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Anthropology

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LiveScience.com

Dried-up bits of food lurking on dinnerware make diners cringe, but they are like gold for an archaeo-botanist. Hot on a new trail of microscopic crumbs revealed that domesticated chili peppers originated in the Americas earlier than previously thoug

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AP

Chimpanzees may have been using stone "hammers" as long as 4,300 years ago. Uncovered hammers, dated to that time, in the West African country Ivory Coast. It would be the earliest known use of tools by chimpanzees.

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By John Noble Wilford - International Herald Trib

New excavations near Stonehenge have uncovered hearths, timbers and other remains of what archaeologists say was probably the village of workers who erected the brooding monoliths on Salisbury Plain in England.

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Reuters

Evidence of a large settlement full of houses dating back to 2,600 BC has been discovered near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge. Scientists suspect inhabitants built the stone circle at Stonehenge -- generally thought to have been a temple, b

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AP

A 2,500-year-old city influenced by the Olmecs, often referred to as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, has been discovered hundreds of miles away from the Olmecs' Gulf coast territory, archaeologists said.

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LiveScience.com

A recently unearthed human skull believed to have been used as a ceremonial trophy by the people of an ancient Peruvian empire gives new insights into the nature of warfare in the society, archaeologists say.

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AP

It was the ancient version of a last stand: Twelve clay bullets lined up and ready to be shot from slings in a desperate attempt to stop fierce invaders who soon would reduce much of the city to rubble. The discovery was made in the ruins of Hamou

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AP

While the initial big die-offs are still blamed on the Conquistadors who started arriving in 1519, even more virulent epidemics in 1545 and 1576 may have been caused by a native blood-hemorrhaging fever spread by rats, Mexican researchers say.

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AP

A man hunting for American Indian artifacts with his sons along a gravel bar on the Missouri River has uncovered an ancient fishhook that is making collectors envious. "The first thing I thought is, 'I hope this isn't metal,'

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AP

The discovery of a 2,000-year-old toilet at one of the world's most important archaeological sites is focusing renewed interest on a question that has preoccupied scholars for more than half a century: Who lived at Qumran?

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AP

The Cup-Bearer, a Cycladic figurine of unknown provenance dating between 2800-2200 B.C. A new discovery of smashed marble figurines on an uninhabited Aegean Sea islet has shed new light on the mysterious Cycladic civilization, whose strikingly modern

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LA Times

Underneath it all, however, is an exceptional treasure — the oldest surviving copy of works by the ancient Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived in the 3rd century BC. About 80% of the text had been transcribed and tra

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AP

The mystery baffled archaeologists for more than 2 decades. What happened to 22,000 pieces of gold—jewel-encrusted crowns, daggers and baubles from an ancient burial mound—that had apparently vanished from Afghanistan? [www.guimet.fr]

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LiveScience.com

Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants and the other of a single baby, were discovered at the same Stone Age camp in Austria. Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric

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LiveScience.com

Neanderthals suffered periods of starvation and may have supplemented their diet through cannibalism, according to a study of remains from northwest Spain. Paleobiologists studied samples from eight 43,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons

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Reuters

Raffaela La Pasta is not sure but thinks that the still half-buried skeleton she is unearthing in downtown Rome is female, and at least 1,600-years-old. A leg-bone is sticking up through the dirt and the outline of the skull is just visible, even

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LiveScience.com

A startling discovery of 70,000-year-old artifacts and a python's head carved of stone appears to represent the first known human rituals. Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until pe

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LiveScience.com

Scientists have finally demystified the incredible workings of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks. More advanced than previously thought—so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years.

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LiveScience.com

CT scans of King Tutankhamun's mummy may put the world's oldest "cold case" to rest, refuting the notion that the ruler's enemies bludgeoned him to death. Instead, a festering leg wound may have led to the boy-king's earl