An international team, led by researchers from the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen, and the Max Planck Society, has identified five new human fossils from the key site of Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. The remains, which include three Denisovans and one Neanderthal, were found in a secure and well dated ~200,000-year-old context. Surrounded by archaeological remains such as stone tools and food refuse, the finds shed light on the adaptation strategies of these early hominins as they spread across Eurasia.
Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia rose to fame 11 years ago, when genetic sequencing of a fossil pinky bone revealed a new, previously unknown human group. Despite the fact that the group has been named 'Denisovans' after the site, identifying further Denisovan remains from the cave has been challenging, as any human remains are extremely fragmentary and difficult to spot amongst the hundreds of thousands of animal bones that are also present. Without definitive Denisovan remains, when they arrived at the site, how they lived, and how they interacted with other humans they shared the space with has remained a mystery.

Over the course of four years, a team led by Assistant Professor Katerina Douka at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology of the University of Vienna - with colleagues in Germany and Russia, have worked to extract and analyse ancient proteins and DNA from nearly 4000 bone fragments from Denisova Cave. Their new findings are reported in Nature Ecology and Evolution and provide robust insights into the first occupants of Denisova Cave and their archaeological signature.

Using a biomolecular method known as peptide fingerprinting or 'ZooMS' (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectroscopy), the team focused on the site's oldest layers, which date to as early as 200,000 years ago and lacked human fossils until now. Such methods are the only means by which scientists could find human remains among the thousands of bones from the site, as more than 95% were too fragmented for standard identification methods. Samantha Brown, doctoral student at Douka's ERC FINDER Project and now junior group leader at the University of Tübingen, analysed 3800 bone fragments no larger than 4 cm in length that were previously deemed taxonomically unidentifiable. Ultimately, Brown identified five bones whose collagen matched the peptide profile of humans.

Archaeologists have unearthed the first Roman mosaic of its kind in the UK. Today, a rare Roman mosaic and surrounding villa complex have been protected as a scheduled monument by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the advice of Historic England.

The decision follows archaeological work undertaken by a team from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), working in partnership with Historic England and in liaison with Rutland County Council.

The initial discovery of the mosaic was made during the 2020 lockdown by Jim Irvine, son of landowner Brian Naylor, who contacted the archaeological team at Leicestershire County Council, heritage advisors to the local authority.

Given the exceptional nature of this discovery, Historic England was able to secure funding for urgent archaeological investigations of the site by ULAS in August 2020. Further excavation involving staff and students from the University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History examined more of the site in September 2021.

A ramble through the fields with the family turned into an incredible discovery.

Finding some unusual pottery amongst the wheat piqued my interest and prompted some further investigative work. Later, looking at the satellite imagery I spotted a very clear crop mark, as if someone had drawn on my computer screen with a piece of chalk! This really was the 'oh wow' moment, and the beginning of the story.

This archaeological discovery has filled most of my spare time over the last year. Between my normal job and this, it's kept me very busy, and has been a fascinating journey. The last year has been a total thrill to have been involved with, and to work with the archaeologists and students at the site, and I can only imagine what will be unearthed next!

Jim Irvine

Throughout the spring and summer of 1963, the leaders of the United States and Israel - President John F. Kennedy and Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol - were engaged in a high-stakes battle of wills over Israel's nuclear program. The tensions were invisible to the publics of both countries, and only a few senior officials, on both sides of the ocean, were aware of the severity of the situation.

In Israel, those in the know saw the situation as a real crisis, as a former high-level science adviser, Prof. Yuval Ne'eman, told one of us (Avner Cohen) 25 years ago. Ne'eman recalled that Eshkol, Ben-Gurion's successor, and his associates saw Kennedy as presenting Israel with a real ultimatum. There was even one senior Israeli official, Ne'eman told me, the former Israel Air Force commander Maj. Gen. (res.) Dan Tolkowsky, who seriously entertained the fear that Kennedy might send U.S. airborne troops to Dimona, the home of Israel's nuclear complex.

Introduction

Just after midnight of June 6, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in a backroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just been celebrating his victory at the California primaries, which made him the most likely Democratic nominee for the presidential election. His popularity was so great that Richard Nixon, on the Republican side, stood little chance. At the age of 43, Robert would have become the youngest American president ever, after being the youngest Attorney General in his brother's government. His death opened the way for Nixon, who could finally become president eight years after having been defeated by John F. Kennedy in 1960.

John had been assassinated four and a half years before Robert. Had he survived, he would certainly have been president until 1968. Instead, his vice-president Lyndon Johnson took over the White House in 1963, and became so unpopular that he retired in 1968. Interestingly, Johnson became president the very day of John's death, and ended his term a few months after Robert's death. He was in power at the time of both investigations.

And both investigations are widely regarded as cover-ups. In both cases, the official conclusion is rife with contradictions. We are going to sum them up here. But we will do more: we will show that the key to solving both cases resides in the link between them. And we will solve them beyond a reasonable doubt.

One summer's day in Tipperary as peat was being dug from a bog, a button peered out from the freshly cut earth. The find set off a five-year journey of conservation to retrieve and preserve what lay beyond: a 1,200-year-old psalm book in its original cover.

