A small puncture wound through a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal shoulder blade may be the earliest evidence of death by spear on humanity’s family tree. Given forensic details such as the entry angle and overall damage, researchers believe the injury was made as an intentionally fatal “heart shot” that killed the ancient hominin within moments. The discovery is detailed in a study published today in the journal Scientific Reports.
In addition to the grisly injury, the nearly translucent bone itself makes this evidence even more striking.
“It’s extraordinary to have a perfectly preserved scapula from 75,000 years ago. These bones are so thin that you often don’t get complete scapulae from modern burials,” explained University of Cambridge archaeologist and study co-author Emma Pomeroy. “We were able to lift it out in one piece from under almost eight meters [roughly 26 feet] of rock and sediment.”
Pomeroy and her colleagues excavated the remains from inside Shanidar Cave, an archaeological site in Iraqi Kurdistan famous for containing evidence of ritualistic Neanderthal burials. The roughly 0.6 inch, nearly circular perforation on the bone was likely made with a wooden spear, since a stone or flint tip would create a flatter injury and leave behind microscopic mineral shards. The individual who inflicted the fatal injury drove the spear downward through the victim’s left chest cavity from the front, piercing major arteries and the lungs before creating the hole in the left scapula.
Remnants of a wooden spear weren’t found near the Neanderthal’s remains, which is understandable since the material often decomposes so quickly. That said, prior archaeological digs have revealed similar prehistoric wooden weapons dating as far back as 400,000 years. Pomeroy’s team believes a rounded spear carved from wood almost certainly caused the killing blow.
“Holes left by recreations of spears from this time are an excellent fit for the one we found in the Neanderthal scapula. That early technology absolutely works for this wound,” said Pomeroy.
Although it’s possible that a mishap like a hunting accident was the cause of death, Pomeroy argues the cumulative details suggest something far more purposeful.
“The position of the wound and the force required to push it right through the Neanderthal’s body bear the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed towards the heart,” she added.
Another major injury the victim sustained before the possible stabbing supports this hypothesis—and complicates the story. In addition to the scapula, archaeologists documented a pair of left ribs, a right rib fragment, a nearly complete right hand, and seven teeth. Collectively, the remains indicate the Neanderthal was about 45 years old at the time of death. However, dental damage reveals the individual suffered a severe blunt-force blow to the front of the face at least a year before death. This injury split a lower front incisor lengthwise and even rotated some teeth inward.
“There’s no doubt that [they] would have had difficulty communicating and been in absolute agony for a long period of time,” said Pomeroy.
Despite this blow to the mouth, the Neanderthal survived for months or even years. This was only possible because others must have cared for the individual, including duties as simple as preparing softer foods to eat. In this sense, there is a distinct possibility the spear wound was a final, merciful act by someone close to them. According to Pomeroy, the prehistoric scene showcases both the highs and lows of what it means to be a human.
“On the one hand, we have evidence of a terribly violent end,” she said. “On the other, this was clearly an individual who was cared for during their lifetime.”
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They’re some of Earth’s most powerful athletes, traversing thousands of miles of rough terrain in sub-zero temperatures, through blinding snow, and biting winds. Sled dogs have been helping humans travel across the planet’s coldest regions for centuries, hauling supplies, people, and equipment across the snow and ice. In the process, this important role that goes above and beyond simply being “man’s best friend” could have a visible impact on their evolution.
Sled dogs may have evolved shorter legs to help them pull loads more efficiently. Currently working sled dogs and those that lived about 2,000 years ago have six percent shorter leg bones than similar species, according to a study published today in the journal iScience. These findings could help biologists trace the origins of sled dogs and understand more about how dog-powered transportation spread over the past 9,000 years.
“Sled dogs have played an indispensable role in communities in the Arctic,” Mitya Kletzerman, a study co-author and an archeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel, said in a statement. “Without dogs, people couldn’t move as efficiently to hunt, relocate as conditions changed, or travel between communities to exchange knowledge and share new ideas. Understanding how the practice evolved could give us new insights into how people adapted to life in the Arctic.”
As of now, our earliest archeological evidence associated with dog sledding comes from 9,000-year-old sled parts and dog remains uncovered in 2017 on Zhokhov Island (present-day Russia). Sledding equipment like this is rarely found in the archaeological record, so it has remained difficult to pinpoint when and where the practice first emerged or spread.
Earlier studies have shown that work associated with humans can leave traces in an animal’s skeleton. Reindeer used for racing, carrying loads, and pulling have limb bone differences compared to those that do not pull. Kletzerman and her team were curious if sled dogs have also developed particular skeletal traits that have helped them adapt to all of the physical demands of pulling a sled.
In the study, the team developed a biomechanical model to help them understand how a dog’s body handles the work of pulling a sled. The model showed that one effective way to pull a sled loaded with material is for a dog to lower its center of gravity. This increases the canine’s ability to generate pulling force.
