One of the oldest known sentences ever written was a plea against contracting lice, a new study has found. Archaeologists made the hair-raising discovery several years after unearthing a hair comb, which they found in 2016 at an Israeli archaeological site called Tel Lachish, located south of Tel Aviv. The site was once a city […]
Layered rocks in Western Australia are some of Earth’s earliest known life, according to a new study. The fossils in question are stromatolites, layered rocks that are formed by the excretions of photosynthetic microbes. The oldest stromatolites that scientists agree were made by living organisms date back 3.43 billion years, but there are older specimens, […]
It’s a simple sentence that captures the hopes and fears of modern-day parents as much as the bronze age Canaanite who owned the doubled-edged ivory comb on which the words appear. Believed to be the oldest known sentence written in the earliest alphabet, the inscription on the luxury item reads: “May this tusk root out […]
The oldest-known star, officially called HD 140283 but nicknamed Methuselah, lies 190.1 light-years away. The Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) UK Schmidt telescope photographed the star in blue light for the Digitized Sky Survey. (Image credit: Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and UKSTU/AAO) Among the countless stars glittering in the vastness of space, some are so […]
Scholars may have just discovered a fragment of the world’s oldest star map. The map segment, which was found beneath the text on a sheet of medieval parchment, is thought to be part of the long-lost star catalog of the second century B.C. Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who made the earliest known attempt to chart the […]
Countless civilizations have risen and fallen over the millennia. But which one is the oldest on record? About 30 years ago, this question seemed to have a straightforward answer. Around 4000 B.C., the earliest phase of the Sumerian culture arose as the oldest civilization in the Mesopotamia region, in what is now mostly Iraq. The […]
About 31,000 years ago, a skilled prehistoric surgeon cut off the lower leg of a child hunter-gatherer in Borneo. Now, archaeologists have concluded that this ancient surgery is the earliest medical amputation on record. The skill of the Stone Age surgeon was admirable; the patient went on to live an additional six to nine years […]
The newly discovered dinosaur Mbiresaurus raathi, pictured here with other Triassic animals whose remains were also recovered from northern Zimbabwe. (Image credit: Andrey Atuchin) The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa — and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth — has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds. The […]
To find the oldest known human-made structures in the Americas, you don’t need to hike into the wilderness or paddle down a raging river — all you need to do is visit Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At the north end of Louisiana State University’s (LSU) campus sit two grassy mounds, rising in a gentle slope to […]
An artist’s interpretation of an early human hunting a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). (Image credit: Shutterstock) (opens in new tab) A 37,000-year-old mammoth butchering site, uncovered in New Mexico, might be the earliest evidence of humans in North America, controversial research finds. Some of the bones at the site show signs of being handled by […]