Bogs across Europe have thrown up all sorts of relics of the ancient past, from naturally preserved bodies to vessels containing butter more than a millennium old, but the 2006 discovery of an entire early medieval manuscript, entombed in a wet time capsule for so long, was unprecedented, said the National Museum of Ireland.

The book fell open upon discovery to reveal the Latin words in ualle lacrimarum (in the valley of tears), which identified it as a book of psalms. One particularly unexpected feature was the vegetable-tanned leather cover with a papyrus reed lining, suggesting the monks could have had trade links with Egypt.

'Plague sceptics' are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6^th- 8^th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries.

The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia.

The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.

The reports about the US 2019 airstrike that killed up to 64 civilians in the ISIS-controlled town of Baghuz, Syria shocked millions of Americans. But this wanton murder is nothing new.

To understand how we got to Baghuz, all one has to do is study the Battle of Raqqa that preceded it.

The bombing conducted by the US Air Force in March 2019 in support of Syrian Kurdish forces mopping up the last vestiges of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) holing up in and around the village of Baghuz, along the Syrian-Iraqi border, has come under renewed scrutiny after allegations that the Department of Defense covered up claims that a war crime may have occurred. These allegations, first detailed in a New York Times article, claim that some 80 people, including 64 civilian women and children, may have been killed by a deliberate air strike conducted by US Air Force F-15E fighters dropping a mix of 500- and 2,000-pound bombs.

While the incident in question may not, on final scrutiny, fall within the legal definition of a war crime, it does appear to be part of a larger pattern of callous indifference by the US-led anti-ISIS coalition toward civilian casualties sustained in the fight against ISIS which dates to the battle for Raqqa, the one-time capital city of the short-lived ISIS Caliphate.

The members of the Don expedition of IA RAS have found a unique plate with a depiction of winged Scythian gods in surrounding of griffons during their examinations of the barrow cemetery Devitsa V in Ostrogozhsky District of Voronezh Oblast. This is the first case of such a finding in the Scythian barrows on Middle Don, earlier there have never been found the items with the depictions of gods from the Scythian pantheon.
"The finding has made an important contribution to our concepts of Scythian beliefs. Firstly, a particular number of gods are depicted at once on one item. Secondly, it has never happened before that an item with depicted gods has been found so far from the north-east of the main Scythian centers", said the head of the Don expedition, doctor of historical sciences, Valeriy Gulyaev.

Barrow cemetery Devitsa V named after the neighboring village area was found in 2000 by the Don archaeological expedition of IA RAS. The site is situated on the hill of the right bank of the river Devitsa and is a group of 19 mounds which are situated in two parallel chains stretched from west to east. However, the significant part of ancient barrows has already disappeared: the necropolis area belongs to an agricultural sector and being actively ploughed.

Since 2010 the site has been systematically studied by the specialists from the Don expedition of IA RAS. During the cemetery excavations some great discoveries have already been made. Thus in 2019 in the barrow 9 the burial was found which held the remains of a woman-warrior and an old lady in a ceremonial female head wear - calathe.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking. Books and investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General. U.S. Government Officials said in 1990 the supposed Anti-Drug Unit at the CIA. "accidentally" shipped a ton of cocaine into the US from Venezuela as part of an effort to infiltrate and gather evidence on drug gangs. The cocaine was then sold on the streets of America. As expected, no criminal charges were brought, although CIA officer Mark McFarlin resigned and one officer was disciplined. The CIA issued a statement on the incident saying there was "poor judgment and management on the part of several CIA officers". We are meant to believe that it all ends there. But this story is much bigger and more wide-ranging than even the issue of drugs on the streets on America and the targeting of black communities with the new deadly drug known as crack.

The third millennium BCE brought about substantial transformations that are visible in the cultures of Bronze Age Europeans. A new study led by researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for the Science of Human History (Jena) and Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig), and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona documents the arrival of new genetic ancestry to southern Iberia, concomitant with the rise of the Early Bronze Age El Argar culture around 2,200 BCE.

The third millennium BCE is a highly dynamic period in the prehistory of Europe and western Asia, characterized by large-scale social and political changes. In the Iberian Peninsula, the Copper Age was in full swing around 2,500 years BCE with substantial demographic growth, attested by a large diversity of settlements and fortifications, monumental funerary structures, as well as ditched mega-sites larger than 100 hectares. For reasons that are still unclear, the latter half of the millennium experienced depopulation and the abandonment of the mega-sites, fortified settlements and necropoles.

In southeastern Iberia, one of the most outstanding archaeological entities of the European Bronze Age emerged around 2,200 BCE. This so-called 'El Argar' culture, one of the first state-level societies on the European continent, was characterised by large, central hilltop settlements, distinct pottery, specialized weapons and bronze, silver and gold artefacts, alongside an intra-murial burial rite. A new study explores the relation between dynamic shifts at population scale and the major social and political changes of the third and second millennia BCE by analysing the genomes of 136 ancient Iberians, ranging from 3,000 to 1,500 BCE.