“When people or animals pull a load, it tends to tip them backward. A lower or more forward position of the center of mass counteracts this effect, allowing greater pulling force,” Kletzerman explained.
They then tested whether modern sled dogs have skeletal proportions that can lower their center of mass. They analyzed bones in 60 different modern canids, including sled dogs, wolves, spitzes, and mongrels. They then compared the lengths of five leg bones. Three in the forelegs (the humerus, radius, and ulna) and two in the hind legs (femur and tibia).
After accounting for overall skeletal size, they found that sled dogs have relatively shorter radius, ulna, and tibia bones than their non-sled pulling counterparts. These bones measured about six percent shorter on average.
“It’s unclear how this trait developed, but selective pressure may have preserved it, because it gave sled dogs an advantage over other dogs,” Kletzerman said.
To see if this characteristic already existed in ancient dogs, the team analyzed 82 ancient dog bones and three skeletons. The three skeletons were from ritually buried dogs uncovered from three archaeological sites associated with ancestral Inuit populations in present-day Chukotka, Russia, and date to 2,000 to 500 years ago.
Nearly 89 percent of the bones were consistent with the modern sled-dog pattern of shorter leg bones, as were all three ritually buried dogs. According to the team, this suggests that the skeletal pattern may be an effective way to identify that canine remains belonged to a sled dog, even when archaeological remains are incomplete or do not have any direct evidence of sled equipment.
“Dogs have been working alongside humans for thousands of years, but we’re only beginning to understand how that partnership shaped them,” Kletzerman concluded.
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Thanks to some medieval human teeth, archaeologists have pinpointed when lead production first expanded across Europe during the Middle Ages. By examining dental enamel collected from graves located in central England, researchers now know the post-Roman society started mining and smelting again during the mid-7th century. As the team explains in a study published today in the journal Antiquity, the consequences of exposure to the toxic were stark—but distributed unequally among locals.
Humanity’s complicated relationship with lead dates back over 9,000 years, and our environmental exposure to the toxic metal is traceable as far as two million years ago. Lead was instrumental in prehistoric smelting advancements, and its invaluable properties paved technological progress all the way through the Industrial Revolution. However, lead is now known to cause various early developmental issues and its uses are dwindling, but tracing our reliance on the material helps contextualize and understand a society’s historical arc.
Researching these metals also isn’t easy. From the 16th to 19th centuries, manufacturers constantly re-smelted lead waste from ancient Rome and medieval England, which destroyed any discernible way to examine its prior origins and uses. Archaeologists including University of Nottingham’s Christopher Loveluck knew of another way to trace lead production in the Derbyshire Peak District, one of Europe’s largest providers of the metal during the Middle Ages
“The team is delighted to have finally confirmed definitively the date by which the early medieval lead industry was established in the Peak District…through evidence provided by the people themselves,” Loveluck said in the study’s accompanying announcement.
Archaeologists analyzed teeth from bodies buried in three Peak District cemeteries dating back to between 650 and 1500 CE. More specifically, they focused on tooth enamel. The external protective layer finishes forming during childhood, meaning any prior lead exposure stays embedded in the enamel for the rest of an individual’s life. Loveluck and his colleagues discovered that by the 7th century, the Derbyshire children’s lead levels were the same, if not higher, than those of children who lived in industrialized cities during the mid-18th and 19th centuries. By the mid-8th century, the growing lead industry had even begun to seep into surrounding regions like Castleton.
Teeth samples showed lead exposure reached its highest levels during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, which aligns with previous historical and environmental data. While the metal’s presence was ubiquitous among the population, it wasn’t necessarily the same across class or gender. High status gravesites included weapons and other personal items with lower lead concentrations than those seen in the graves of poorer residents. This implies that while the upper class owned lead-imbued possessions, they were higher quality objects. Meanwhile, working class families employed in mines and factories routinely exposed their children to larger amounts of lead.
There is also evidence that suggests women were especially at risk during this era. Three women who died between 17 and 25 years old showed particularly increased lead quantities in their tooth enamel. Overall, most of the men survived to middle or old age, while women often died during young adulthood.
“Our results indicate that in these mining communities, girls and boys alike were raised in dangerously polluted home environments,” said Castleton excavation co-director and study co-author Anna Bloxam. “This exposure…perhaps contributed to higher rates of premature death among women of child-bearing age.”
Lead contamination is still a serious issue today, although overall conditions have improved greatly since medieval England. Still, the underlying problems of environmental degradation and socio-economic vulnerabilities remain relevant today.
“This study has enabled us, for the first time…to look more deeply into the profound impact lead production had on individuals and the communities they lived in,” added University of Sheffield historian and study co-author Colin Merrony.
