Soap has a fairly simple formula and a long history. But for centuries, water was the primary means of bathing. For example, in the Indus Valley Civilization—a culture that flourished in parts of what is now Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan from 2600 to 1900 BCE—the Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro is thought to be one of the earliest public steam baths. But steam only lasts so long.

The long-term promise of reliable quantum computing is hard to overstate. Its potential to cure disease, create much-needed material breakthroughs, and even solve big problems like climate change is not technological bluster, it’s a real possibility. Time crystals are an entirely new form of matter in which particles move forever and don’t lose energy.

Although dental ablation has been documented among groups around the world, it is most often associated with early Austronesian communities, which included people in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Polynesia. The first evidence of the procedure dates back to around 4,800 BCE, during the Neolithic period, and the tradition continued into the early 20th century.

When a museum displays a piece of art, they usually try to show it in its entirety. It’s rare to see a painting with half its canvas missing, or a tapestry with one side unraveled. But when it comes to ancient Roman statues, they can come a little broken, and that’s pretty much the norm. Walk through any classical art museum, and you’re likely to see broken noses, severed fingers, and a whole lot of severed heads.

In 2024, archaeologists discovered a huge observatory in Egypt, which they say is the largest ever found and dates back to the sixth century BC. Several stones with sundials and inscriptions related to astronomy were found at the site.

Representations of pi (π) help scientists use values ​​that are close to the real thing without having to store a million digits. Creating a new pi required using a series, which is a structured set of terms that either converge to a single expression or diverge. In a new study, physicists use principles of quantum mechanics to build a new model of the abstract concept of π. Or, more accurately, they built a new model that happens…

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The cave lion may have been a symbolic animal for ancient people in Baikal-Yenisei Siberia. Fossilized bones of an extinct armored mammal give us the latest clue about when humans arrived in South America. The ancient Egyptians regularly mummified crocodiles in elaborate ceremonies to honor their crocodile god Sobek. Unusual wooden figurines depicting animals.

Yet these historical monuments were practically before the eyes of scientists. For example, archaeologists recently reinterpreted the markings on a stone pillar at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, the site of one of the oldest ancient farming communities in the world. The Mesopotamian monument is about 12,000 years old, dating back to the early Holocene, which marks the most recent era on Earth since the glaciers retreated. Divers also discovered the wreckage of an ancient ship off…

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The first direct evidence confirming the hypothesis of the existence of wandering metallurgists in the Bronze Age was discovered by SUSU scientists as part of an international research team. According to the specialists, they conducted a comprehensive analysis of the unique burial of an elderly man of the Sintashta culture, which existed in the Southern Trans-Urals about 4,000 years ago. The results were published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

In humanity’s distant past, highly skilled seafarers made daring voyages from Asia to the Pacific islands. It was a global migration that shaped the spread of our species, Homo sapiens, across the planet. These seafarers became the ancestors of the people who live in this region today, from West Papua to Aotearoa (New Zealand). However, archaeologists are still unclear about the exact timing, location and nature of these seaborne migrations. The study found that people lived near…

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Humans began to transition from small nomadic bands to early agricultural civilizations during the Neolithic period. According to National Geographic, historians have several theories about why the Neolithic Revolution, also known as the Agricultural Revolution, began: overpopulation, reliance on certain plants, and even the creation of a more cohesive, productive society. The Neolithic fundamentally changed the way humans interacted with the land, animals, and each other, and the organizational practices developed during this time can be traced…

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The life of people of the Stone Age was inextricably linked with the natural environment, so scientists studying their settlements try to understand not only what ancient dwellings and their inhabitants looked like, but also what kind of landscape surrounded people, what the climate was like, what plants and animals existed around, the scientists said.

During the Paleozoic Era (541–252 million years ago), there was enough atmospheric oxygen to support giant superbugs and insects. For example, the largest giant dragonfly had a wingspan of up to 28 inches (71 cm). The giant centipede could reach eight feet in length (8.5 meters), making it the largest known invertebrate in history.

China is building a Great Wall of Energy that could power an entire city. It could power all of Beijing and usher in an era of clean energy. China is the world leader in solar energy, and the country is using that title to its advantage by trying to build what it calls the “Great Wall of Solar.”

Most scientists agree that a major collision 4.5 billion years ago with the protoplanet Theia formed the Earth-Moon system. A new study from the University of Nevada argues that the chaos of that collision in the early days of the Earth-Moon system may have created polar cislunar “moons.”

Experts at English Heritage are investigating a new theory about how the Moon may have influenced the design of Stonehenge. A major lunar standstill occurs about every 19 years, with the next one due in 2024. This has prompted experts in England to investigate whether the phenomenon could have something to do with the design of Stonehenge. The stones at Stonehenge are varied in composition and come from a number of potential sources.

