The harsh winter of 1609 in Virginia's Jamestown Colony forced residents to do the unthinkable. A recent excavation at the historic site discovered the carcasses of dogs, cats and horses consumed during the season commonly called the "Starving Time." But a few other newly discovered bones in particular, though, tell a far more gruesome story: the dismemberment and cannibalization of a 14-year-old English girl.

"The chops to the forehead are very tentative, very incomplete," says Douglas Owsley, the Smithsonian forensic anthropologist who analyzed the bones after they were found by archaeologists from Preservation Virginia. "Then, the body was turned over, and there were four strikes to the back of the head, one of which was the strongest and split the skull in half. A penetrating wound was then made to the left temple, probably by a single-sided knife, which was used to pry open the head and remove the brain."

Much is still unknown about the circumstances of this grisly meal: Who exactly the girl researchers are calling "Jane" was, whether she was murdered or died of natural causes, whether multiple people participated in the butchering or it was a solo act. But as Owsley revealed along with lead archaeologist William Kelso today at a press conference at the National Museum of Natural History, we now have the first direct evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the oldest permanent English colony in the Americas. "Historians have gone back and forth on whether this sort of thing really happened there," Owsley says. "Given these bones in a trash pit, all cut and chopped up, it's clear that this body was dismembered for consumption."

It's long been speculated that the harsh conditions faced by the colonists of Jamestown might have made them desperate enough to eat other humans - and perhaps even commit murder to do so. The colony was founded in 1607 by 104 settlers aboard three ships, the Susan Constant, Discovery and Godspeed, but only 38 survived the first nine months of life in Jamestown, with most succumbing to starvation and disease (some researchers speculate that drinking water poisoned by arsenic and human waste also played a role). Because of difficulties in growing crops - they arrived in the midst of one of the worst regional droughts in centuries and many settlers were unused to hard agricultural labor - the survivors remained dependent on supplies brought by subsequent missions, as well as trade with Native Americans.

They lived in well-planned cities, made exquisite jewelry, and enjoyed the ancient world's best plumbing. But the people of the sophisticated Indus civilization - which flourished four millennia ago in what is now Pakistan and western India - remain tantalizingly mysterious.

Unable to decipher the Indus script, archaeologists have pored over beads, slivers of pottery, and other artifacts for insights into one of the world's first city-building cultures.

Now scientists are turning to long-silent witnesses: human bones. In two new studies of skeletons from Indus cemeteries, researchers have found intriguing clues to the makeup of one city's population - and hints that the society there was not as peaceful as it has been portrayed.

Peaceful or not, the Indus civilization accomplished great things. At its peak, its settlements spanned an area greater than that of ancient Egypt, a contemporary culture. Indus jewelry was so coveted that examples have been found as far as Mesopotamia, some 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) away. Indus cities boasted blocks of houses built on a grid pattern and drains that funneled sewage from homes to dumping grounds outside the city walls.

A controversial theory that humans evolved from amphibious apes has won new support.

The aquatic ape theory, whose supporters include David Attenborough, suggests that apes emerged from the water, lost their fur, started to walk upright and then developed big brains.

While it has been treated with scorn by some scientists since it first emerged 50 years ago, it is backed by a committed group of academics, including Sir David.

The group will hold a major London conference next week featuring several speakers who will voice support for the theory.

Peter Rhys Evans is one of the organisers of Human Evolution: Past, Present and Future.

He told the Observer that humans are very different from other apes, as we lack fur, walk upright, have big brains and subcutaneous fat and have a descended larynx - which is common among aquatic animals.

According to evolutionary theories, these features appeared at separate times, for different reasons.

But the aquatic ape theory says they appeared because our ancestors decided to live in or near water for millions of years.

British biologist Sir Alister Hardy first theorised that we were descended from aquatic apes.

He wrote that apes came down from the trees to live in the food rich creeks, river and seas.

In 2001, a lonely computer technician living in the countryside in Northern Germany advertised online for a well-built man willing to participate in a mutually satisfying sexual act. Armin Meiwes' notice was similar to many others on the Internet except for a rather important detail: The requested man must be willing to be killed and eaten.

Meiwes didn't have to look far. Two hundred and thirty miles away in Berlin, an engineer called Bernd Brandes agreed to travel to Meiwes' farmhouse. There, a gory video later found by police documented Brandes' consensual participation in the deadly dinner. The cannibalism was both a shock to the German public and a conundrum to German prosecutors wanting to charge Meiwes with a crime.

Cannibalism might be humanity's most sacred taboo, but consent of a victim typically eliminates a crime, explains Emilia Musumeci, a criminologist at the University of Catania, in Italy, who studies cannibalism and serial killers.

More technically, cannibalism is not designated as illegal in Germany's extensive criminal code: Until that point, laws against murder had sufficed to cover cannibalism. If Brandes had volunteered his own life, how could Meiwes be accused of murder?