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A man in upstate New York discovered more than cobwebs and missing holiday decorations while recently cleaning out his garage. Behind a small wood plank, homeowner Jason Hurdle spotted a long-forgotten crawlspace stuffed with vintage milk pails, a safe, and a dusty box of files. Hurdle intended to simply toss the papers in the trash, until a perfectly timed gust of wind removed the crate’s lid. Only then did he realize the box’s true contents: dozens of reports labeled “Secret” relating to Stalag Luft 3, an infamous prison camp run by the Nazi Luftwaffe near Germany’s western border during World War II. Over 300 pages of handwritten accounts from U.S. soldiers recounting their brutal incarcerations at the facility under conditions “not fit for humans.”
“I feel the hurt, the pain, and a lot of things these guys have been through,” Hurdle recently told local news outlet WHEC.
A visit from specialists at the National Archives quickly confirmed the authenticity of the questionnaires, which were compiled in 1945 following Allied liberations of German POW camps. The box was clearly intended for use as evidence of war crimes, which the reports corroborate in tragic detail. Soldiers wrote about living in facilities with “no heat, no beds” while exposed to the elements and vermin. Other troops recalled grueling work on rail lines while witnessing beatings, executions, and even the “cold blooded murder” of surrendering armed forces. Stalag Luft 3 is famously the site of a breakout later recounted by former prisoner Paul Brickhill in the book and 1963 film adaptation, The Great Escape.
“When I first laid them on the table in front of them, the first thing the one agent said was, ‘These are original, we want these,’” added Hurdle.
It’s still unclear how the box ended up inside the garage crawlspace. Hurdle suspects they may have belonged to a retired U.S. Army officer who once lived next door, especially since the box also contained other personal items from the man’s family. In any case, the indispensable historical accounts are now under the care of the National Archives, who have since digitized and unclassified the reports. The entirety of the discovery is now available online to the public.
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Typical brains function smoothly, with neurons (nerve cells) firing rhythmically like predictable weather patterns.
But in epileptic brains, a sunny day can suddenly turn dark and stormy. Neurons will just be trucking along, operating in the controlled and routine way that keeps a body’s mental and physical functions stable when, all of a sudden, they freak out, pulsing with an electrochemical intensity that causes confusion and uncontrollable jerking.
The broken doll movement and unexpected mental interruptions of epileptic seizures have probably always been unsettling. Some cultures have explained their onset as the consequence of religious sin, others as divine intervention or a sign of sacredness.
To the ancient Romans, epilepsy was a contagious disease caused by evil spirits or demonic possession, and there was only one way to cure it—with the blood of a gladiator.
Ancient Rome wasn’t the first place epilepsy was treated with human blood. There’s evidence of its use in ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere. But the Romans were the first to look to the blood of a warrior for a cure, according to “Between Horror and Hope: Gladiator’s Blood as a Cure for Epileptics in Ancient Medicine,” an article by Ferdinand Peter Moog and Axel Karenberg published in the Journal of the History of Neurosciences in 2003.
Drinking the “hot blood from the throat of a gladiator” is first recommended in the Book on Medicine in 40 C.E. and, over the next 500 years, Roman doctors experimented with exactly how to administer the cure: three spoonfuls a day for 30 days, sucking directly from a bleeding wound, filling a cup with the dripping blood of the slaughtered.
In the sixth century, one physician’s method was to burn a rag soaked in the blood of a swordsman and mix its ashes with wine. “With seven doses you will free the patient of epilepsy,” he wrote. “Often applied with excellent results.”
For a remedy to have such staying power over such a long period of time is unusual. When that remedy is drinking the blood of a gladiator, Moog, senior lecturer at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Cologne in Germany, tells Popular Science, it suggests a strong undercurrent of magical thinking.
“Magic is not logic,” he explains. “People are healed by those things and procedures they expect to be healed from.”
Gladiators weren’t exactly average Romans. In the early days of the republic, their death in combat had religious associations, with fallen gladiators believed to be offerings to the gods or escorts for the dead into the next world. Even as gladiatorial combat later lost its religious connotations, the dramatic circumstances of the contestants’ deaths still made their blood a potent epileptic cure.
Belief in the remedy likely had something to do with what Moog and Karenberg describe as “the illusion of therapeutic effectiveness.” Since the symptoms of some forms of epilepsy affect only children before disappearing completely around puberty, a child who consumed gladiator blood while still symptomatic would appear to anyone unfamiliar with the disorder as having been cured by it.
When gladiatorial combat was outlawed in the Roman Empire around 400 C.E., physicians were forced to look for an alternative treatment for epileptic patients. They found it in the blood of those executed by decapitation.
“The blood of the decapitated was the blood of ‘noble’ criminals, and this might have been important when searching for a substitute for gladiator’s blood,” says Moog. It seems not to have been the legendary strength and virility of the gladiator that imbued a person’s blood with healing power, then, but the way they died—by the blade of a sword (or later a guillotine).
There was a practical element to using blood from an execution too, Moog continues. “In the case, for example, of a hanging, you’d have to hurt the body of the executed yourself. And wounding a corpse was in many cultures regarded as a bad thing.”
