YAKOHAMA, JAPAN—A new genetic study conducted by Xiaoxi Liu of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences and his colleagues suggests that modern Japanese people are mostly descended from three ancestral groups, according to a Live Science report. Those three groups include Jomon (…)

GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA—According to a CNN report, burned human remains and artifacts have have been discovered under a pile of discarded construction materials in a room beneath a temple at Guatemala’s Maya site of Ucanal by a team of researchers led by Christina T. Halperin of the University (…)

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA—Nature News reports that hundreds of human and animal bones and more than 40 fragments of stone tools have been uncovered at the entrance to a lava tube cave in northwestern Saudi Arabia. The stone tools are thought to be as much as 10,000 years old, while the oldest human (…)

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—According to a Cosmos Magazine report, Laura van Holstein of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues examined the rate of evolution of hominin species over a period of five million years. First, Van Holstein created a database of the 385 known hominin species, and then (…)

PILBARA, AUSTRALIA—ABC News Australia reports that an excavation conducted at the site of a rock shelter destroyed by mine blasting in 2020 in north Western Australia’s Juukan Gorge has uncovered a tooth from a Tasmanian devil. Archaeologist Michael Slack said that the tooth likely reached the (…)

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—According to a statement released by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, museum officials handed over a Sumerian sculpture to representatives from Iraq in a ceremony conducted in Washington, D.C. The copper alloy figurine, dated to between 2900 and 2600 B.C., depicts a man (…)

WEST YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND—Newsweek reports that the examination of the contents of a Roman lead coffin discovered in 2022 in the city of Leeds has identified the partial remains of a child. The initial evaluation of the coffin’s poorly preserved contents found the remains of a woman between the (…)

HUAINAN, CHINA—China Daily reports that a tomb built by the Chu vassal state at the end of the Warring States Period (475–221 B.C.) has been excavated at the Wuwangdun site in eastern China. Looting has severely damaged the tomb, prompting this rescue excavation. The site features a cemetery (…)

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA—According to a Live Science report, David Zeanah of California State University, Sacramento, representatives of the Buurabalayji Thalanyji Aboriginal Corporation, and their colleagues have analyzed more than 4,400 cutting and grinding tools recovered from open-air sites on (…)

SWINTON, SCOTLAND—Chronicle Live reports that human bone fragments have been discovered in disturbed soil in the area of Swinton Parish Church, which is located in Scotland near the Anglo-Scottish border, by researchers from the Border Reivers Archaeology Unit. The bones are thought to represent (…)