A building site near the Uffizi museum has uncovered what archeologists believe could be a mass grave dating back to the sixth or seventh century AD, possibly during a plague.

The dig found 60 bodies laid out head-to-toe in a manner that could indicate hasty burial and need to optimize space in view of many more deaths, possibly because of a fatal epidemic.

''The remains have been unearthed over five months, and bear no evidence of trauma'', said Tuscany Archeology Superintendent Andrea Pessina. ''We will conduct DNA and carbon-14 tests to determine the cause and time of death, as well as information on diet, pathologies, and work-related stresses at the time''.

The entire operation is being filmed in 3D for future museum exhibitions.

New York - The DNA of a baby boy who was buried in Montana 12,600 years ago has been recovered, and it provides new indications of the ancient roots of today's American Indians and other native peoples of the Americas.

It's the oldest genome ever recovered from the New World. Artifacts found with the body show the boy was part of the Clovis culture, which existed in North America from about 13,000 years ago to about 12,600 years ago and is named for an archaeological site near Clovis, N.M.

The boy's genome showed his people were direct ancestors of many of today's native peoples in the Americas, researchers said. He was more closely related to those in Central and South America than to those in Canada. The reason for that difference isn't clear, scientists said.

The researchers said they had no Native American DNA from the United States available for comparison, but that they assume the results would be same, with some Native Americans being direct descendants and others also closely related.

The DNA also indicates the boy's ancestors came from Asia, supporting the standard idea of ancient migration to the Americas by way of a land bridge that disappeared long ago.

The burial site, northeast of Livingston, Mont., is the only burial known from the Clovis culture. The boy was between 1 year and 18 months old when he died of an unknown cause.

He was buried with 125 artifacts, including spear points and elk antler tools. Some were evidently ritual objects or heirlooms. The artifacts and the skeleton were covered with powdered red ochre, a natural pigment, indicating a burial ceremony.

The skeleton was discovered in 1968 next to a rock cliff, but it's only in recent years that scientists have been able to recover and analyze complete genomes from such ancient samples.

Archaeologists working in the western desert of Egypt have discovered a school dating back about 1,700 years that contains ancient Greek writings on its walls, including a text about ancient drug use that references Homer's The Odyssey.

The school - which contains benches that students could sit on to read, or stand on and write on the walls - dates back to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, and Greek was widely spoken.

In use for less than 20 years, the school structure eventually became part of a large house that contained colorful art, including images of the Olympian gods, the researchers said.

The house and school are located in the ancient town of Trimithis (modern-day Amheida), which is in the Dakhla Oasis, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) west of the Nile River. The house, and some of the art, was first discovered in 1979. In 2001, a new exploration project at Amheida, now sponsored primarily by New York University, led to the discovery of the school, its Greek writings and more art scenes from the house.

A mammoth tusk from the ice age was found while construction workers were digging in Seattle's South Lake Union area Tuesday.

Workers at 528 Pontius Ave. North found the tusk about 1.5 stories down and immediately stopped digging and roped off the area pending confirmation.

Experts from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture were called in to examine the find.

"Burke Museum paleontologists have examined the fossil and we are confident that it represents a tusk from an ice age mammoth," Christian Sidor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, said later Tuesday.

"Because the fossil is on private property and does not seem to be associated with an archaeological site, it is up to the landowner to decide what they would like to do with the tusk," Sidor said. "We are happy to excavate the fossil if the landowner would like to take that step.

"The discovery of a mammoth tusk in South Lake Union is a rare opportunity to directly study Seattle's ancient natural history. As a public repository, the Burke Museum would be pleased to curate the tusk and provide access to scientists and others wishing to study it," he said.

The authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has been in question for centuries and scientific investigations over the last few decades have only seemed to muddle the debate. Is the revered cloth a miracle or an elaborate hoax?

Now, a study claims neutron emissions from an ancient earthquake that rocked Jerusalem could have created the iconic image, as well as messed up the radiocarbon levels that later suggested the shroud was a medieval forgery. But other scientists say this newly proposed premise leaves some major questions unanswered.

The Shroud of Turin, which bears a faint image of a man's face and torso, is said to be the fabric that covered Jesus' body after his crucifixion in A.D. 33. Though the Catholic Church doesn't have an official position on the cloth, the relic is visited by tens of thousands of worshippers at the Turin Cathedral in Italy each year.

A wealthy slave merchant's 270-year-old notebook and business log has revealed a chilling insight into the slave trade and attitudes to human trafficking.