The blood spilled by decapitation, on the other hand, “was easy to get.”
The new twist on the old remedy apparently proved just as enduring as the original. The blood of the executed was a “miracle cure” for epilepsy all the way until the 20th-century invention of anti-epileptic pharmaceuticals.
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A 2,000-year-old marble sculpture slated for auction later this month is more than a well-preserved piece of artistic history. From its original vantage point inside an ancient temple in present-day Croatia, the depiction of an emperor’s decorative chestplate reminded the recently conquered residents that the age of the Roman empire had arrived.
The intricately detailed bust dates back to the Julio-Claudian era (27 BCE–68 CE), and was crafted from highly coveted marble mined from the Aegean island of Paros. While only the torso remains intact today, the fragment is appropriate given its larger context. Government officials intended sculptures like these to be a permanent temple fixture, so their limbs and heads were regularly updated to depict the current reigning emperor. The monument was more than a way to depict Rome’s ultimate authority—it embodied the very concept of imperial authority.
Reinforcing Roman rule in a conquered town like Salona was vital during this era. The Julio-Claudian period saw Rome’s first five emperors consolidating power and expanding their territory. Erecting these monumental odes ensured the conquered saw visual reminders of the empire’s strength every day.
“The Romans at this period in time were asking, ‘How does this convey power? How do you legitimize a new imperial structure? What iconography do you land on to convey these things?’” Alexandra Olsman, an antiquities specialist on sculpture and works of art at Sotheby’s, explained in an accompanying video.
Every detail carved onto the cuirass ties back to this concept. Its centerpiece depicts the sun god, Sol, riding his four-horse chariot known as a quadriga over the sea to announce the dawn of a new day. According to Olsman, the intentional choice of subject matter declares the victory of order over chaos. Beneath Sol are two images of the goddess Victoria on either side of a tropaeum—a visualization of defeated armies’ abandoned shields, weaponry, and even a conquered enemy’s head. Finally, the smaller images of ram and feline faces on overlapping leather straps represent strength and wards against evil.
“This is Rome becoming Rome in a sculpture,” Olsman added.
The sculpture is scheduled for auction on October 21.
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A bronze signet ring depicting the Lighthouse of Alexandria, a wonder of the ancient world, has been discovered underwater in the Mediterranean off Alexandria, Egypt.
A joint team from the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities found the artifact in the remains of a palace on the now-submerged island of Antirhodos, marking the first time a signet ring featuring the image of the lighthouse has been found, the IEASM team said in a statement.
The image on the ring is similar to depictions of the lighthouse that have been previously found on coins dating to the second century, representatives of IEASM said.
"The discovery of the ring-signet is even more important as it has been excavated in the legendary palace of the Island of Antirhodos, that once was a centre of power," Franck Goddio, president of IEASM, said in the emailed statement.
The palace was used by Egyptian pharaohs who reigned during the Ptolemaic period (304 to 30 B.C.), a dynasty of rulers descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals. The lighthouse was built on the island of Pharos around 280 B.C. and stood more than 328 feet (100 meters) tall. Some ancient writers, such as Pliny the Elder, considered it among the wonders of the world, and it continued to be used into the Middle Ages, until earthquakes and erosion resulted in its destruction and disappearance beneath the sea.
While the lighthouse was modified over time, it would have had a statue, possibly of Zeus, at the top holding an oil lamp that helped guide mariners.
Whoever was wearing a signet ring could have used it to make an impression on soft materials, such as clay and wax, to create a seal. The discovery of the ring in the remains of the palace at Antirhodos suggests that the palace was used for administrative functions related to the lighthouse, representatives of IEASM said in the statement.
Even though the ring's engraving is somewhat worn, it likely depicts the lighthouse, said Doris Behrens-Abouseif, a professor emeritus of history of art and archaeology at the University of London who has written about the lighthouse but was not part of the research team.
There are "thousands of coins from Alexandria showing a similar depiction of the lighthouse," she told Live Science in an email. Those coins date to the Ptolemaic or Roman (29 B.C. to A.D. 395) periods, she noted.
Behrens-Abouseif added that she wasn't familiar enough with rings from Alexandria to comment on whether this is the only ring that contains this image.
Other scholars told Live Science that they, too, believe that this ring depicts the lighthouse, with two scholars noting that it may feature smoke coming from a lamp at top.
The "most interesting thing about the new signet ring engraved gem is an asymmetrical feature at its peak," which "may depict a plume of smoke from the oil lamp in the hand of the crowning statue," Andrew Chugg, an independent researcher who wrote the book "The Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria: Second Sun and Seventh Wonder of Antiquity" (Routledge, 2024), said in an email.
Margaret Miles, a professor emeritus of art history and classics at the University of California, Irvine, also noticed the possible plume of smoke. Miles noted in an email that this "ring could have been used as a signet ring by a merchant from Alexandria who used the profile of the [lighthouse] to signal his location in Alexandria. The lighthouse was famous, so it became a symbol of the city."
