his manuscripts contained figural doodles, and their delightfully simple style has made him the most famous person in the Novgorod birch-bark texts — as well as the creator of some of the earliest child-produced artwork ever found.

Unfortunately, there is no historical evidence to reveal what happened to Onfim as he grew up. Did he become a merchant or a monk? Did he ever actually ride horseback and slay his enemies? Although we don't know Onfim's fate, his 800-year-old doodles have left an indelible mark on history.

This new research — hailed as a "knockout study" — places the arrival of domestic cats in East Asia several hundred years later than previous studies. And it appears that the kitties were an instant hit with the local elite.

"Cats were initially regarded as prized, exotic pets," study co-author Shu-Jin Luo, a principal investigator at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and Evolution at Peking University in China, told Live Science in an email. "Cats' mysterious behaviors — alternating between distant and affectionate — added an air of mystique."

Modern domestic cats (Felis catus) descend from African wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica). Previous research suggests these felines began living alongside humans in the Middle East roughly 10,000 years ago, before evolving and then spreading to Europe about 3,000 years ago, according to the new study.

Around A.D. 600, merchants and diplomats first transported domestic cats in small crates and cages from the eastern Mediterranean through Central Asia, Luo said. These traders and officials brought just a handful of the pets to China, offering them as tribute to members of the elite, she said.

Related: Lasers reveal secrets of lost Silk Road cities in the mountains of Uzbekistan

Archaeological evidence shows that long before the arrival of domestic cats in China, people in rural Chinese communities lived alongside native leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis). Researchers have previously found leopard cat bones dating to 5,400 years ago in an ancient farming village in the northwestern Shaanxi province, indicating that humans and cats co-existed in settlements together.

But this relationship was not equivalent to cat domestication, the authors of the new study argued. Moreover, the common assumption that cat domestication took place in China during the Han Dynasty between 206 B.C. and A.D. 220 also lacks support, as there are no archaeological remains of pet cats from that period. Therefore, a complete re-evaluation of when and how domestic cats came to China is required, the researchers said in the study.

'A highly challenging task'

To address these questions, Luo and her colleagues analyzed 22 feline remains from 14 archaeological sites in China spanning a period of about 5,000 years. The researchers first sequenced nuclear and mitochondrial DNA in the bones to determine each species. Then, the researchers compared these results with previously published data from 63 nuclear and 108 mitochondrial genomes that summarize the evolution of cat genetics worldwide.

"This is by far the largest and most comprehensive study on small felids living closely with humans in China," Luo said. "Assembling the archaeological samples of cat remains from China across this time period [was] a highly challenging task."

Fourteen of the 22 feline bones from China belonged to domestic cats, according to the study, which was uploaded Feb. 5 to the preprint database BioRxiv and has not yet been peer reviewed. The oldest of these pet cat remains originated from Tongwan City in Shaanxi and was radiocarbon dated to A.D. 730, suggesting that domestic cats arrived in China long after the Han Dynasty had ended.

The 14 domestic cats in the sample all shared a genetic signature in their mitochondrial DNA known as clade IV-B. This signature is rare among domestic cats from Europe and Western Asia, but the researchers found a close match in the previously published data about a cat that lived sometime between A.D. 775 and 940 in the city of Dhzankent, Kazakhstan.

The Dhzankent cat is the oldest-known domestic cat along the Silk Road, offering tantalizing clues about the origins of domestic cats in China. The Silk Road's heyday lasted between A.D. 500 and 800, hinting that merchants likely transported the kitties to East Asia along this route.

Rare coat colors

The cats that merchants and diplomats initially gifted to the Chinese elite were likely all-white cats or mackerel-tabby cats with white patches, the researchers noted in the study. DNA from the Tongwan City cat suggested it was a healthy male with a long tail and short, either all-white or partially white fur, they said. Even today, the proportion of white cats is higher in East Asia than elsewhere in the world, the researchers added.

Domestic cats became so popular following their introduction to China that people incorporated them into Chinese folk religion, Luo said. "Ancient Chinese people even performed specific religious rituals when bringing a cat into their homes, viewing them not as mere possessions but as honored guests," she said.

Melinda Zeder, an archaeozoologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History who was not involved in the new research, told Science magazine that the work offers valuable insights into how domestic cats made it to China. "Tying them to the Silk Road is really boffo," Zeder said. "It's a knockout study."

The Phoenicians are famous for settling northern Africa and later battling Rome, but new excavations at the archaeological site of Kach Kouch reveal that northwestern Morocco was inhabited long before the Phoenicians arrived around 800 B.C.

The finds challenge "the notion of north-western Africa as terra nullius [uninhabited area] prior to Phoenician arrival," a team wrote in a study published Feb. 17 in the journal Antiquity. The excavations also suggest that when the Phoenicians arrived, they didn't just take over the site. Instead, evidence indicates that ancient people there built houses using a mix of Phoenician and local architectural styles.

The earliest evidence for habitation at Kach Kouch dates to between 2200 and 2000 B.C., the researchers found. Archaeologists found three pottery shards, a cow bone and a chipped stone that may be from a stone tool. However, it's unclear if there was a permanent settlement at Kach Kouch at that point in time, study first author Hamza Benattia, a researcher at the University of Barcelona who led the excavations at the site, told Live Science.

The next phase of human habitation at the site started around 1300 B.C., when humans returned to Kach Kouch and turned it into a flourishing settlement. The archaeologists found the remains of houses, made using a technique called "wattle-and-daub." Houses built using this technique have a wooden frame known as a "wattle," with a sticky earthen material known as a "daub" filling out the walls.

Related: Rare gold coins and cremated infants were possible sacrificial gifts to the ancient gods of Carthage

Part of Kach Kouch's success at that time came from people growing a variety of crops, including barley, wheat, beans and peas. More than 8,000 animal bones were found, indicating that people were raising a variety of animals, including cattle, sheep and goats, the researchers said.

