A new study reveals that the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia (c. 6200–5500 BCE) produced the earliest systematic plant imagery in prehistoric art, flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees painted on fine pottery, arranged with precise symmetry and numerical sequences, especially petal and flower counts of 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64. This suggests that early farming villages in the Near East already possessed sophisticated, practical mathematical thinking about dividing space and quantities, likely tied to everyday needs such as fairly sharing crops from collectively worked fields, long before writing or formal number systems existed.

Researchers are now investigating a Viking Age grave with preserved skeletal remains and jewellery. The grave was found at Val in Bjugn, in Trøndelag County. A discovery by a metal detectorist alerted researchers to the find.

A University of Arkansas archaeologist is part of a team that discovered the first example of ancient plague DNA in domesticated livestock. 

An international team of scientists has found compelling evidence that a changing climate played a role in the extinction of the early human species Homo floresiensis, also known as ‘hobbits’. Their research reveals the hobbits abandoned Liang Bua – a cave they had occupied for around 140,000 years – during a drought that lasted for thousands of years.

- Ancient Historian at University of Leicester reveals that the Rutland mosaic depicts an alternative telling of the Trojan War to Homer’s Iliad

- Suggests that Roman Britain was not as isolated from the classical world as assumed

- Craftspeople in 4^th century Britain were using patterns passed down over 800 years from across the ancient Mediterranean

A fossil site in Bolivia preserves thousands of traces of dinosaurs who walked, ran, and swam along an ancient coastline, according to a study published December 3, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Raúl Esperante of the Geoscience Research Institute, California, U.S., and colleagues.

An international team of researchers has used knowledge of historical geography to reexamine the earliest datable total solar eclipse record known to the scientific community, enabling accurate measurements of Earth's variable rotation speed from 709 BCE. The researchers calculated how the Sun would have appeared from Qufu, the ancient Chinese capital of the Lu Duchy, during the total solar eclipse. Using this information, they analyzed the ancient description of what has been considered the solar corona—the dim outer atmosphere of the Sun visible to the naked eye only during total eclipses—and found that its morphology supports recent solar cycle reconstructions for the 8th century BCE.