During warmer periods of the Middle Pleistocene, ancient humans in Italy were in the habit of butchering elephants for meat and raw materials, according to a study published October 8, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Beniamino Mecozzi of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and colleagues.

Analysis of preserved feces and intestinal tissue has revealed specific types of bacteria that were present in the microbiome of a young adult man who lived in Mexico about 1,000 years ago, prior to Spanish colonization. Santiago Rosas-Plaza of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on October 8, 2025.

Why do virtually all humans today live in large-scale societies organized as states? A new book by Peter Turchin, from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), offers an answer based on analysis of data from more than 800 societies: warfare drove humanity's transformation from small nomadic bands to the complex civilizations that dominate our world.

The new analysis of animal remains found at Jamestown is the first to show that colonists also brought donkeys to the New World, and the animals were likely eaten during starvation times.

For years, researchers have puzzled over how the ancient people of Rapa Nui did the seemingly impossible and moved their iconic moai statues. Using a combination of physics, 3D modeling and on-the-ground experiments, a team including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has confirmed that the statues actually walked – with a little rope and remarkably few people.

Archaeologists have revealed new insights into how the world’s first farming villagers formed communities, moved across the land and responded to outsiders. 

A world-first study incorporating both technical analysis and research into diaries and correspondence sheds new light on the ill-fated Endurance expedition and famed explorer Ernest Shackleton himself. Not only did the ship have structural weaknesses that made it notably less robust than other early polar vessels but also, remarkably, Shackleton was well aware of them before he set sail.