Around 800 B.C., with the arrival of Phoenicians in the area, the site changed. Phoenician ceramics appeared at the site, and the architecture of the houses also evolved. Although people still built wattle-and-daub houses, they started building them on a stone base, known as a plinth, which is a Phoenician technique. This suggests that a "hybridization" of local and Phoenician culture occurred at the site, the team wrote in their paper. It's not clear if the site actually grew in size or what the Phoenicians themselves called it.

Kach Kouch was abandoned around 600 B.C., with no evidence of violence, the archaeologists wrote. New settlements were being established on the north coast of Africa at this time and it's possible that people moved to them, wrote researchers in their paper.

One Phoenician site that was growing in size was Carthage, located in Tunisia. Its people eventually fought a series of wars against the Roman Republic that led to Carthage's destruction in 146 B.C. As the Roman Republic spread across the Mediterranean, it took over Phoenician cities and towns across the region.

This leads to an interesting question: Could the metal suits worn by knights and other warriors block a bullet? Live Science contacted experts to find out.

Related: How fast is a bullet?

Armor vs. bullets

Exactly when the medieval period or "Middle Ages" started and ended is a matter of debate, with dates falling roughly between A.D. 500 and 1500. Although the period is traditionally associated with Europe, some historians also apply it to the Middle East and China.

In fact, gunpowder was first invented in China, possibly around 1,200 years ago. Weapons that used gunpowder gradually spread across Eurasia and started being used in Europe before the 14th century.

Meanwhile, different types of armor were being developed around the world. Perhaps the best known is plate armor, which consisted of interconnecting metal plates that covered a warrior's entire body. Plate armor was first used in Europe during the 13th century and became the dominant form of protection during the 15th century, according to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Knights' encounters with firearms during the Middle Ages were likely infrequent. "Firearms were indeed present in the Medieval period from the 13th to 15th century, but much less used [than in later centuries]," Jonathan Tavares, the Amy and Paul Carbone curator of the Applied Arts of Europe at the Art Institute of Chicago, told Live Science in an email.

But even if knights' encounters with firearms were uncommon, medieval armor may have offered some protection against a bullet.

"The Late Medieval-Early Modern Era, from around 1380 to about 1600, saw something of a technology race between gunsmiths and armourers," Roger Pauly, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas, told Live Science in an email. "As guns entered the scene, armor-makers began making stronger and more sophisticated armor. Gunsmiths, in turn, developed techniques to increase muzzle velocity, range, power etc."

Was medieval armor effective against bullets fired from guns? "A lot depended on if the armor was relatively new or if the firearm was a bit older or smaller in design," Pauly said. "My suspicion is that most pistols [from the time period] would be challenged to bust through a first rate set of armor."

Firearms during the Middle Ages could not propel bullets as fast or as frequently as modern day guns can.

There have been a few tests done on armor that dates to a bit after the Middle Ages. For instance, in 2017 a team working with the TV program Nova created a replica of a late-16th-century breastplate and a firearm from that time. In that episode, called "Secrets of the Shining Knight," they determined that the plate was able to stop a bullet.

Nowadays, body armor worn by soldiers is often designed to protect against bullets. Modern-day pieces of armor, such as bullet-proof vests, are effective because they slow the impact of projectiles and help absorb the impact: "When a bullet hits body armor, the tough layered fibers that make up the armor decelerate the bullet and spread out its force," according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Armor was not as sophisticated in medieval times, and it seems that most of the armor that could have stopped a bullet was developed after the medieval period, said Tavares. "There are many 16th- and 17th-century field armors both for infantry and cavalry that may have been successful in stopping lead ball from black powder arms," Tavares said.

Whereas armorers in Europe tried to keep up with gunsmiths, armorers in China did not. "Medieval Chinese armor does not appear to have changed in response to firearms," Peter Lorge, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, told Live Science in an email. Armor capable of protecting against bullets was expensive, and armies in medieval China tended to incorporate vast numbers of soldiers from common backgrounds, Lorge noted.

Armor that could protect against bullets "was only available to very wealthy men, so perhaps the very different composition of Chinese armies [with] mass armies of commoners, did not allow for such expensive defensive measures," Lorge said. Medieval Chinese armies both used and encountered firearms such as the "firelance," a tube filled with gunpowder that fired off debris.

The new dates, which range from 25,830 to 26,600 B.C., change what archaeologists initially thought about the burial rituals surrounding the "Lapedo child" in what is now Portugal.

"The death of the child may have triggered a declaration of the place as taboo or as unsuitable for mundane hunting activities, leading to people avoiding it until such time as the event faded from social memory," João Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona, told Live Science in an email. Zilhão and colleagues published the new dates Friday (March 7) in the journal Science Advances.

The child's skeleton was discovered in 1998 in the Lagar Velho rock-shelter in the Lapedo Valley of central Portugal. When paleoanthropologists removed the bones from the dirt, they immediately noticed that the child's skeleton had a "mosaic" of Neanderthal and human features, suggesting it was a hybrid individual. For example, the child had a prominent chin like humans' but short, stocky legs like Neanderthals'.

In the late 1990s, the discovery of a hybrid child and associated burial ritual was not immediately accepted as a valid interpretation of the Lapedo site. The Lapedo child was found a decade before the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced — a feat that paved the way for a better understanding of interbreeding between humans and our extinct cousins. We now know from ancient DNA that Neanderthals and humans interbred multiple times over thousands of years.

Related: Did we kill the Neanderthals? New research may finally answer an age-old question.

