Scientists have finally uncovered direct genetic evidence of Yersinia pestis — the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian — in a mass grave in Jerash, Jordan. This long-sought discovery resolves a ...

In recent years, Egyptologists’ understanding of the period of stability and prosperity that emerged at the end of the 4th millennium B.C.E. known as the Old Kingdom has begun to change. Excavations ...

For centuries, plants were seen as the first colonisers of land, but new research reveals that fungi ruled terrestrial ecosystems long before plants took root. Emerging hundreds of millions of years ...

Researchers have sequenced the first whole ancient Egyptian genome from an individual who lived 4,500 to 4,800 years ago – the oldest DNA sample from Egypt to date. 80% of his ancestry was related to ...

For the first time, researchers have uncovered direct genomic evidence of the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian—the world's first recorded pandemic—in the Eastern Mediterranean, where the ...

The room we are in is locked. It is windowless and lit from above by a fluorescent bulb. In the hallway outside—two stories beneath the city of London—attendants in dark suits patrol silently, giving ...

Teeth from an elderly man who lived around the time that the earliest pyramids were built have yielded the first full human genome sequence from ancient Egypt. The remains are 4,800 to 4,500 years old ...

A third-century B.C.E. plaque unearthed at Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan depicts the mother goddess Cybele in a chariot driven by Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Thierry Ollivier / Musée Guimet via ...