Research off the coast of Alexandria over the past few years, including the discovery of 22 massive blocks, has revealed more information about the lighthouse, including how exactly it looked, which is helping researchers who are trying to digitally reconstruct it.
Are you a fan of mummies and hieroglyphs? Find out with our ancient Egypt quiz!
Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that men, women and children were subjected to violence within their communities in ancient Scandinavia — and that these victims were buried in unusual places, such as pits or wells or under a family's house or yard.
During the Scandinavian Iron Age and Viking Age (from roughly 500 B.C. to A.D. 1050), violent encounters between individuals and communities steadily increased, resulting in archaeological evidence of elite warrior burials and mass graves from battles.
To better understand the context of violence in the Iron and Viking ages, researchers analyzed 192 human bones from people buried in domestic areas at settlements in what are now Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
"The fact is that not all bodies ended up in monumental burial mounds in the Iron and Viking Ages, or even in more modest urnfields and cemeteries," the researchers wrote in a study published Sept. 28 in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. Rather, some bodies — or pieces of bodies — were placed in postholes, pits, floors, wells, houses, yards and feasting halls.
The archaeologists discovered that at least 12 of the individuals had sustained a violent injury around the time of death. Half of those cases involved head trauma, while four people suffered multiple injuries. Most of the victims of violence were adult males, but there were two females and a child as well.
In one Iron Age house in Denmark, built sometime between 500 and 1 B.C., archaeologists discovered a frontal bone from the skull of a child who died between the ages of 2 and 4 years old.
"Our DNA analyses show that it is a small boy who has been cut with a sword," study first author Marianne Hem Eriksen, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, said in a translated statement. "The child's skull was placed on the floor of a house where people continued to live. This means that someone has walked over a child's skull day after day."
Radiocarbon dating revealed that the child's skull is significantly older than the house itself, by as many as two centuries, suggesting the bone may have been kept for some time before being placed in the house floor, according to the study.
At a Viking Age site dated to around 750 to 1050, archaeologists found a young woman's skull in a well near a cluster of four small houses. "The woman's skull bore traces of blows and was buried in a well," Eriksen said. She may have been cut or slashed with a sword or ax and, like the child, her bones may have been kept for a significant amount of time before being buried in the well. "These glimpses of lives lived from the past show how fascinatingly different people must have thought about life and death," Eriksen said.
And at the Viking Age site of Gammel Lejre, a royal feasting hall that many experts consider to be the inspiration for the epic Old English poem "Beowulf," archaeologists found the burial of a man whose skeleton bore numerous blunt force injuries, several of which had healed, and which attested to a difficult and likely painful life. His skeleton was discovered directly south of the feasting hall.
The study of bones in domestic areas "opens up a completely new understanding of Iron Age society, of the occurrence of violence and of the handling of the dead," Eriksen said. "The results show a much greater complexity in the everyday life and world of imagination of the time than we often attribute to Iron Age people."
But it is unclear exactly why these particular people were the victims of violence and why they were buried in such unusual ways. One possible scenario, the researchers wrote in the study, is that these were victims of violent domestic encounters rather than warfare. Their deaths may also have been the result of socially acceptable corporal punishment or some form of aggression within the community.
Given the increase in social inequality and rise in violence in the Iron and Viking ages, the researchers suspect that precarious community members may have been targeted.
"Not all lives were equally grieved and commemorated in the Iron and Viking Ages of Scandinavia," the researchers wrote. "We may question whether some lives were already considered disposable."
See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!
The ancient Egyptians practiced human sacrifice around 5,000 years ago, a period shortly after the country was first unified, a new study finds.
In the new study, Roselyn Campbell, an anthropology researcher at Purdue University, re-examined 46 skulls from individuals who were buried near royal tombs that belonged to King Djer, King Djet and Meretneith (a woman who likely ruled Egypt at times), and were built near the ancient sacred city of Abydos. All three rulers lived during the first dynasty, a period that started around 5,000 years ago when Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt were unified into one kingdom. The sacrificed retainers were buried next to the tomb of the king they had served.
Researchers first excavated the royal burial site in the early 20th century. At the time, the excavator, Flinders Petrie, believed that the hundreds of other burials found near the royal tombs contained nonroyals, such as retainers and other people who served the king. Moreover, it appeared that these nonroyals had been sacrificed after the king they had served died, in the belief that they could serve the king in the afterlife.
However, Petrie was unable to identify evidence of fatal skeletal trauma, and his idea that they were sacrificed has been debated ever since. Petrie reburied most of the human remains, but 46 skulls were retained and preserved in the Duckworth Collections at the University of Cambridge.
In the new study, published Monday (Oct. 5) in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, Campbell re-examined these 46 skulls using modern forensic techniques and information about the marks that different types of trauma leaves on human skeletons. Campbell found that 18 of the skulls have signs of trauma that were likely fatal — indicating that these individuals were likely sacrificed, according to a statement from the journal. Specifically, Campbell found that many of the skulls had linear fractures, which Petrie had mistaken for damage that occurred after burial.