One issue that has plagued researchers' study of the Lapedo child is the difficulty of dating it. Four previous attempts were made using traditional radiocarbon-dating methods to narrow down the time frame of the burial, but problems with poor preservation and methodology could produce only a broad range of 20,000 to 26,000 years before present — much more recent than expected based on dates from nearby animal bones.

But using a novel method called compound-specific radiocarbon analysis (CSRA), researchers have determined that the Lapedo child lived thousands of years earlier than initially thought.

Study first author Bethan Linscott, a geochemist at the University of Miami, told Live Science in an email that, although the CSRA method has been around awhile, it's only recently been used to redate Neanderthal sites where modern carbon has contaminated the ancient samples.

"The key benefit of compound-specific radiocarbon dating is that it is extremely efficient at removing contamination from archaeological bones," Linscott said. "This is especially important when dealing with poorly preserved bones because even trace amounts of contamination present in such samples can seriously impact the accuracy of the date."

Bunny bones

The team then took their research a step further by redating three things that excavators assumed were part of the Lapedo child's burial ritual: a young rabbit whose bones were found on top of the child, red deer bones discovered near the child's shoulder, and charcoal underneath the child's legs that was assumed to have been a ritual fire.

The researchers discovered, however, that only the rabbit bones were contemporaneous with the Lapedo child, while the charcoal and red deer bones were much older, suggesting they were already present at the site when the child was buried.

As a result of the new dating technique, the researchers hypothesized that the bunny was placed on top of the shrouded body of the Lapedo child as an offering before the grave was filled roughly 28,000 years ago. The site was then abandoned for at least two millennia.

"While we do not have any genetic evidence from Lagar Velho, providing additional confirmation on the age of the site allows us to better understand, on the basis of morphology, how the process of replacement of Neanderthals by Homo sapiens may have played out," Adam Van Arsdale, a paleoanthropologist at Wellesley College who was not involved in the study, told Live Science by email.

Researchers are figuring out the exact amount of overlap in time between the two groups and whether specific features shared from one group to the other were advantageous, especially given that Neanderthals went extinct around 40,000 years ago but modern humans persisted.

Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?

Researchers found thousands of ancient irrigation canals up to 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) long carved into the landscape near Basra in Iraq, which at the time was the Eridu region of Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians occupied this region along the vast Euphrates river from the sixth millennium B.C. (8,000 to 7,000 years ago) to the early first millennium B.C. (3,000 to 2,000 years ago).

The canals provide researchers with rare insights into the ancient practices of Mesopotamians, according to a statement released by Durham University in the U.K., one of the universities involved in the research.

"This ground-breaking discovery not only enhances our understanding of ancient irrigation systems but also highlights the ingenuity and adaptability of early farmers," Durham University said in the statement.

The researchers published their findings Feb. 18 in the journal Antiquity.

Related: What's the world's oldest civilization?

Mesopotamia was a historical region that included parts of modern-day Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Kuwait. "Mesopotamia" is an ancient Greek word that can be translated to "the land between two rivers." Those rivers were the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flowed from eastern Turkey to the Persian Gulf.

Along the Euphrates river was Ancient Babylon, which sat at the heart of the Mesopotamian civilization around 2000 B.C. to 540 B.C., and the even more ancient city of Eridu, founded closer to the Persian Gulf around 5,400 B.C. The newly discovered canals were carved out of the sides of the Euphrates and supplied farms in the Eridu region. That was until the river shifted course, drying out the region and leaving the canal trenches behind, according to the study.

"A shift in the ancient course of the Euphrates River left this region dry and consequently unoccupied after the early first millennium BC until now," the study authors wrote. "This has allowed the archaeological landscape of this region to remain intact and thus we were able to identify and map a vast, intensive and well-developed network of irrigation canals that pre-date the early first millennium BC."

The researchers traced these canals using satellite imagery, geological maps, drone footage and other techniques. In total, they found more than 200 primary and secondary canals and more than 4,000 smaller canals connected to the main channels. They also identified more than 700 farms, which typically had small canals around their perimeters, according to the study.

The study authors noted that though the network is vast, the canals were probably not in use at the same time.

"This reconstructed network of irrigation canals represents the combined agricultural activities for all the periods of occupation in the region and it is unlikely that all of the canals were running simultaneously during the entire occupation period (i.e. from the sixth until the early first millennium BC)," the study authors wrote.

The child — nicknamed "Pangpond," after a Thai cartoon character — was likely living with their family of hunter-gatherers near the coast before their untimely death. Both the skeleton and the method of burial are revealing groundbreaking information about Stone Age Thailand.

The discovery was announced last month at a news conference held by the Thai government's Fine Arts Department and Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. The skeleton, along with numerous cave paintings, was found at the Tham Din (Earthen Cave) archaeological site in Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park.

In 2020, archaeologists began studying paintings made in red ocher on the walls and ceiling of three chambers at Tham Din, according to the Prachuap Post. Most of the paintings represented people, and some were depicted using bows and arrows to hunt animals such as deer and monkeys. The stones and red ocher may be symbols of blood and power, lead archaeologist Kannika Premjai told the Bangkok Post.

When excavations began in 2022, archaeologists noticed animal bones, shells, seeds and stones that suggested that prehistoric humans used the cave. Radiocarbon dating of the material suggested they lived there from about 29,000 to 11,000 years ago, although it is unclear precisely when the cave paintings were made.

Beneath those artifacts, archaeologists recently discovered the burial of a modern human (Homo sapiens) child, around 6 to 8 years old, who was stretched out on their back, with their arms and legs close to their body. Thai Fine Arts Department archaeologists said that this specific positioning of the body likely indicates the corpse was wrapped or tied before burial, as reported by Thai PBS World.

Related: New, big-headed archaic humans discovered: Who is Homo juluensis?

