Archaeologists have long argued over when and how people first domesticated horses. A decade ago, new techniques appeared to have provided answers – but further discoveries change the story again.
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo
20 years ago, who could predict how much more researchers would know today about the human past – let alone what they could learn from a thimble of dirt, a scrape of dental plaque, or satellites in space.
What happened to make plague able to cause devastating epidemics, as in this depiction from 1349?
Pierart dou Tielt/Wikimedia
People caught and died from plague long before it caused major epidemics like the Black Death in the middle ages. Could what scientists call cultural resistance be what kept the disease under control?
Livestock, like these goats in the Rift Valley of Tanzania, are critical to household economies in East Africa.
Katherine Grillo
Pastoralism is a central part of many Africans' identity. But how and when did this way of life get started on the continent? Ancient DNA can reveal how herding populations spread.
New technology means accessing new information from ancient human remains, some which have been in collections for decades.
Duckworth Laboratory
Ancient DNA allows scientists to learn directly from the remains of people from the past. As this new field takes off, researchers are figuring out how to ethically work with ancient samples and each other.
A three-dimensional volume rendering of the Tuli mummy.
SA Journal of Science
Modern techniques such as CT scanning and ancient DNA analysis have allowed scientists to discover a great deal about a mummy found in a shallow grave in Botswana.