Hundreds of genomes shed light on the marriage habits and social norms of the Avar people of central Europe.
Most people know about the Huns, if only because of their infamous warrior-ruler Attila. But the Avars, another nomadic people who subsequently occupied roughly the same region of eastern and central Europe, have remained obscure despite having assembled a sprawling empire that lasted from the late sixth century to the early ninth century. Even archaeologists have struggled to piece together their history and culture, relying on spotty and potentially biased contemporaneous chronicles that, in many cases, were authored by the Avars' adversaries.

A deep dive into 424 genomes collected from hundreds of Avar graves is filling in crucial gaps in this story, revealing a wealth of insights into the Avars' social structure and culture^1. "These people basically didn't have a voice in history, and we are kind of looking into them this way — through their bodies," says Zuzana Hofmanová, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and one of the study's lead authors.

The work was published today in Nature.

The forgotten cherries were supposed to be served on George Washington's dinner table, but became a time capsule instead, sitting untouched since at least 1776

Archaeologists found something incredibly rare in the cellar of George Washington's home at Mount Vernon: Two intact jars of cherries buried in the basement of the first U.S. president's house.

Nick Beard, project archeologist at Mount Vernon, told USA TODAY on Tuesday that he had been excavating the basement "for quite a while" when he saw the lip of one of the jars in November.

When the bottle started to peek out from the earth, he proceeded carefully but said he didn't think it would turn out to be anything out of the ordinary, adding that it's common to find wine bottles and glasses at the site about 15 miles south of Washington, D.C.

Archaeologists have conducted a study of lithic material from the Pilauco and Los Notros sites in north-western Patagonia, revealing evidence of human occupation in the region prior to the Younger Dryas period.

The Younger Dryas, which occurred circa 12,900 to 11,700 years BP), was a cooling event which marked a return to glacial conditions, temporarily reversing the climatic warming of the preceding Late Glacial Interstadial.

The period in which humans arrived in South America, in particular, north-western Patagonia, has been the subject of an ongoing debate by academics for many years.

Previous archaeological evidence and palaeogenetic studies have suggested human presence between 16 600 and 15 100 cal BP, however, a new study published in the journal Antiquity is providing new evidence of pre-Holocene human activity during the late Pleistocene-early Holocene transition.

Americans once took great pride in the defeat of the Nazi scourge that threatened to run roughshod over the 20th century and beyond. Under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt, America mobilized not only to heal from the devastation of the Great Depression, but also became a global leader of industrial power supplying the Allies with the tools they needed to fight the war before entering the fight herself in 1941.

Coming out of that scarring experience, there was great hope that the world would finally be raised out of the fires of imperialism, poverty and war. The UN charter enshrined Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, respect for sovereignty and a mandate for economic cooperation into law giving hope that a new age of brotherhood was upon us.

Despite certain pushbacks by US Statesmen to the Anglo-American special relationship, and military industrial complex that began to take on a life of its own, FDR's vision for world peace continued to die throughout the Cold War.

Perhaps it was allowing RAND Corp computer modellers to shape international policy, or perhaps it was the FBI-McCarthyite witch hunts and constant threat of global nuclear annihilation that caused once-courageous Americans to become gullible and fearful. Whatever the cause had been, the fact that major components of Hitler's intelligence apparatus and unapologetic fascists were repurposed after the war to be used to combat Communism throughout the Cold War did not help.

Oak Island, located in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, is a small 140-acre island which has been the subject of an ongoing treasure hunt since 1795.

The earliest human occupation of the region dates back several thousand years to the ancestors of the Mi'kmaq, an indigenous First Nations people of Canada's Atlantic Provinces.

Europeans established permanent settlements in the area during the mid-18th century through the Shorham grant, an edict which offered free land grants to attract settlers and generate population growth.

At the time, Oak Island was known locally as "Smith's Island" (named for Edward Smith, an early settler), but was renamed to "Gloucester Isle" in 1778, and shortly after to "Oak Island" supposedly because of the red oaks growing on the island.

The following account is neither exact nor complete, but is a rough summary of the reports and materials published in sequence.

The history of the Oak Island treasure hunt begun in 1795, when a young Daniel McInnes discovered evidence of tree felling on the island's interior and a clearing with a shallow saucer-shaped depression.

McInnes likely envisioned stumbling across a pirate cache, as the Novia Scotia region was known to be a hide-out for pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Golden Age of Piracy.