The presence of ash and charcoal in the grave suggests that, once the body was placed in the prepared grave, a fire was built around it. The idea was to smoke the body in order to drive away wild animals and eliminate the odor of decomposition, the Prachuap Post reported.

The burial's location below the already-dated organic remains suggests the child lived during the late Pleistocene epoch, more than 29,000 years ago, Kannika told the Bangkok Post.

"This is a groundbreaking discovery that will reshape our understanding of early human presence in Southeast Asia," Phnombootra Chandrajoti, director general of the Fine Arts Department, said in a statement, according to Thai PBS World. "The careful burial and the associated artifacts provide invaluable insights into the rituals and daily lives of these ancient inhabitants."

In addition to being the oldest human burial discovered to date in Thailand, Pangpond sheds light on human adaptation and survival in a region that is now largely submerged. Sea levels in the late Pleistocene were significantly lower than they are today, making bare a landmass called Sundaland that connected swaths of Southeast Asia during the last ice age, approximately 110,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Evidence shows Tham Din has a long history of human occupation, from the burial of Pangpond in the late Pleistocene to farming communities in the Holocene (11,700 years ago to the present day). The site shows the importance of continued excavation in this region for gaining a better understanding of early humans' dispersal, experts noted at the news conference.

The Thai Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation plans to protect the Tham Din archaeological site and eventually open it for tourism and educational purposes, Phnombootra said at the news conference.

A team found the pot at Karnak Temple, a complex near Luxor (ancient Thebes). The temple was initially built around 4,000 years ago and was continuously expanded, renovated and modified over millennia. A number of deities were worshipped at the site, including Amun, the chief god of Thebes.

The finds include beads, amulets and statuettes, many of which are gold, according to a translated statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

They "were discovered in the northwestern sector of the Karnak Temple complex," Abdelghaffar Wagdy, an archaeologist with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities who is co-leader of the team, told Live Science in an email. "This area is suspected to have housed administrative and storage facilities."

One of the most remarkable finds is a gold statuette that depicts the deities Amun, Khonsu and Mut standing beside each other. These gods were a family: Amun was the chief god of Thebes, his wife Mut was a mother goddess, and their son Khonsu was a moon god. All three gods were associated with Thebes, and depictions of the three together have been found in previous excavations in Egypt. The statuette may have been worn on the neck like an amulet, Wagdy said.

"The depiction of the Theban Triad on the amulet likely symbolizes the devotion to the divine family of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu," Wagdy said, noting that the person who owned it may have been hoping to receive divine protection.

Related: 13 ancient Egyptian mummies found with gold tongues to help them talk in the afterlife

"The golden triad of Amun, Mut and Khonsu is intricately designed and is right at home in Karnak Temple, as [this] cult temple is dedicated for the [worship] of these three deities," said Shelby Justl, an Egyptologist and lecturer in the critical writing program at the University of Pennsylvania who is not part of the excavation team.

Some of the amulets found in the pot are wadjet (also spelled wedjet) amulets, which are eye-shaped amulets that "for the Egyptians, imbues healing power and symbolizes rebirth," Justl told Live Science. "An amulet in this shape was thought to protect its wearer and to transfer the power of regeneration onto him or her."

Why was the jewelry buried in a pot?

It's unclear why the jewelry was buried in a pot. "The collection appears to be typical of a rare type of 'cache' or 'hoard' of valuable precious metals buried for uncertain reasons," Peter Brand, a history professor at the University of Memphis in Tennessee who is not part of the excavation team, told Live Science in an email.

Wagdy said there are a number of possibilities, including that the jewelry could be votive offerings given to the deities during a ritual. Or perhaps they were a donation to the temple treasury. Another possibility is that they were buried for safekeeping during a time of political unrest in the area.

"Finding so many beautifully crafted items of gold together and in a location associated with the living and not a grave is rare," Justl said, noting that it's possible that the jewelry was manufactured in nearby workshops and sealed in the pot to prevent the items from being stolen.

Jack Ogden, a jewelry historian who has conducted extensive research on Egyptian jewelry but is not part of the excavation team, noted that the jewelry seems to have been designed for burial and not everyday wear.

"The goldwork appears from the photos to be fairly flimsy, so one suspects that it was purely funerary," Ogden said. The area near Karnak Temple contains many tombs, Ogden said, and it's possible that an ancient grave robber stole the jewelry but had to unexpectedly hide their stash.

"One explanation is that it was an ancient tomb robber's haul concealed for safety but never recovered," Ogden said. "It would be useful for whoever studies it all to try to work out if the breaks and damage were likely caused by less-than-gentle removal from a mummy."

The tools, made from hippo and elephant leg bones, were discovered at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and are a million years older than any previously found shaped bone tools.

The hominins who created these tools "knew how to incorporate technical innovations by adapting their knowledge of stone work to the manipulation of bone remains," study first author Ignacio de la Torre, a paleolithic archaeologist at the Centre for Human and Social Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council, said in a statement. The finding indicates "advances in the cognitive abilities and mental structures of these hominins."

The researchers studied 27 bone fragments that had been turned into tools through a process used in stone tool manufacturing called knapping. This technique involves using one larger stone to break pieces off a smaller stone, achieving a sharp edge around the latter.

Although evidence of stone tool knapping goes back at least 3.3 million years in East Africa, only a handful of bone tools shaped by the same process have been found, likely because bone usually decays over time. These fragments of bone may have been preserved because they were buried quickly.

But when de la Torre and colleagues looked closely at more than two dozen bits of bone, they were able to show that the removal of bone flakes was not caused by carnivore activity but by hominins purposely shaping the bone. They published their findings Wednesday (March 5) in the journal Nature.

Related: 1.5 million-year-old footprints reveal our Homo erectus ancestors lived with a 2nd proto-human species

The researchers were further able to narrow down the species of animals used to make the bone tools: eight were made out of elephant bones, six from hippos and two from a cow-like species. Since most of the non-tool animal bones were from bovids, this suggests that the elephant and hippo bones were specifically selected for their tool-making properties, such as their length and thickness.

