The plague of Akhetaten has long been cited as a possible explanation for the mysterious abandonment of ancient Egypt's short-lived capital city. However, a comprehensive new archaeological analysis by researchers Dr. Gretchen Dabbs and Dr. Anna Stevens, published in the American Journal of Archaeology, analyzed the evidence for this plague and suggests it may never have affected Akhetaten at all.| phys.org
Sadly, there are signs that racism is increasing across the world.| phys.org
Barley is one of the world's oldest cultivated plants, farmed for more than 10,000 years. Scientists have long believed it was domesticated in just one location. An international research team led by the IPK Leibniz Institute has revealed that modern barley has a "mosaic origin," meaning it stems from several wild populations across the Fertile Crescent. The paper is published in the journal Nature.| phys.org
Roughly 10,000 years ago, humans started shifting from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to building large agricultural settlements, marking one of the greatest transformations in human history. This transition, known as the Neolithic Revolution, began in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East and led to the spread of farming throughout Europe. For decades, researchers have debated what drove this change. Did farming spread mainly because farmers themselves moved into new lands, or because hunt...| phys.org
Archaeologists have analyzed the DNA of two unrelated individuals buried in 7th-century-AD cemeteries on the south coast of England, revealing that they both had recent ancestors, likely grandparents, from West Africa.| phys.org
Researchers looking into the origin of domestic cats have long considered that cats likely accompanied early farmers during the Neolithic, spreading through Europe alongside the adoption of agriculture.| phys.org
