Topic description and stories

Fashion for pointy shoes unleashed a plague of bunions in medieval Britain

11 Jun 2021

Researchers analysing skeletal remains in Cambridge find a dramatic increase in ‘hallux valgus’ around the time that pointed shoes became de rigueur...

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Left: Skull of a man found lying prone in the lagoons sediments. The skull has multiple lesions consistent with wounds from a blunt implement. Right: The skull in situ.

Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare

20 Jan 2016

Skeletal remains of a group of foragers massacred around 10,000 years ago on the shores of a lagoon is unique evidence of a violent encounter between...

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Skull of a man with multiple lesions on the side, probably caused by a club.

Opinion: Finding a hunter-gatherer massacre scene that may change history of human warfare

19 Jan 2016

Marta Mirazon Lahr (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies) discusses the discovery, made by her and her team, of the oldest known case of...

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Right: excavation deep down into the latrine by the Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem. Left: Taenia tapeworm egg in the latrine indicating either pork or beef tapeworm.

Human parasites found in medieval cesspit reveal links between Middle East and Europe

19 Mar 2015

Analysis of a latrine in Jerusalem that dates back over 500 years finds human parasites common in northern Europe yet very rare in Middle East at the...

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Isampur

The thinking hominid

01 Feb 2008

The discovery in southern India of a well-preserved quarry dating from a million years ago is helping researchers to answer: how intelligent were our...

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Camp Fire

A strange way to share food

01 Apr 2007

Close scrutiny of the ancient remains of our ancestors’ meals gives us some sense of the development and rationale behind our strange food-sharing...

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