Tools made from elephant bones range from 8.6 to 15 inches (22 to 38 centimeters) long, while the hippo bone tools are slightly shorter at 7 to 11.8 inches (18 to 30 cm) long. These may have been used as heavy-duty tools for processing animal carcasses, the researchers suggested. But it's unclear which hominin species made the tools — both Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei lived in the Olduvai Gorge region 1.5 million years ago, long before modern humans appeared on the scene.

The discovery of knapped bone tools over a million years earlier than expected has important consequences for our understanding of human evolution, according to the study. Prior to creating large stone tools like hand-axes, it appears that early hominins tested out their knapping skills on bone, an innovation that had previously been invisible at archaeological sites in East Africa.

"We were excited to find these bone tools from such an early timeframe," study co-author Renata Peters, an archaeologist at University College London, said in the statement. "It means that human ancestors were capable of transferring skills from stone to bone, a level of complex cognition that we haven't seen elsewhere for another million years."

Human evolution quiz: What do you know about Homo sapiens?

The wreck at Landfjärden, south of Stockholm, is one of five in the area that have been known since the 1800s. They were commonly thought to have been from ships dating to the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066).

But last year, maritime archaeologists at Vrak, the museum of wrecks in Stockholm, revealed that four of the wrecks date to the 1600s and 1700s and that the oldest wreck was built before 1480 and perhaps as early as the 1460s, museum curator and project manager Håkan Altrock said in a statement.

"It's a large ship, likely about 35 metres [115 feet] long and 10 metres [33 feet] wide," he said. "The ship's frame still rises high above the seabed, and in the stern, both the sternpost and rudder remain upright."

Related: 32 haunting shipwrecks from the ancient world

New shipbuilding technique

The most significant aspect of the wreck, now known as "Vrak 5," is that it was built in the "carvel" style, with planks on the hull that were flush with neighboring planks so that the whole hull surface was relatively smooth, Altrock said.

By contrast, traditional Nordic ships, such as Viking longships, were built in the "clinker" style with overlapping planks, which had made them light and relatively flexible.

But the use of carvel-style flush planks — an innovation from the Mediterranean dating to about the seventh century A.D. — meant that a ship's hull could be reinforced with framing to make it stronger. This was an important consideration when ships started carrying cannons in the 15th century, Altrock said, so traditional "clinker-built" ships soon became obsolete.

Important wreck

These details make Vrak 5 key to understanding the transition from clinker-built to carvel-built ships — an important period in Sweden's maritime history, Altrock said.

"We plan to apply for external funding for an excavation," he said. "This ship represents a fascinating link between medieval and modern shipbuilding."

The new analysis also showed that the trees used for the wood in Vrak 5 had been felled in Sweden's southern Kalmar region or in the nearby Blekinge region, Altrock said.

The Vrak archaeologists have also made a digital model of the wreck using photogrammetry — a technique that combines digital photographs so that their positions are reflected in three dimensions — and the results are now online.

Archaeologists found the five ceramic figurines, depicting four females and one male, on top of a large pyramidal structure in 2022. The unexpected find, reported in the journal Antiquity on Wednesday (March 5), initially appeared to be part of lavish burial offerings. But because the archaeologists found no human remains onsite, the puppets' location at the tallest pyramid at the site instead hints that they were used for public rituals, the archaeologists said.

"One of the most striking features of the puppets is their dramatic facial expression, which changes depending on the angle that we look at them from," study lead author Jan Szymański, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw, said in a statement. At eye-level, the puppets appear angry; from above, they appear to be grinning; from below, they look scared. "This is a conscious design, perhaps meant to enhance the gamut of ritual performances the puppets could have been used in," Szymański said.

Three of the five puppets are each nearly 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall, while the others are shorter at 0.6 feet (18 cm) and 0.3 feet (10 cm) in height. The three larger figurines are depicted naked and don't have hair or jewelry, but the two smaller ones are fashioned with "locks of hair on their foreheads and earspools in the lobes," the researchers wrote in the study.

The larger figurines have movable heads and open mouths, like modern toy dolls, and may have been used in a theatrical scene or tableau to convey messages or stories from "readily decodable events, mythical or real," that are now lost, the archaeologists wrote. It was unclear whether these figures represent actual individuals.

Related: What's hidden inside the ancient Maya pyramids?

Apart from the five intact figurines, the archaeologist also found figurine fragments in other parts of the excavation site. The upper part of the smallest figurine from the tableau fits into a hollow torso figure, which the archaeologists speculated could be elements of a birth reenactment scene.

This is only the second time that researchers have found ceramic figurines like these in their original location, and "the first to feature a male figure," Szymański said. The first discovery was of six broken but complete female figurines that other archaeologists found in 2012 at a burial site in the western Guatemalan highlands. Those figurines date to the late Middle Preclassical period (350 to 100 B.C.).

The El Salvador finds, which date to around 400 B.C. suggest that this kind of puppet may have been used in rituals during the Preclassic (2000 B.C. to A.D. 200) and Classic (A.D. 200 to 900) periods in Central America. Their style and material, similar to those found in Guatemala, suggests a shared tradition and connections between the elites of the time, according to the archaeologists.

El Salvador was thought to be isolated

Around A.D. 400 to 500, many of El Salvador's artifacts were lost or buried in volcanic ashes when the Ilopango volcano erupted and unleashed pyroclastic flows — a mixture of volcanic gases, ash and rocks. The massive eruption released 10 times the volume of material as Mount Vesuvius' eruption in Pompeii in A.D. 79 and killed all life within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the volcano, a 2020 study in the journal PNAS found.