Linear fractures "occur when the cranium strikes or is struck by a relatively large object with low overall force; because of the cranium's globular shape, the impact of the blow disperses across the cranial vault," Campbell wrote in the study. "While linear fractures are not always immediately lethal, they often cause intracranial lesions and/or hemorrhage, which can quickly cause loss of consciousness and death if surgery [to relieve pressure] is not performed."
Campbell told Live Science in an email that it's difficult to identify the weapon or object that was used. "Based on comparative forensic and archaeological studies, the most likely implement would have been flat and relatively light, probably made out of something like wood rather than stone," she said.
The practice of human sacrifice seems to have ended in the second dynasty of Egypt. Evidence for human sacrifice is limited and seems to be confined mainly to the first dynasty. Petrie theorized that they were retainers to the king based on the fact that some were buried with gravestones that had titles such as seal-bearer which suggested that they served the king.
"As far as we can tell, this particular type of retainer sacrifice seems to have ended with the close of the First Dynasty, which means it [lasted] around two centuries or possibly less," Campbell said.
Jacobus van Dijk, an Egyptologist at Groningen University in the Netherlands who was not involved with the study, welcomed the new research. The "existence of retainer sacrifice in early Egypt has always been controversial and Dr Campbell's research adds an important argument in support of scholars who, like myself, believe this custom was practised in Egypt in the early dynastic period," he told Live Science in an email.
He noted he was surprised at the method used for human sacrifice, because depictions of ritual killing on wooden labels "seems to indicate that the victim was kneeling with his hands tied behind his back being stabbed in the chest with a knife."
Are you a fan of mummies and hieroglyphs? Find out with our ancient Egypt quiz!
Archaeologists have discovered a temple dedicated to the Roman war god Mars in the wooded foothills of the Taunus mountains in Germany. The temple was part of a military settlement that was built in the third century to defend the border of the Roman Empire against Germanic tribes.
The Roman military constructed thousands of forts across Europe, northern Africa and western Asia while expanding the empire, and most of these fortifications had an adjacent settlement, called a "vicus," that was occupied primarily by merchants, families and other civilians.
Since 2024, archaeologists have been excavating the Kapersburg Roman fort and its adjacent vicus in Hesse, roughly 16 miles (26 kilometers) north of Frankfurt, according to a Sept. 25 translated statement from the Hessen State Office for Monument Preservation.
One of the highlights of the current excavation is the unexpected discovery of a Roman temple, Kai Mückenberger, an archaeologist with Hessen Archaeology, a part of the Hesse State Office for Monument Preservation, said in a translated video. "Inside the temple, we found several fragments of a dedicatory inscription," he said. Experts have already translated a portion of the inscription, which mentions that the temple was dedicated to Mars, the Roman god of war.
"We also have the remains of a Mars [statue]," Mückenberger said, as well as a statuette of "a winged figure holding a palm branch and laurel wreath," which is likely the ancient Roman goddess Victoria, a personification of victory in battle.
When archaeologists first excavated the Kapersburg fort near the turn of the 20th century, they discovered that it was built in the early second century, likely under either Emperor Trajan, who ruled from A.D. 98 to 117, or Emperor Hadrian, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138 and expanded the Roman Empire further into northern England, building Hadrian's Wall. The Kapersburg fort was used by a unit of Roman soldiers and cavalry for about a century and a half, until around A.D. 275.
Although the fort's defensive structures and some of its walls have been visible since antiquity, practically nothing was known about its nearby vicus prior to the excavations that began in 2024, according to Mückenberger.
"The astonishing thing is the exquisite preservation of the archaeological layers that start right beneath the forest floor," Mückenberger said. These layers, which include burnt material, almost never survive in agricultural areas but have been well preserved at the vicus. "This is an incredible learning process and a gain in knowledge for us," Mückenberger added.
During their excavations, the research team discovered far fewer houses than they expected. However, they found much more evidence of craft activities, such as blacksmith pits and ovens for drying wheat and baking bread.
"These are all very technical elements related to local services, indicating that we're in a kind of intermediate area not directly adjacent to the fort itself, but perhaps more like the fort's craft area," Mückenberger said.
The temple and votive statues provide new insight into the Roman world of beliefs on the border of the empire, according to the statement. But when the fort was no longer useful, the Romans leveled the camp and replaced it with residential buildings, the archaeologists discovered.
Mückenberger and his team plan to continue their excavation of the site next year.
From Augustus to Nero, see how much you know about ancient Rome's famous leaders with our Roman emperor quiz!
Name: Urn with jaguars and skulls
What it is: A ceramic burial urn
Where it is from: Guatemala
When it was made: Circa A.D. 600 to 900
This colorful ceramic urn depicts a person wearing a jaguar costume and surrounded by human skulls, about to be received into the Maya underworld. The urn once held the bones of an ancestor for their descendants to venerate.
