Prehistoric man may have been responsible for the first ever war crime, after German archaeologists found a mass grave with evidence that the victims had been tortured and slain.

Researchers at the University of Mainz have been studying the remains of 26 people who were found dumped in a bit dating from the early Neolithic, around 4000BC.

Although mass graves have been found before from the stone age, it is the first time that skeletons have shown evidence of needless violence.

Most of the skull bones revealed that the victims had been hit over the head with a blunt instrument, while arrow heads nearby suggest they could have been killed by bowmen.

But for the first time there was evidence of deliberate and systematic smashing of the lower leg bones of a number of individuals suggesting that the victims were either tortured before or mutilated after death.

The grave was discovered at Schöneck-Kilianstädten, Darmstadt, in 2006, and archaeologist have been excavating the site and studying the bones ever since.

Researchers have discovered unique inscriptions on the wall of a cave in China recording the effects of droughts on the local population over the course of 500 years.

The inscriptions were found on the walls of Dayu Cave in the Qinling Mountains of central China by a team of international experts including scientists from the University of Cambridge in the UK. When there was a drought, people from the local area would go to the cave to collect water and to pray for rain. Some of them recorded the impacts of the drought by writing a graffiti-type scrawl on the yellow rock wall. Seven such droughts occurring between 1520 and 1920 were recorded in this way. For example, one of the inscriptions, from 1891, reads:

"On May 24th, 17th year of the Emperor Guangxu period, Qing Dynasty, the local mayor, Huaizong Zhu led more than 200 people into the cave to get water. A fortune-teller named Zhenrong Ran prayed for rain during the ceremony."

Adding to the number of unsolved mysteries regarding the ancient origins of humanity and the biology of our species, scientists have discovered that we have less DNA now than our ancient ancestors possessed. Are we de-evolving?

A study published this week in the journal Science has found that modern humans lost DNA as we evolved after our split from apes. Our ancient ancestors, early humans, possessed substantially more amounts of genetic data than we do now. This surprising discovery raises many questions, the most obvious one being: why did we lose all that genetic information? Also, what difference has the loss made?

The short answer is: we don't know yet.

According to news website Gizmodo, the team of researchers led by Professor Evan Eichler, geneticist at the Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, sequenced the genomes of 236 individuals from 125 distinct populations. They found that Homo sapiens have shed approximately 40.7 million base pairs of DNA after breaking from our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, around 13 million years ago.

Washington — DNA testing all but confirmed Thomas Jefferson slept with his slave Sally Hemings. Now it's rewriting another lurid chapter in presidential history, this one from the Roaring '20s.

Genetic analysis has proved that President Warren G. Harding fathered a child with long-rumored mistress Nan Britton, according to AncestryDNA, a DNA-testing division of Ancestry.com.

Britton set off a Jazz Age sex scandal when she went public with her tale of forbidden love in the White House, boldly publishing her story in a 1927 best-selling memoir, The President's Daughter. But historians long questioned her claims, and Harding defenders vilified her as a liar for nearly 90 years.

Based on DNA from Britton's grandson and descendants of Harding, the results are 99.9 percent certain, Ancestry.com said. The findings were first reported Thursday by The New York Times.

The child born of their union, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, was the only known offspring of the 29th president. She died in 2005. Britton died in 1991.

James Blaesing, 65, who grew up hearing the story of his grandfather, the president, from Britton, his grandmother, told The Associated Press he long wanted to prove she was telling the truth. He was delighted by the DNA results.

"You know what this is? It's a love story," he said of his grandparents. "It was true love, especially on her side, and I know he felt the same way. And he got trapped."

Harding was a heartthrob U.S. senator from Ohio when the affair began. The relationship continued when Harding was president, with Britton later writing of how they made love in a White House coat closet. It ended with Harding's sudden death during his presidency in 1923.

Harding's family long maintained that Britton's book was a lie or a childhood fantasy or was perhaps dreamed up by Democratic opponents of the Republican president. Some people maintained that Harding was sterile because he had mumps as a child.

