News Desk

It was long assumed to be a product of Vincent van Gogh’s rich imagination – but scientific sleuthing now suggests The Starry Night may be based on a real dawn sky. Researchers say the celestial bodies depicted in the famous painting match the sky the Dutch artist may have seen on about 22 July 1889, a month later than the usual date given for the work.

A new fossil analysis from an international team of researchers, published in the Annals of Human Biology, pushes back the emergence of these proto-people by about 200,000 years.

These findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B,  provide new evidence for the complex technical and possibly symbolic behaviors of early Homo sapiens.

Anew analysis of that trove of data has revealed a striking pattern in these mysterious episodes. The findings, reported in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, can’t really be explained, researchers say.

In addition to helping people with stress and mental health, high ventilation breathwork is also reported to induce altered states of consciousness…In a new study published in Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, researchers found evidence that could explain how these mysterious side effects emerge.

A shipwreck off the coast of Turkey is the oldest shipwreck in the world, our team of archaeologists believes. There’s little left of the ship itself, but based on clues from its cargo—including pottery vessels—a research team I was part of has tentatively dated the wreck to around 2700–2400 B.C.

For decades, archaeologists have argued about what happened next. Some pictured an apocalypse that wiped out all human life near the blast. Others claimed people survived even close to the eruption. A new international study led by Lund University says both sides got it wrong.

Around 13,800 years ago, hunters set up camp on a small ridge above the Tanana River in interior Alaska. Spruce trees cover the spot today. Back then, shrub tundra rolled across the land. Archaeologists now call the place Shég’ Xdaltth’i’, an Athabascan name meaning “they were there.”  See the study titled: ‘Highlights from an early base camp in Beringia 13,800 years ago: Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ and the Late Pleistocene peopling of Alaska’ published in Science Advances (Oct 14th).

We can’t say for sure what made that hole, but in a new study in Scientific Reports, researchers suggest it was probably a spear, meaning this could be the earliest known example of an interpersonal spear attack in the hominin fossil record.

A new study published Wednesday (Oct. 14) in the journal Science Advances suggests some of the first people in North America lived through extreme climate change at the peak of the last ice age. Researchers studied ancient pollen locked in rocks at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, which houses an archaeological site thought by some to contain the oldest human footprints in the Americas.

One of America’s largest meteor craters is around 100 million years younger than scientists thought, which means the ancient impact coincided with — and potentially contributed to — one of the biggest global extinction events in Earth’s history, according to a new study published July 7 in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

The Bering Land Bridge formed 35,000 years ago, eventually disappearing under rising sea levels around 12,000 years ago. But the humans and creatures who inhabited the territory have left behind plenty of archaeological evidence of their presence. The article titled “Highlights from an early base camp in Beringia 13,800 years ago: Shég’ Xdaltth’i’ and the Late Pleistocene Peopling of Alaska” appears in Science Advances.

Two researchers may have opened floodgates on the debate over why humans can run marathons, swim the English Channel or dive a hundred meters and back on a single breath, and their ape cousins can’t. Humans evolved endurance for feats like these not just by running down prey on the African savanna, but also by diving for food in lakes or coastal waters, the duo proposed in PaleoAnthropology on September 17.

A recent study found that rapid-acting antidepressants like ketamine and psychedelics may relieve depression by regulating specific immune system pathways in the body and brain. The research suggests that rebalancing a precise set of immune signaling molecules can predict how well a patient will respond to treatment. These findings were published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Exclusive: Finds suggest account in medieval folklore of a camp near Frenni Fawr hill was rooted in reality

Intense flash of radio waves is more than 10bn years old and has travelled through ‘approximately 80% of cosmic history’