The urn was anonymously gifted to The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in 2008. According to the museum, the urn is about 17.5 inches (44.5 centimeters) tall and was likely produced in Guatemala by the K'iche' Maya people more than a millennium ago. Originally, the urn probably had an elaborate lid that was tied on with string through the loops near the lip of the vessel, but it is now missing.
The decoration on the urn is striking. A person wearing a jaguar costume splashed with blood — claws and teeth bared — looks out at the viewer from the center of the urn. This individual may be a deceased ruler who is entering the world of the dead, which is symbolized by two pairs of human skulls and the dark figures of two Maya gods of the underworld. Behind the underworld gods are raised spikes representing thorns of the tropical kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra).
The Maya believed that the kapok tree, which was also called the Maya "world tree" or the Yaxche, had roots in the aquatic underworld, so its depiction on this funerary urn may reflect how it is a conduit between realms, according to The Walters Art Museum. Jaguars also held important spiritual meaning to the Maya; they were thought to move fluidly between the three realms — sky, Earth and underworld. Therefore, the depiction of the deceased ruler wearing a jaguar costume to enter the underworld may have suggested that they could also mediate between the world of the living and the Maya gods.
This colorful and symbol-laden urn shows that death was not an ending for the Maya, according to The Walters Art Museum, and that the urn "serves as a graphic reminder of how the dissolution of the body could be a positive change, transforming a beloved ancestor into an honored spirit who would continue to guide the living for eternity."
For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.
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Nearly 2 million years ago, a leopard in Africa sank its teeth into the face of an early human. This bite etched tiny tooth marks into the unlucky person’s jawbone. That bone now speaks to a chilling early chapter in our history: when humans were prey.
The fossil belongs to Homo habilis. It’s one of the earliest members of our genus. (Homo includes modern humans and our closest relatives.) At first glance, the bone marks look like scratches. But a recent, close analysis tells another story. The bite marks suggest leopards hunted these early folk.
That discovery helps solve a fossil mystery. It also raises questions about a time when humans held a more precarious spot in the food web. Sometimes people ate meat. Other times, they were the meat being eaten.
That threat of becoming prey to some other predator likely shaped how humans evolved. To survive, our ancestors learned to count on each other for protection. They may have lived and worked in groups, sharing information about dangers and teaching each other skills. Over generations, these behaviors could have helped people become more cooperative and successful.
Today, it’s easy to imagine our early ancestors as fearless hunters, chasing prey across ancient savannas. But that image reflects a time late in our evolution. Before we became one of the world’s most successful predators, we first had to survive life as prey.
Much of what scientists have learned about ancient humans comes from fossils found at Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania. Since the 1930s, researchers have unearthed many bones from our early ancestors at this site in southeastern Africa. They include a pair of tooth-marked jawbones.
Other finds include tools made of stone or bone.
Sharp stones likely served as knives. Cut marks on animal bones suggest early humans ate meat. This led many scientists to assume H. habilis was a hunter. But these early people may have dined on leftovers scavenged from bigger, stronger predators.
The bitten human jawbones add another angle to this story.
Marina Vegara-Riquelme studies our human ancestors and their fossils at the University of Alcalá in Spain. She led a team that examined H. habilis bones using artificial intelligence, or AI. Her group wanted to know what animal had left its bite marks on a human jaw.
Different carnivores have different eating habits. Hyenas often scavenge dead carcasses. Leopards, in contrast, rarely eat meat they didn’t kill. Knowing which one left the marks would suggest whether the H. habilis had been hunted or died some other way.
Even experts can struggle to tell apart the tooth marks of a leopard from those of a hyena, Vegara-Riquelme notes. But AI can. By comparing thousands of details, it can spot patterns too subtle for the human eye to see. Her team used thousands of tooth-mark images from modern carnivores to train the AI. Then they showed it the bones in question.
“Two Homo habilis specimens show tooth marks most likely inflicted by leopards,” Vegara-Riquelme says. That makes it look less like scavenging.
Study co-author Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo co-directs the Institute of Evolution in Africa in Madrid, Spain. To him, it’s clear how the encounter ended. “That individual was preyed upon,” he says. “Not scavenged.”
If true, what had the lives of H. habilis been like with lions and leopards as neighbors? Could survival have required new traits that helped our ancestors ascend the food web?
For millions of years before H. habilis, our ape ancestors spent most of their time in trees. They might venture to the ground now and then. But when danger emerged, they’d dart into the trees and out of reach.
By the time H. habilis evolved, humans were walking upright (though not as well as today’s H. sapiens), spending far more time on the ground.
An open savanna offered new opportunities. Ambling upright helped early humans travel farther. It also gave them a better vantage to spot potential food across the landscape. But being out in the open may have made them easier targets, too, for powerful predators.