Because of his victim's consent, Meiwes was initially found guilty of something akin to assisted suicide, and sentenced to eight years in jail. Had there not been widespread uproar about the seemingly lenient penalty, Meiwes would be out of jail by now. Instead, the uproar led to a subsequent retrial, where Meiwes was found guilty of killing for sexual pleasure. He will likely spend the rest of his life in jail.

The oldest ancient Maya ceremonial compound ever discovered in the Central American lowlands dates back 200 years before similar sites pop up elsewhere in the region, archaeologists announced today (April 25). The recently excavated plaza and pyramid would have likely served as a solar observatory for rituals.

The finding at a site called Ceibal suggests that the origins of the Maya civilization are more complex than first believed. Archaeologists hotly debate whether the Maya - famous for their complex calendar system that spurred apocalypse rumors last year - developed independently or whether they were largely inspired by an earlier culture known as the Olmec. The new research suggests the answer is neither.

"This major social change happened through interregional interactions," said study researcher Takeshi Inomata, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona. But it doesn't look like the Olmec inspired the Maya, Inomata told reporters. Rather, the entire region went through a cultural shift around 1000 B.C., with all nearby cultures adopting similar architectural and ceremonial styles. [See Images of the Ancient Maya Observatory]

"It's signaling to us that the Maya were not receiving this sophisticated stuff 500 years later from somebody else, but much of the innovation we're seeing out of the whole region may be coming out of Ceibal or a place like Ceibal," said Walter Witschey, an anthropologist at Longwood University in Virginia, who was not involved in the study.

Ancient DNA recovered from a series of skeletons in central Germany up to 7500 years old has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe.

The study, published today in Nature Communications, reveals a dramatic series of events including major migrations from both Western Europe and Eurasia, and signs of an unexplained genetic turnover about 4000-5000 years ago.

Researchers found genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4000 years ago

Bell Beaker culture, which is believed to have been instrumental in building the monoliths at Stonehedge, could hold the key

The genetic makeup of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,000-5,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.

An Australian team found the unexplained change while analysing several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old.

They say the rapid expansion of the Bell Beaker culture, which is believed to have been instrumental in building the monoliths at Stonehedge, could hold the key.
What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don't know why,' study co-author Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide Australian Center for Ancient DNA said.

'Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was.'

The grand Mycenaens, the first Greeks, inspired the legends of the Trojan Wars, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Their culture abruptly declined around 1200 B.C., marking the start of a Dark Ages in Greece.

The disappearance of the Mycenaens is a Mediterranean mystery. Leading explanations include warfare with invaders or uprising by lower classes. Some scientists also think one of the country's frequent earthquakes could have contributed to the culture's collapse. At the ruins of Tiryns, a fortified palace, geologists hope to find evidence to confirm whether an earthquake was a likely culprit.

Tiryns was one of the great Mycenaean cities. Atop a limestone hill, the city-state's king built a palace with walls so thick they were called Cyclopean, because only the one-eyed monster could have carried the massive limestone blocks. The walls were about 30 feet (10 meters) high and 26 feet (8 m) wide, with blocks weighing 13 tons, said Klaus-G. Hinzen, a seismologist at the University of Cologne in Germany and project leader. He presented his team's preliminary results April 19 at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting in Salt Lake City.

A site near Stonehenge has revealed archaeological evidence that hunters gathered just a mile from Stonehenge roughly 5,000 years prior to the construction of the first stones, new research suggests.

What's more, the site, which was occupied continuously for 3,000 years, had evidence of burning, thousands of flint tool fragments and bones of wild aurochs , a type of giant cow. That suggests the area near Stonehenge may have been an auroch migration route that became an ancient feasting site, drawing people together from across different cultures in the region, wrote lead researcher David Jacques of the Open University in the United Kingdeom, in an email.

"We may have found the cradle of Stonehenge, the reason why it is where it is," Jacques wrote. [In Photos: A Walk Through Stonehenge]

Teotihuacan, an ancient, abandoned city about an hour north of Mexico City, was once one of the largest cities in the world. It collapsed in the centuries ago (thanks either to an internal uprising or foreign invaders, depending on who you ask), but it's never been completely deserted, since the ruins have always been a magnet for squatters, archaeologists and hordes of tourists.

Yet there are still portions of Teotihuacan that remain untouched by today's explorers, including a subterranean burial site that scientists estimate has spent the last 1900 years unseen by human eyes. Until now.

In 2003, scientists discovered a tunnel beneath Teotihuacan's Temple of the Plumed Serpent. They speculated that the tunnel was a processional walkway leading to a warren of royal burial chambers, but couldn't say for sure, since the opening to the tunnel was intentionally buried by the city's last inhabitants. According to BLDGBLOG, archaeologists at Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute are now uncovering the mystery of the buried chambers without disturbing them - thanks to a diminutive robotic system designed to go where shimmying archaeologists cannot:

... A little wireless robot called Tlaloc II-TC will soon "investigate the far reaches of a tunnel found beneath the Temple of the Plumed Serpent at Teotihuacan," entering a chamber "estimated to be 2,000 years old, and [that] may have been used as a place for royal ceremonies or burials."