Deciphering ancient charred texts - the power of a prize.
The Vesuvius Prize reward has encouraged work on deciphering scans of ancient charred scrolls from Herculaneum. "First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed Marchant, Jo. Nature 2024. ... Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts,...
Source: nature.com
Huge ancient city found in the Amazon
The city was built 2,500 years ago but may have been abandoned after a volcanic eruption.
Source: bbc.com
Ancient comatulid named after President Zelensky -Ausichicrinites zelenskyyi
Ancient sea animal with 10 arms is named after Ukraine's president Zelensky. "Fossil comatulids, referred to as feather stars, are mostly known from highly disarticulated
specimens. A single isolated element (centrodorsal) has been the basis for taxonomic
description of a vast majority of fossil comatulids....
Source: royalsocietypublishing.org
AI unlocks ancient Dead Sea Scrolls mystery
"Cutting edge technology" reveals how scribes foiled modern scholars with one of the Biblical texts.
Source: bbc.com
Data-driven humanitarianism
An article from MIT Technology Review showing how the World Food
Programme uses geospatial data that is developed and made 'open' to all
by people within the areas being served. "It’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but its people are among the most vulnerable. Afghanistan’s snowy...
Source: technologyreview.com
Human origins: 'Little Foot' fossil's big journey out of Africa
"How the priceless skull of an ancient ancestor was brought to the UK from South Africa for study."
Source: bbc.com
Ancient Northland swamp kauri solves 42,000 year old mystery
NZ Herald: Ancient Northland swamp kauri shows breakdown of Earth's magnetic field 42,000 years ago. "For the first time ever, we have been able to precisely date the timing and environmental impacts of the last magnetic pole switch," Chris Turney, a professor at UNSW Science and co-lead author of the...
Source: nzherald.co.nz
Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii
When in Rome ... or Pompeii. "Eat like a first-century Roman, using recent archaeological discoveries as your guide." "In consideration of some of this evidence, if we were to hypothesize that what we’ve read in the Latin literary record about “boiled meat,” “broth and chunks of meat,” and...
Source: atlasobscura.com
Abydos beer factory: Ancient large-scale brewery discovered in Egypt.
"The archaeological find in the Abydos burial ground is thought to date back about 5,000 years." They brewed beer in batch sizes of about 220 hectolitres and I bet they got away without paying much beer duty. Wonder if we can work out some of the recipes.
Source: bbc.com
Greeks domesticated grapes about 4000 years ago to improve wine-making
We know that the ancient Greeks made wine as early as 4300 BC, but a new analysis of preserved seeds suggests grapes were domesticated around 2000 BC
Source: newscientist.com
Curious Neanderthals may have been early scientist explorers investigating volcanoes.
Neanderthals may have climbed an active volcano soon after it erupted: Footprints on an extinct Italian volcano suggest ancient humans were regular visitors, and the shapes of the tracks point to the identity of the trackmakers. "A set of preserved footprints suggests that ancient humans often went scrambling...
Source: newscientist.com
Greenland ice cores track Roman lead pollution in year-by-year detail: Studying the ice cores may help reconstruct fluctuations
Greenland ice cores track Roman lead pollution in year-by-year detail: Studying the ice cores may help reconstruct fluctuations in the ancient economy.
Source: arstechnica.com
Shock at mystery ancient tree deaths: Many of the oldest and largest specimens of Africa's baobab tree have died over the
Shock at mystery ancient tree deaths: Many of the oldest and largest specimens of Africa's baobab tree have died over the past 12 years.
Source: bbc.co.uk
Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study: Dating from 1,000 years before Pythagoras’s
Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study: Dating from 1,000 years before Pythagoras’s theorem, the Babylonian clay tablet is a trigonometric table more accurate than any today, say researchers
Source: theguardian.com
Genetic evidence suggests the Canaanites weren’t destroyed after all. Analysis of ancient DNA reveals that the Biblical
Genetic evidence suggests the Canaanites weren’t destroyed after all. Analysis of ancient DNA reveals that the Biblical account isn’t the whole story. "The Canaanites are famous as the bad guys of the Book of Joshua in the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible. First, God orders the Hebrews to destroy the...
Source: arstechnica.com
Surprise virus in child mummy unravels thousands of years of disease history: The oldest sample of smallpox is younger than
Surprise virus in child mummy unravels thousands of years of disease history: The oldest sample of smallpox is younger than we thought, bucking ancient reports.
Source: arstechnica.com
Good read - The Path. A quick overview of 5 Chinese philosophies making them relevant to how we should think about how we
Good read - The Path. A quick overview of 5 Chinese philosophies making them relevant to how we should think about how we live today. I've not read much about them and assumed they were pretty much ancient and irrelevant, reduced to one-liner aphorisms, but Michael Puett has been teaching a popular...
Source: amazon.co.uk
Ancient 'massacre' unearthed near Lake Turkana, Kenya - BBC News: Archaeologists say they have unearthed the earliest evidence
Ancient 'massacre' unearthed near Lake Turkana, Kenya - BBC News: Archaeologists say they have unearthed the earliest evidence of warfare between hunter-gatherers, at a site in northern Kenya.
Source: bbc.co.uk
NASA Earth Observatory : : Modern international shipping meets the ancient world in the famous canal.
NASA Earth Observatory : : Modern international shipping meets the ancient world in the famous canal.
Source: nasa.gov
Plague traced back to Bronze Age - BBC News: Plague has been a scourge on humanity for far longer than previously thought,
Plague traced back to Bronze Age - BBC News: Plague has been a scourge on humanity for far longer than previously thought, samples of ancient DNA show.
Source: bbc.co.uk
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