Craig Stanford studies predator and prey relationships among primates. He’s an evolutionary biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He’s spent years in Tanzania watching Africa’s monkeys work together and protect one another.
Life on the open savanna would have been risky for early humans, he says. Even if predators killed only a few people, the threat would have shaped how early species lived and behaved.
“Predation may have been rare, but that doesn’t mean it was unimportant,” Stanford says. “There’s no question that predation influenced our evolution.”
Many prey species rely on group living for protection. “You have more eyes to detect a predator coming,” Stanford explains. When one animal spots danger and yells an alarm, others can run or climb to safety.
And safety in numbers isn’t just about watching. It can also help to fight back.
In Tanzania, Stanford saw male colobus monkeys work together to fend off threats. They would leap onto chimpanzees that threatened them. An adult male chimp weighs about 54 kilograms (120 pounds); a colobus monkey only about 9 kg (20 lbs). “So three [monkeys] together weigh half of what the chimp weighs,” Stanford says. “They’re biting the chimps.” Such group attacks could fend off a chimp.
Early humans on the open savanna may have similarly benefited from teaming up. Faced with threats from big cats, people who were more alert and willing to cooperate may have been more likely to survive. If so, they could have passed along those traits to their offspring.
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Survival wasn’t just about not becoming someone else’s meal, though. It also was about getting access to your own high-quality food. Here, too, cooperation would have helped.
Briana Pobiner works at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. She studies what ancient humans ate and how they got their food. Marks on fossil bones can say a lot about this, she says.
Early humans would have cut meat from wherever they could get it. Consider butchery marks on bones that don’t have a lot of meat on them — “like ankle bones and lower foot and leg bones,” says Pobiner. Here, she says, “We think [humans] mostly got the scraps after the predators ate.”
Such a pattern suggests people were scavenging.
With large prey, early humans likely ate after big carnivores had already taken the better meat. That doesn’t mean these humans didn’t hunt. They may have captured smaller animals on their own. Taking down large prey, however, would have been much harder and more dangerous.
“Early humans probably got the not-great parts of animals when they were able to eat meat,” Pobiner says. “The predators were getting the best parts.”
But, she adds, “At some point that changed.” By around 1.5 million years ago, fossils show stone-tool cut marks on bones from some of the meatiest parts of big game. By now, it seems, people were no longer eating just the leftovers.
Fossils can’t directly show cooperation. But the bone markings suggest humans gained better access to meat over time. Researchers think teamwork may have helped make that possible.
Working in groups would have given humans a better chance of getting larger prey and better meat. Sharing meat may have strengthened social bonds. Plus, large carcasses are hard for one person to process or defend.
Such cooperation may have paved the way for humans to become more successful.
This chart shows the emergence (and later die-offs) of many humans — Homo species — throughout the past 3 million years. Notice how far apart H. habilis and H. sapiens are.
People likely evolved group living for several reasons, cautions Richard Wrangham. He works at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. As a biological anthropologist, he studies how fire has shaped human evolution.
Around 1.8 million to 1.5 million years ago, fossils show the rise of a new species of human, Homo erectus. Compared to earlier species, such as H. habilis, H. erectus had longer legs, a larger body and a bigger brain. These changes suggest humans were better adapting to life on the ground. This may have included sleeping there rather than in trees.
Here, fire also may have been key. “Once you’ve got fire, it increases the amount of protection against predators substantially,” Wrangham says. Flames and smoke would have scared off big cats, especially at night. He says, “I would imagine that there was much more predation of [early humans] prior to fire.”
Groups able to control fire may no longer have needed to retreat to trees each night. Sleeping on the ground would have marked a major shift in human evolution. With time, arms got shorter. Legs got longer. Walking and running became more efficient. Such changes would have made them more effective hunters, too.
People who could travel long distances could also track prey across broad savannas.
Fire had another benefit: It helped people get more energy from their food.
Cooked food is easier to digest. That extra energy could have allowed brains to grow bigger and more complex. Wrangham explored this idea in the 2010 book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.
Ours is the only human species alive today. But earlier in history, multiple human species lived — and evolved — beside each other. Fossils suggest that not all of these species advanced at the same pace. The pressures of avoiding predators while getting enough food may have nudged some species higher in the food web. As a result of these gradual changes, some species flourished. All but one of them — H. sapiens — died out.
By 300,000 years ago, stone-tipped spears appeared. Archaeologists found dozens of these along with the bones of hunted and butchered animals at a site in Germany. The find suggests that people had become skilled hunters. They planned ahead and worked in groups to hunt big animals. No longer just surviving within their ecosystem, humans were beginning to dominate it.
Those leopard bites on ancient jawbones remind us that humans haven’t always been on top. Our ancestors came to survive by working together, sharing resources and developing new tools and skills. Over time, these behaviors helped people shift from fearing predators to competing with them.
That almost nothing hunts us is a fairly recent development. Our history has been shaped by our vulnerability and the behaviors that allowed our ancestors to survive long enough to thrive.
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