Because of the devastation caused by the volcano, as well as the region's high population density today, which limits archaeological digs, "very little is known about the identities and ethnolinguistic affiliations of the creators of ancient settlements that predate the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th century," Szymański said. This lack of evidence led some to believe that El Salvador might not share the same political or social beliefs that neighboring countries had.

But the discovery of the figurines suggests that ancient people in what is now El Slavador had ties with other parts of Central America. Other artifacts found at the El Salvador site, including jade pendants, are similar to those found at archaeological sites in modern-day Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, indicating cultural and trade connections between El Salvador and its neighbors, the researchers found.

"This discovery contradicts the prevailing notion about El Salvador's cultural backwardness or isolation in the ancient times," Szymański said. "It reveals the existence of vibrant and far-reaching communities capable of exchanging ideas with remarkably distant places."

The most famous ruler featured in the hoard is arguably the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (reigned from A.D. 161 to 180), while his wife, Faustina II, is portrayed on a coin of her own. Aurelius, one of the "five good emperors of Rome," is best known for writing his "Meditations" and thoughts on Stoic philosophy.

Adrian Marsden, a coin specialist at the Norfolk Historic Environment Service, which is part of the regional government, said the coins were found near the village of Barton Bendish in the county of Norfolk, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the town of King's Lynn.

Each of the 16 coins is a denarius — the standard Roman coin — and Marsden estimates that the entire horde would have been worth the equivalent of a few hundred dollars at the time. "It's a reasonable sum of money, but it's not life changing," he told Live Science.

The coin hoard was unearthed in 2023 and handed over in March 2024 to the Norfolk authorities, who announced the find on March 1. The hoard is now the subject of an inquest in which a judicial official will determine if it can officially be considered "treasure" — which in England refers to metallic artifacts or coins that are at least 300 years old and are at least 10% gold or silver by weight. If it is officially "treasure" then the coins may be turned over to a museum at King's Lynn and the finders and landowners could be compensated.

Related: 32 stunning centuries-old hoards unearthed by metal detectorists

Roman Norfolk

Norfolk was an important part of Roman Britain, with many large villas that acted as the hubs of farming estates, Marsden said. One of Britain's longest Roman roads passed through the region; and the west of Norfolk, in particular, was considered prime land for farming because the soil there was fertile.

The Roman coin hoard may have been buried at the time for safekeeping, which was a common practice in an era when there were no banks. It's also possible that a person lost a purse that held the coins: "This [explanation] would work for something this size," Marsden said.

Stable value

The analysis of the coins shows the earliest was made in about 57 B.C., during the late stages of the Roman Republic when Roman officials were ostensibly elected by popular vote. The latest coins date from the reign of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and were made in A.D. 175 or 176.

Roman coins were not dated as most modern coins are, but the dates when they were minted were well known to modern numismatists (coin experts), Marsden said. And while many of the coins portray the Roman emperor at the time they were made, two of them instead portray the emperors' wives — Faustina I, the wife of the emperor Antoninus Pius, and Faustina II, the wife of Marcus Aurelius, he said.

A hoard that contains coins spanning more than 200 years is a sign that the Roman currency at the time was relatively stable, Marsden said. Hoards from times when the Roman currency was being devalued — when more base metals were added to the silver — tended to have coins only from a specific time.

If that were the case here, the older coins with more silver would have been taken out and then melted for their precious metal. But the silver content of the oldest and youngest coins in this hoard seem to have been about the same, he said.

The coins come from the beginning of a "non-fiduciary" period when the silver metal in one denarius was about equal to the value as currency of the denarius itself. At that time, everyday purchases might be made for so many denarius coins, or denarii, Marsden said. But it was likely that the coins would have been weighed out for large transactions. Modern coins are "fiduciary" because the metal they contain is worth only a fraction of their value as currency, which is backed by a modern financial system, he said.

"This is an extraordinary find," Sidsel Wåhlin, curator at the Vesthimmerlands Museum and excavation co-leader, said in a statement. "The timber circle provides valuable insights into the ritual practices and social structures of this internationally connected prehistoric society."

The newly uncovered circle consists of 45 postholes spaced roughly 6.5 feet (2 meters) apart, according to the statement, for a diameter of about 100 feet (30 m). Although no wood remains standing, experts guess that large, upright timbers had been placed in the small holes.

Timber circles, or wood henges, are somewhat mysterious, as no records have been left to explain what they were used for. But these henges have been found across northwestern Europe, particularly in the British Isles, where butchered animal bones and domestic waste found at some sites suggest people engaged in rituals and feasted there.

Woodhenge, located a couple of miles from Stonehenge, is perhaps the best-known timber circle. It was constructed of six concentric ovals of posts around 2500 B.C., roughly the same time as Stonehenge and, like Stonehenge, is thought to align with the summer solstice.

Related: 'Exceptionally rare' 1,500-year-old Roman helmet found in chief's burial in Denmark

"The timber circle is not only a significant archaeological discovery but also a window into the past, offering us a glimpse of the ceremonial and ritual activities of our ancestors," excavation manager Andreas Bo Nielsen said in the statement.

Archaeological excavation of the postholes has already begun, with a goal of better understanding the construction and use of the timber circle. Vesthimmerlands Museum plans to share details of the excavation and findings later this year.

The new henge in Vesthimmerland, Denmark, has not been fully studied, but its shape implies that there were strong connections between northern Europe and England as early as the Late Neolithic period.

Stonehenge quiz: What do you know about the ancient monument?

Excavations of a series of crypts at the Byzantine monastery at Khirbat el-Masani, about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) northwest of the Old City of Jerusalem, revealed the skeletons of several men, women and children. One tomb contained the poorly preserved bones of an individual wrapped in chains. The corpse was not constrained for nefarious reasons, archaeologists suggested. Rather, the chains were used by the person during life to limit mobility as a part of a religious ascetic lifestyle. Initially, the Israel Antiquities Authority, which oversaw the dig, reported that this individual was male.

