For at least 1,400 years, poets in China have penned pieces about the Yangtze River’s sights and sounds. Now, scientists are using those artworks to reconstruct an animal’s past. “When we do ...

The human genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes, the biological blueprints that make humans … well, human. But it turns out that some of our DNA — about 8% — are the remnants of ancient viruses ...

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Researchers have recreated the world's oldest synthetic pigment, called Egyptian blue, which was used in ancient Egypt about 5,000 years ago. A team of Washington State University-led researchers has ...

Researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from Borrelia recurrentis, a type of bacteria that causes relapsing fever, pinpointing when it evolved to spread through lice rather than ticks, and how it gained ...

Ancient DNA from Stone Age burials in Turkey has finally put to rest a decades-long debate about whether the 9,000-year-old proto-city of Çatalhöyük was a matriarchal society. The research finally ...

The ancient Egyptians took a number of measures to safeguard the pyramids. But did they ever resort to booby traps? The answer, Egyptologists told Live Science, is an emphatic no. "No, they didn't use ...

Important, previously unrecognized genetic changes common to all ancient and modern Homo sapiens spread in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, a new study finds. After that, the same investigation ...

Scientists have found traces of ancient opiates in the residue lining an Egyptian alabaster vase, indicating that opiate use was woven into the fabric of the culture. And the Egyptians didn’t just ...