The most infamous pirate to be associated with the Oak Island legend is Captain Kidd, however, there is little supporting evidence other than hearsay, and any association is merely speculative.

McInnes returned to the island with John (Jack) Smith and Anthony Vaughan, and begun excavating the depression until they discovered a layer of flagstones sourced from the Gold River several miles to the north.

Upon removing the flagstones, it is claimed that the trio found a shaft made by human hands (evidenced by pick marks in the hard clay walls), and continued to excavate the shaft interior to reveal several platforms of wooden logs at a depth of every 10 feet.

This shaft would later become known as the "Money Pit".

The possibility that Stonehenge aligns with the positions of the Moon - as well as the Sun - is being investigated by a team of experts and organisations including the Royal Astronomical Society.

Archaeoastronomers led by English Heritage will study the connection between the ancient monument and a 'major lunar standstill' — a rare astronomical phenomenon which happens every 18.6 years.

It refers to the point when Moonrise and Moonset reach their furthest points along the horizon and is next taking place from this year into next.

Academics from Oxford, Leicester and Bournemouth universities believe these once-in-a-generation lunar movements may have been noticed in the early phase of Stonehenge, and therefore influenced its later design.

Their research into the theory will begin this spring and last until the middle of 2025.

Professor Clive Ruggles, emeritus professor of archaeoastronomy at Leicester University, said: "Stonehenge's architectural connection to the Sun is well known, but its link with the Moon is less well understood.

"The four Station Stones align with the Moon's extreme positions, and researchers have debated for years whether this was deliberate, and - if so - how this was achieved and what might have been its purpose."

The mysterious monument site appears to have been occupied across multiple historical periods.
Archaeologists have discovered an unusual horseshoe-shaped monument and a collection of weapons and ornaments spanning multiple historical periods at a site in France.

Located in Marliens, a commune in eastern France, the site has a large bowtie-shaped structure, whose middle sports a circular construction measuring 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter. This center circlet is interconnected by a 26-foot-long (8 m) horseshoe-shaped structure on one side and a jug-handle-shaped feature on the other, according to a translated statement from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), which carried out the excavations.

Researchers described the finding as "unprecedented," as there are no other known sites with similar shaped constructions.

Based on the plethora of artifacts found there — including a bundle containing seven flint arrowheads, two protective armbands worn by archers, a flint lighter and a copper-alloy dagger — archaeologists determined that the site was occupied during different time periods.

In an ancient Maya temple-pyramid in Guatemala, archaeologists recently discovered the scorched bones of at least four adults who were likely members of a royal lineage. The burning signaled a deliberate and potentially public desecration of their remains, according to new research.

The bones offer a rare glimpse of intentional corpse destruction in Maya culture to commemorate dramatic political change.

All of the remains belonged to adults, and scientists identified three of the individuals as male. Two were between 21 and 35 years old, and one was between 40 and 60 years old, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Antiquity. Among the bones were thousands of burned objects — whole and in pieces — including body adornments made of greenstone (green minerals, including jade), pendants made from mammal teeth, shell beads, mosaics and weapons. Their richness and abundance hinted at the royal status of the people in the tomb.

Important to understand is that there is not one single new or original idea in Klaus Schwab's so-called Great Reset agenda for the world. Nor is his Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda his or his claim to having invented the notion of Stakeholder Capitalism a product of Schwab. Klaus Schwab is little more than a slick PR agent for a global technocratic agenda, a corporatist unity of corporate power with government, including the UN, an agenda whose origins go back to the beginning of the 1970s, and even earlier. The Davos Great Reset is merely an updated blueprint for a global dystopian dictatorship under UN control that has been decades in development. The key actors were David Rockefeller and his protégé, Maurice Strong.

In the beginning of the 1970s, there was arguably no one person more influential in world politics than the late David Rockefeller, then largely known as chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.

New research has identified over a dozen murders where women were traditionally sacrificed in Neolithic Europe across a period of 2,000 years.

The murder of sacrificial victims by "incaprettamento" — tying their neck to their legs bent behind their back, so that they effectively strangled themselves — seems to have been a tradition across much of Neolithic Europe.

The study follows a reevaluation of an old tomb found in southern France's Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, close to Avignon, more than 20 years ago. Two women who were buried there approximately 5,500 years ago are buried in a tomb that resembles a silo, or pit used to store grain.