After Christianity became the main religion of the Roman Empire in A.D. 380, there was a surge of new monasteries and asceticism, in which monks abstained from worldly pleasures for spiritual purposes. A common practice of asceticism involved living at the top of a pillar while preaching and praying, often with heavy chains worn around the body.

In a study published in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers studied the bones in the chain-filled burial with the goal of confirming the person was male. But they got a big surprise: the person was probably female.

"The use of chains by male ascetics is widely documented," study co-author Elisabetta Boaretto, an archaeologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told Live Science in an email, but "it's much rarer to find accounts of women using chains in the same way."

Related: 1,800-year-old silver amulet could rewrite history of Christianity in the early Roman Empire

The person appeared to be between 30 and 60 years old at the time of death, but the bones were poorly preserved. So the researchers analyzed peptides — short chains of amino acids — in the person's tooth enamel to figure out their sex.

They found the presence of AMELX, an X-chromosome gene involved in enamel development, but no evidence of AMELY, the Y-chromosome gene that codes for the same thing. This meant the person very likely had two X chromosomes and was female.

"It is important to note that our results only show biological sex identification and not gender preference," the researchers wrote in the study.

Female ascetics are known from historical records, the study authors said, particularly among nobility starting in the fourth century. However, women in ascetic communities tended to pursue their spiritual paths in different ways that were generally less extreme than those practiced by men, Boaretto said. Prayer, fasting and meditation were more likely to be integral to women's spiritual journeys.

As physical restraints, chains were a more extreme way to practice asceticism, Boaretto said, as they were meant to keep the body in check and the spirit focused. "By restricting their physical movements, they created space for their minds and hearts to turn solely to God," she said.

Although other chained burials of ascetics have been discovered in the past, the identification of a woman buried in this way is highly unusual.

"The chains were likely viewed as integral to her identity as an ascetic," Boaretto said, and her burial "may have served to honor her ascetic life and ensure that her spiritual commitment continued to be recognized even after death."

What do you know about Jesus Christ, the man? Test your knowledge of biblical archaeology

What it is: A decorated mask carved from driftwood

Where it is from: Southwestern Alaska

When it was made: These masks date to at least the 16th century; the one photographed above dates to 1885.

Related: Croesus stater: The 2,500-year-old coin that introduced the gold standard

What it tells us about the past:

The Yup'ik people, whose ancestors arrived in southwestern Alaska around 800 years ago, are known for their elaborate and often-fantastical-looking masks. But this artistic tradition was nearly eradicated in the late 1700s, as Russian missionaries likened the masks and their associated ceremonies to witchcraft.

Yup'ik masks vary dramatically in size and shape, anthropologist Dorothy Jean Ray wrote in her 1967 book "Eskimo Masks: Art and Ceremony," with some as small as 6 inches (15 centimeters) and others up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) long. These masks were traditionally carved from spruce driftwood found along the coast, with natural fibers added for movement — undulating feathers of the sea duck, rawhide or baleen for appendages, or human or caribou hair blowing in the wind. Color was added from natural pigments, such as white fingerprint dots created from white clay.

The first historic reference to Yup'ik masks was in a Russian traveler's diary written between 1764 and 1766, in which the man described the Yup'ik dancing in the nude while wearing masks.

Masks were an essential part of Yup'ik religious practice, according to Ray, and no two were alike. Typically, the Yup'ik shaman would commission a skilled carver to create a mask based on a dream or vision. Villagers then wore these masks during dances and festivals, such as whaling and caribou ceremonies connected to hunting practices.

Each mask represented a particular spirit and was a part of a larger story woven by the shaman, who was the interpreter of the world's unknown forces. Highly distorted, human-face-like masks were often used to represent other mythological beings; an upturned mouth represented male beings, while a downturned mouth represented female beings.

By the late 1700s, according to Ray, Russian priests and missionaries reportedly destroyed as many Yup'ik masks as they could find in their zeal to convert the Indigenous people to Christianity. Some masks survived, only to be collected by American naturalist Edward W. Nelson beginning in 1877 and shipped to museums in North America and Europe.

It is unclear how old the practice of Yup'ik mask making is, as the custom following their use in a ceremony was to dispose of the masks in the tundra or burn them, according to Yup'ik culture bearers. But archaeologists found evidence of masks dating to the 16th century at a prehistoric site in the village of Quinhagak near the Bering Sea.

Although Yup'ik mask making was demonized by missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice is being revitalized today as local community members reclaim their precolonial practices.

So when did the first modern humans reach each of the seven continents?

Out of Africa

The accepted ideas about human evolution today are the "Out of Africa" theories, which propose that H. sapiens evolved in Africa and spread to the other continents, sometimes displacing or mating with other members of the Homo genus — known as hominins — as they did so.

Some scientists once considered the "multiregional" hypothesis (also known as the "candelabra" hypothesis) which proposed that H. sapiens also evolved in other places, including in Europe and Asia. But the multiregional hypothesis is now rejected, said paleoanthropologist Michael Petraglia, director of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University in Brisbane.

"There is no support for the multiregional or candelabra model of human evolution," he told Live Science. "All evidence points to the origin and movement of Homo sapiens out of Africa."

According to recent studies, H. sapiens evolved from earlier hominins in Africa about 300,000 years ago, and our species first dispersed from there about 200,000 years ago, or roughly 100,000 years after it evolved, Petraglia said.

Related: When did Homo sapiens first appear?

Into Asia

Our species first spread from Africa into the eastern Mediterranean region, probably through the Sinai region between Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Although the Sinai is a desert now, scientists think it was much greener when anatomically modern humans first traveled there.

