Category: Arch/ Anthro

Archaeologists from the University of Bologna have developed a system of AI algorithms that can identify previously undiscovered archaeological sites in the southern Mesopotamian plain. Deep learning has found multiple uses in every field of application. In the context of archaeology, it can help in classifying objects and text, finding similarities, building 3D models, and…

The seven aerophones discovered at Eynan-Mallaha. Credit: © Laurent Davin Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team, are the subject of an article published on 9 June…

Perforated bones excavated at an ancient settlement in northern Israel may be the oldest wind instruments found in the region. The small flutes could have been used to make music, call birds or even communicate over short distances, the researchers suggest June 9 in Scientific Reports. The instruments were unearthed from the remains of small…

Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have uncovered a Toltec settlement in the town of El Salitre near the Toltec regional centre of Tula. Tula was the capital of the Toltec Empire between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The city is located in…

Flint points from Grotte Mandrin in France and Ksar Akil in Lebanon. Credit: Drawings and measurements by Laure Metz and Ludovic Slimak, Fourni par l’auteur The French archaeologist Ludovic Slimak has spent the past 30 years rummaging fields and caves from the Horn of Africa to the Artic Circle, and, of course, his beloved Rhône…

Archaeologists from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES), and the CERCA Institute, have discovered hundreds of ancient carvings near the village of Cogullons, in the municipality of Montblanc, Spain. In total, the researchers have found 250 carvings at a site known as Roca de les Ferradures in the Prades mountains. The…

View of the site Kaf Taht el-Ghar (KTG). Credit: Juan Carlos Vera A genomic analysis of ancient human remains from Morocco in northwest Africa revealed that food production was introduced by Neolithic European and Levantine migrants and then adopted by local groups. A research team from Sweden, Spain and Morocco present their results in Nature.…

Though masturbation is common across the animal kingdom, it seems, at its face, to be an evolutionary paradox: Why would an animal waste time, energy and reproductive resources on self-pleasure instead of copulating with a partner? Studies on individual species have found some explanations. Low-ranking Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), for example, masturbate to keep their…

Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have discovered ritual offerings in the Maya city of Uxmal. Uxmal was a Maya polity, located in the Puuc region of the eastern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. Most of the city’s major construction works took place while Uxmal was the capital of a Late Classic Maya…