Scientists have discovered that natural selection is happening right now among humans high in the mountains of Nepal. The physiological traits that help Tibetan women survive at high altitude are being selected for within the population, meaning they could become more common. The people of Papua New Guinea, who have been genetically isolated for millennia, carry unique genes that help them fight off infections, and some of these genes come from our extinct human cousins, the Denisovans.…

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A complex picture is emerging of how the Neanderthals died out, and what role modern humans played in their demise. About 37,000 years ago, Neanderthals were still living in small groups in what is now southern Spain. They may have gone about their daily business, making stone tools, eating birds and mushrooms, carving symbols into rocks, and creating feather and shell jewelry. They probably never realized that they were among the last of their kind.

It would seem that Egypt has been dug up and down, but archaeologists and scientists are finding new facts to study. For example, mysterious plasma bubbles have appeared above the pyramids; China has recorded these strange atmospheric phenomena using modern radar. Archaeologists have discovered a 3,000-year-old fort in the desert, which contains evidence of the pharaoh’s stay. The ancient Egyptians used so much copper that they polluted the harbor near the pyramids.

Surprisingly, historical landmarks can survive in water. A 2,000-year-old temple from the “Indiana Jones civilization” has been found submerged off the coast of Italy. An ancient sunken bridge in Spain shows that people inhabited the Mediterranean island nearly 6,000 years ago. A torrential downpour hit an excavation site and uncovered a 233-million-year-old dinosaur. Archaeologists have discovered underwater images of several New and Late Kingdom pharaohs in the southern Egyptian province of Aswan. Archaeologists have found a centuries-old…

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In the coastal desert north of Lima, Peru, archaeologists have uncovered the skeletal remains of 227 children, apparently killed and buried hundreds of years ago in a massive ritual sacrifice. The find represents the largest child burial on Earth, according to researchers who have been excavating the site for more than a year, and the bodies discovered so far may be just the tip of the proverbial blade. “No matter where you dig, there’s another one,” said…

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The 2024 Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese public organization Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating that nuclear weapons should never be used again.” “The outstanding efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the ‘nuclear taboo.’ It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure,” the official press release said.

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to South Korean writer Han Kang “for her richly poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life.” The writer became the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. South Korean writer Han Kang is the 18th woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2016, she won the Booker Prize for her novel The Vegetarian.

The laureates studied the different political and economic systems brought in by European colonizers. As the committee noted, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson “helped us understand differences in well-being across countries.” They demonstrated the importance of institutions for a country’s prosperity and developed theoretical tools that can explain why differences in institutions persist and how institutions can change.

After establishing settlements in Iceland and Greenland in the ninth and tenth centuries A.D., the Vikings reached what is now Newfoundland, Canada, around A.D. 1000. In the 13th century, the Inuit and Thule Norse hunted walruses in the high Arctic, according to a new study. Medieval walrus ivory may indicate trade between the Norse and Native Americans hundreds of years before Columbus, the study found.

Archaeologists have found 115,000-year-old human footprints where they shouldn’t be. Fossilized footprints in Saudi Arabia show evidence of human movement on the cusp of the next ice age. Study of preserved tracks in New Mexico continues to shed light on the first human movements across North America.

Scientists are discovering and resurrecting ancient viruses trapped in permafrost and frozen remains. Trapped in frigid Arctic soils and riverbeds, the world is teeming with ancient microbes. Bacteria and viruses that existed thousands of years ago are frozen in time within prehistoric layers of permafrost. Rising temperatures could cause much of the ice to melt, freeing these microbes from their icy prisons. The viruses found are harmless, but other microbes, as yet unknown, could be released and…

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Layered rocks in Western Australia are among the earliest known forms of life on Earth, according to a new study. The fossils in question are stromatolites, layered rocks formed by the secretions of photosynthetic microbes. The oldest stromatolites, which scientists believe were created by living organisms, date back 3.43 billion years, but there are older examples. Stromatolites dating back 3.48 billion years have been found in the Dresser Formation in Western Australia.

New research suggests that salt crystals from Central Australia contain ancient microorganisms that became trapped 830 million years ago, and there is a chance that some of the microorganisms are still alive. The single-celled organisms are trapped in tiny pockets of liquid – smaller than the width of a human hair – in halite, or salt, from a sedimentary rock formation.

Fossil evidence of an ancient rainforest has recently been discovered in West Antarctica. A thriving temperate rainforest grew in West Antarctica about 90 million years ago, according to a new study, based on newly discovered fossil roots, pollen and spores.