Another hypothesis suggested early modern humans migrated from Africa via a land bridge at the southern end of the Red Sea, across the Bab el Mandeb (Arabic for "Gate of Grief") and into the Arabian Peninsula, which is also thought to have been greener hundreds of thousands of years ago. A study published in 2006, however, established that there had been no such land bridge. But the researchers noted that the Bab el Mandeb had always been only a few miles wide, and so it was possible that people had floated or paddled across.

From the eastern Mediterranean, H. sapiens quickly spread east into Asia. Petraglia told Live Science in an email that multiple waves of early humans may have established themselves along the nearest coastlines of Asia by more than 100,000 years ago, then moved into its interior regions. Between 54,000 years ago and 44,000 years ago, some H. sapiens bred with Denisovans, another early human species, and so gene variants from Denisovans now appear in the genomes of many Asians.

Into Europe

The earliest evidence of H. sapiens in Europe is from Apidima Cave in southern Greece and dates to about 210,000 years ago, Martin Richards, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Huddersfield in the U.K., told Live Science. But if that dating is accurate, it may be from a very early wave of migrating H. sapiens that died off or retreated during a glaciation, he said in an email.

Scientists generally accept that our species arrived in Europe permanently between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago and that, during this time, they bred with and replaced the existing population of their close cousins, the Neanderthals.

Into Oceania

Mitochondrial DNA dating has indicated that H. sapiens arrived in Southeast Asia about 60,000 years ago, Richards said. From there, they spread into the prehistoric Sunda and Sahul regions that became Southeast Asia and Australia, which were mostly dry land at that time.

Archaeological evidence indicates that modern humans were in the New Guinea region up to 50,000 years ago. Scientists now think they spread from there throughout the Pacific Islands in waves of migration that included the Lapita expansion about 3,000 years ago and the Polynesian expansion from about 1,500 years ago.

Into North America

The leading theory of the origins of Indigenous North Americans was once that "Paleo-Indian" people had arrived about 13,000 years ago from Siberia by traveling over a land bridge called Beringia, to Alaska. But archaeologists have now discovered evidence of pre-Clovis settlements and even older human footprints from New Mexico that suggest the first North Americans arrived by that route, and perhaps along the Pacific coast, at least 23,000 years ago.

Into South America

Archaeological and genetic evidence indicates early modern humans spread from North America through Central America to South America, where fossils and archaeological artifacts suggest they'd arrived by about 15,000 years ago; the well-studied site of Monte Verde II in southern Chile, for example, dates to about 14,550 years ago. However, some scientists debate the date of the first human arrival in South America.

To Antarctica

Conventionally, the first person in Antarctica was the American sealer and explorer John Davis, who reportedly reached the seventh continent in 1821. However, his claim is disputed. Instead, it might have been the Norwegian businessman Henrik Bull or the Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink, both of whom claimed to have gone there in 1895. There's also an idea that early Māori sailed to Antarctica from New Zealand as early as the seventh century, but this is not accepted by many historians and scientists.

Human evolution quiz: What do you know about Homo sapiens?

The wall, which runs through a narrow mountain pass in the eastern province of Shandong, was first constructed in around 800 B.C. At that time, it was about 33 feet (10 meters) wide. But it was expanded during the Warring States period (circa 475 to 221 B.C.) to be about 100 feet (30 m) wide, the Chinese news outlet Global Times reported.

The archaeologists also found the remains of houses, roads and trenches nearby. The team discovered the wall's age by radiocarbon-dating animal bones and plant remains from the same layer.

The Global Times, among others, said that this pushes back the construction of the Great Wall of China back by 300 years. However, experts that Live Science contacted disputed this. (Live Science reached out to the Global Times for comment, but it did not respond by the time of publication.)

This newly found wall "is, of course, not 'the Great Wall of China,'" Gideon Shelach-Lavi, a professor of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science in an email. The newfound wall was built at a time when China was divided into a number of different states that were often at war with each other. Shelach Lavi noted that the different states often constructed walls during these conflicts.

One of these walls is called the "Great Wall of Qi," also known as the "Long Wall of Qi," which runs east-west through Shandong province, roughly from Pingyin county to the Pacific Ocean. The exact length of the wall is unclear, but it would have been more than 200 miles (322 km).

Related: Ancient Chinese burials with swords and chariot cast light on violent 'Warring States' period

But the newfound fortification is not part of the Great Wall of Qi, either, as that was built later, in around 441 B.C., Yuri Pines, a professor of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science.

Pines called the newly unearthed wall a "very important" discovery and noted that it is at a narrow mountain pass that could have been used to invade the state of Qi. The new find suggests that there was a permanent garrison at the pass, likely made up of Qi soldiers, and that they built a narrow wall to try to block the pass.

"That the garrison tried to wall the narrow pass northward is indeed very interesting," Pines said. "But this is not a Long Wall, surely nothing on a par with the subsequent effort." While the newly discovered wall fortified a single narrow mountain pass, the Long Wall of Qi ran for more than 200 miles.

Live Science contacted archaeologists who discovered the 2,800-year-old wall remains but has not heard back at time of publication.

Great walls

The Great Wall of Qi was built by Qi, a state that was based in northern China, Pines wrote in a 2018 paper published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. The wall protected Qi from invasions by other states south of the wall. While its exact route is unclear it ran east-west through Shandong province.

Construction of the Great Wall of China started during the reign of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who ruled from around 221 to 210 B.C. The wall was later modified and renovated during the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) UNESCO reports. It was built to protect China from nomadic groups that lived north of China.

When he started construction of the Great Wall, the first emperor made use of earlier walls built by the different states — including the Great Wall of Qi — and connected parts of them together to help build the Great Wall of China, UNESCO notes.