The Library of Congress recently published love letters between Harding and another woman, Carrie F. Phillips, opening further doubts about the family's denials.

Skeletal remains of 30 people thought to have perished during The Great Plague of 1665 have been unearthed by construction workers in London's financial district. Railway construction workers discovered the skeletons 350 years after the Bubonic plague engulfed London, as they set about digging up the Bedlam burial ground in Liverpool Street.

A headstone at the historic site marked "1665" was discovered, suggesting that the mass graveyard dates back to the outbreak of the deadly plague across London.

Experts believe the bodies were buried on the same day in individual coffins, which have since rotted away, leaving a mass of distorted skeletons.

The skeletal fragments will now be analyzed by the Museum of London Archaeology, which will carry out tests to determine the causes of death.

Crossrail lead archaeologist Jay Carver said the railway construction was an opportunity to delve into a period of history that remains a relative enigma.


"The construction of Crossrail gives us a rare opportunity to study previously inaccessible areas of London and learn about the lives and deaths of 16th and 17th century Londoners," he said.

In April 2012, Nengyong Yang, a farmer in Laos, was cutting a tree in his field, preparing to plant corn. As Nengyong was hacking away, a bomb lodged in the trunk of the tree exploded in his face. Nengyong survived, but lost both his eyesight and his ability to provide for his wife and four children. Two months later, his wife found his lifeless body hanging from a tree.

The nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea during a maritime exercise on this day in 2000. All 118 crew members died after international efforts to save them frustratingly failed.
The Russian Oscar II class submarine K-141 Kursk was the pride of Russia's fleet, having symbolized the power and strength of the Russian Navy. Having been set afloat in 1994, the 154-meter-long nuclear sub had been in service for less than six years when it sank.
The nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine could carry up to 130 people on board. At the time of the tragedy, 118 sailors and officers were on board, under the command of first rank captain Gennady Lyachin. Most of the crew members were under 30 years of age.

Playing into the hands of Ukrainian nationalists, a monument to the so-called Ukrainian "Holodomor," one the 20th century's most famous myths and vitriolic pieces of anti-Soviet Propaganda, has been erected in the US capital.

Remarkably, the roots of the "Holodomor" ("deliberate starvation") myth lie in the longstanding Cold War standoff between Soviet Russia and the West. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, infamous Nazi collaborators — members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and their paramilitary UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) units — fled into Western Europe and the United States, escaping punishment for their hideous crimes, including ruthless terror against peaceful Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian civilians.

In 1949 the CIA and the US State Department sponsored the OUN-UPA leaders' immigration to the United States, planning to use them as subversion groups and intelligence agents in the Cold War against the Soviet Russia.

A British archaeologist claims to have found evidence that the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti was buried inside the tomb of Pharoah Tutankhamun, who some historians have claimed was her son.

The long lost tomb of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti may have been found, located in the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, or 'King Tut', according to an analysis of high-resolution images which reportedly reveal the presence of two secret, sealed-off doorways hidden in the tomb's painted walls.

"The implications are extraordinary, for, if digital appearance translates into physical reality, it seems we are now faced not merely with the prospect of a new, Tutankhamun-era storeroom to the west; to the north there appears to be signaled a continuation of tomb KV 62 (Tutankhamun's tomb), and within these uncharted depths an earlier royal interment - that of Nefertiti herself."

Scores of families in east London were evacuated Monday night as bomb disposal experts were called to defuse an unexploded World War II bomb discovered at a building site.

The bomb was unearthed by contractors working in Bethnal Green just after midday Monday, triggering the introduction of a police hazard zone and the evacuation of 150 local residents.

Sappers were called to the scene at 17:00 BST and worked through the night to defuse the 500lb device.

Families were evacuated to a local school where Tower Hamlets Council set up a rest center. The exclusion zone was also extended to 200 meters from the bomb's location.