The Denisovan skull
Hebei GEO University
In 2010, DNA analysis of a finger bone around 40,000 years old revealed that it came from a previously unknown group of ancient humans, dubbed the Denisovans after the cave in Siberia where the bone was found. But with no skulls, we had no idea what they looked like. Now, Denisovan DNA has been found in this 146,000-year-old skull found in China. It suggests these people had an unusual combination of features, with faces similar to ours, but with thick brow ridges.
A woman and baby buried at an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Scremby, UK
Dr Hugh Willmott, University of Sheffield
This picture is a sad one. You might miss it on a quick glance, but the woman buried here is cradling a young baby in her arms, and probably died in childbirth. She lived in the 5th or 6th century and was richly dressed when buried. The cemetery at Scremby, UK, was discovered by a metal detectorist in 2018 and excavated by archaeologists including Hugh Willmott at the University of Sheffield in the UK, who took this picture. Researchers have now analysed some of the skeletons in the burial ground to look for hormones associated with pregnancy – the idea is to establish whether it is possible to tell from skeletal remains whether a woman was pregnant at or before the time of her death.
An ancient hunter’s toolkit
Martin Novák
This pile of sand and stones was once a leather bag containing a hunter’s tools. It was left at a campsite in the Pavlovské vrchy Hills in the Czech Republic around 30,000 years ago. The tools include everything from spear or arrow tips to cutting tools for meat and wood. They are well used and some have been remade from older tools, leading the archaeologists to speculate the tools were taken on long expeditions on which resources were scarce. It’s possible the tools were deliberately discarded because of their worn state.
The remains of a man excavated from Huiyaotian in Guangxi, China, dated to more than 9000 years ago
Yousuke Kaifu and Hirofumi Matsumura
Would you like to keep an eye on your family after your death? If so, you could consider asking them to slowly smoke you and put your mummified body in a convenient corner. This is the burial practice of some people in Indonesia today, with the body typically bound in a crouched position. It’s probably also how the remains in this photo were prepared in southern China 9000 years ago. The practice of mummifying bodies by slow smoking may have been widespread in South-East Asia up until around 4000 years ago, according to a study published this year.
A fragment of organic glass found inside the skull of a man in Herculaneum
Pier Paolo Petrone
An abstract artwork? No, this strange object is in fact a brain turned to glass by rapid cooling after being heated to 500°C. It belonged to a man in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum who was caught in a superhot cloud of ash and gas when Mount Vesuvius erupted around 2000 years ago. Although the brain exploded as it was superheated, parts of it are well preserved, with visible networks of brain cells.
A 1200-year-old mummified hand featuring tattoos
Michael Pittman and Thomas G Kaye
This almost life-like mummified hand belonged to a member of the Chancay people of Peru who lived around 1200 years ago. It was found in 1981 in the Huaura valley of Peru. The intricate tattoos are typical of Chancay mummies. This year, a study claimed that an imaging technique called laser-stimulated fluorescence had revealed new details of the tattoos. But other researchers have criticised this study, saying that the supposedly new details had already been reported by researchers in Peru, and that the study is wrong about the tattoo techniques used by the Chancay.
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Discovery Tours: Archaeology and palaeontology