Cranfield Becher's written instructions order the captain of the Jason Gally to swap brandy and guns for 'as many Negros as our ship can carry'.

He specifies that the slaves are 'not too old or decrepit' and his entries make it clear that he views the unfortunate people as simple commodities to be bought and sold.

Lost for centuries, a rare bronze statue of the Greek god Apollo has mysteriously resurfaced in the Gaza Strip, only to be seized by police and vanish almost immediately from view.

Word of the remarkable find has caught the imagination of the world of archaeology, but the police cannot say when the life-sized bronze might re-emerge or where it might be put on display.

A local fisherman says he scooped the 500kg (1,100lb) god from the seabed last August, and carried it home on a donkey cart, unaware of the significance of his catch.

Others soon guessed at its importance, and the statue briefly appeared on eBay with a $500,000 (£300,000) price tag - well below its true value. Police from the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the isolated Palestinian territory, swiftly seized it and say they are investigating the affair.

Archaeologists have not been able to get their hands on the Apollo - to their great frustration- and instead must pore over a few blurred photographs of the intact deity, who is laid out incongruously on a blanket emblazoned with Smurfs.

From what they can tell, it was cast sometime between the 5th and the 1st century BC, making it at least 2,000 years old.

The prints, thought to be more than 800,000 years old, were found in silt on the beach at Happisburgh on the north-east coast of the county.

Scientists believe the prints, which were probably made by five different people, are direct evidence of the earliest known humans in northern Europe.

Dr Nick Ashton from the British Museum said it was "an extraordinarily rare discovery".

The prints were found at low tide when heavy waves washed away much of the beach sand to briefly expose the silt and scientists rushed to take photographs of them before they were eroded by the sea.

He said: "At first we weren't sure what we were seeing but as we removed any remaining beach sand and sponged off the seawater, it was clear that the hollows resembled prints, perhaps human footprints, and that we needed to record the surface as quickly as possible before the sea eroded it away."

The scientists also made 3D models of the surface which show distinct heel, arch and toe marks left by a group of adults and children - with some equating to modern shoe sizes of up to UK size eight.

The "Little Ice Age" impact on Europe was sudden and ferocious.

Using its weapons of plague, famine and (perhaps controversially) earthquake, the so-called "Little Ice age" reduced the population of Europe by around 30 to 50 percent. The virulence and death toll of the 1348 AD plague is totally unmatched by modern examples. Further, the world mega-famine of 1315 AD, due to both weather and pestilence, was catastrophic. The relentless temperature drops combined with erratic weather are nearly impossible to explain, but mankind had no hand in its inception. What forces of nature caused this catastrophic scenario? Greenland is a classic example of death and abandonment. Let's travel back in time and see what happened.

Although the Little Ice Age is a scientific reconstruction, it covers a period when there was a significant and chaotic down-turn in climate, compared to the present era. It is classified into four periods from around 1280 AD to 1850 AD. These erratic cold periods are referred to as the Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton weather minima. Those dramatic climatic deteriorations were not only cooler, wetter and windier on average, but also vastly more chaotic in their fluctuations, creating the prime ingredients for famine and (curiously) plague.

The Little Ice Age followed a period known as the "Medieval Maximum" that is dated to between 900 AD - 1280 AD, which copious records reveal was much warmer than modern times. For instance, grapevines grew in the area of today's shivering Wales! This was generally a period of prosperity for civilizations. There was a large increase in world population and an era of colonial expansion. During the years 800 AD - 1200 AD, Greenland and Iceland were settled by the Vikings. The "Medieval Warm Period" allowed this great migration to flourish. Drift ice at later dates posed the greatest hazard to sailors but reports of drift ice in old records do not appear until the thirteenth century.

A mysterious manuscript that appears to be written in gibberish may actually be in an extinct dialect of the Mexican language Nahuatl. Illustrations of plants in the manuscript have been linked to plants native to Central America for the first time, suggesting a new origin for the text. But some still say it could be a hoax.

The Voynich manuscript has puzzled researchers since book dealer Wilfrid Voynich found it in an Italian monastery in 1912.

Among hundreds of pages of so-far undecipherable text, it includes illustrations of naked nymphs, astrological diagrams and drawings of plants that no one has been able to identify.

An academic war has raged for years between those who think the manuscript contains a real language that could eventually be decoded, and those who think it was a clever forgery designed to dupe book collectors.

"It's a battle with two sides," says Alain Touwaide, a historian of botany at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.