Voki - Voki Scene Pickup. Untitled. Neanderthals Munched on 'Aspirin' and Woolly Rhinos. Neanderthals once dined on woolly rhinoceroses and wild sheep, and even self-medicated with painkillers and antibiotics, according to a new analysis of their dental plaque. But the diets of Neanderthals — the closest known extinct human relative, which co-existed and sometimes bred with humans before going extinct about 40,000 years ago — varied depending on where they lived. Researchers sequenced the ancient DNA of dental plaque from five Neanderthal skeletons — two from Spain's El Sidrón Cave, two from Belgium's Spy Cave and one from Italy's Breuil Cave. (However, the plaque sample from the Breuil Cave Neanderthal "failed to produce amplifiable [DNA] sequences," and one of the Spy Cave individuals had DNA plaque contamination, so the researchers excluded both from the plaque analysis, they wrote in the study.)
[In Photos: New Human Ancestor Possibly Unearthed in Spanish Cave] Prehistoric Van Goghs: Artists Used Pointillism 38,000 Years Ago. Rock Art Discovered in 'Dark Ages' Tomb in Israel. Moving 400 tons' worth of boulders to make a 65-foot-wide tomb is no easy feat. That's why Israeli archaeologists were impressed to find an ancient burial chamber of that size dating back to the "Dark Ages," more than 4,000 years ago.
And the tomb isn't just big. It also has a rare example of rock art carved into its ceiling. The scale and careful construction of the megalithic tomb suggest that people of this era weren't exactly living in the dark after all. Rather, the tomb, known as a dolmen, could be indirect proof of the existence of some type of organized society, the researchers argue. [See Images of the Tomb and Rock Art] Prehistoric Van Goghs: Artists Used Pointillism 38,000 Years Ago Nineteenth-century artists, such as Georges Seurat and Vincent van Gogh, weren't the first to use pointillism, according to a discovery of 38,000-year-old decorated limestone tablets in France. One particular dolmen stood out. Sharon and colleagues think the dolmen near Shamir challenges this view.
Investigate how archaeologists do what they do. How do archaeologists and historians investigate the past? By investigationrecordingreconstructingwhat questions do they ask? How do they explain the data? In the early days of "archaeology", for example from the times of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), investigating ancient sites was pretty haphazard. Until scientific ways of excavating, recording and conserving remains were developed, much damage was done to archaeological remains. Early archaeology often : was little more than a dig to find precious artefacts and monumental remainsthen taken for private collections and museumshad little understanding of the archaeological value of items related to everyday lifeknew little of the importance of objects associations with different items and levels within a site (context and layering). had few scientific techniques available to study the remains or to investigate them further.
The study of the physical remains from the past now involves: New Opportunities Maritime archaeologist at a shipwreck. Discovering Archaeology. Prehistoric art.