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A man who was renovating his wine cellar in Austria has made an extraordinary discovery. It wasn't a vintage red or white - but the remains of prehistoric mammoths...The winemaker, Andreas Pernerstorfer, came across a number of huge bones, buried deep in his wine cellar in the village of Gobelsburg, in the district of Krems, west of Vienna.He reported his find to the authorities, who identified them as the bones of at least three Stone Age mammoths..."I thought it was just a piece of wood left by my grandfather. But then I dug it out a bit and then I...

The analysis of fat traces in over one hundred pottery vessels reveals deep changes in food consumption and preparation by communities living in central Germany between the Early Neolithic and the Late Bronze Age, as well as in their relation with innovations in pottery styles and decorations.In a groundbreaking study, researchers from the UAB and the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt identified a generalised inclusion of dairy products in prehistoric diets, a preference in consuming pork with the arrival of communities from the Eurasian Steppe, and the importance of dairy products in funeral rites.Central Germany was...

Gardeners can buy a new seed, a genetically modified tomato the FDA barely looked at and GMO proponents hope will win Americans over to more modified foods. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As spring gardening approaches, a new contender has entered the fray—the genetically modified (GM) Purple Tomato. Unlike its GM predecessors, the GM Purple Tomato is not destined solely for the fields of commercial agriculture—it has made its debut in the backyards of home gardeners across the United States. With claims of heightened antioxidant levels and potential health benefits, this novel creation has stirred both excitement and controversy among consumers and scientists alike....

The PB&J is as American as it gets, and its story is spread across the internet from web page to web page as if by digital butter knife, each as recognizable to the next as the sandwich itself. I'll spare you too much of a regurgitation here, except in the broadest strokes: It supposedly started as a fancy-ish tea sandwich at the turn of the 20th century, but quickly became a popular lunchtime snack as an increasingly industrialized food system made sliced bread and store-bought jam and peanut butter a common and affordable option to Americans of all economic stripes

...In addition to the amphorae, archaeologists found ropes, shoes, a wooden drill and organic "dunnage" or matting, made from vine shoots and grass, that was used to protect the ship's hull from the cargo, Cau said...Many of the amphorae contained the remnants of fish sauce, while others held oil from plants — likely olives, wine, and perhaps olives preserved in vinegar. The distinctive amphorae for different products were labeled with painted inscriptions known as "tituli picti" in Latin, he said...Previous studies found that many of the oil amphorae had seals stamped with a "Chrismon," or Christian monogram — similar to...

...Using population genomic modeling methods, the researchers determined that C. arabica evolved as a result of natural hybridization between two other species of coffee: C. eugenioides and C. canephora. The hybridization resulted in a polyploid genome, meaning each offspring contains two sets of chromosomes from each parent. This may have given C. arabica a survival advantage that enabled it to thrive and adapt...The researchers acknowledge that there is a margin of error. Earlier estimates of the time of hybridization date it as recently as 10,000 years ago."We had to input an estimated mutation rate, and a generation time (seed to...

The Romans are well known for introducing sanitation technology to Europe around 2,000 years ago, including public multi-seat latrines with washing facilities, sewerage systems, piped drinking water from aqueducts, and heated public baths for washing. Romans also developed laws designed to keep their towns free of excrement and rubbish. However, new archaeological research has revealed that -- for all their apparently hygienic innovations -- intestinal parasites such as whipworm, roundworm and Entamoeba histolytica dysentery did not decrease as expected in Roman times compared with the preceding Iron Age, they gradually increased... Dr Piers Mitchell brought together evidence of parasites in...

When the Romans expanded their empire across three continents, they probably seemed like the neat-freakiest people to attempt global domination. The Romans brought aqueducts, heated public baths, flushing toilets, sewers and piped water. They even had multiseat public bathrooms decked out with contour toilet seats, a sea sponge version of toilet paper and hand-washing stations.

There's never been a better time to eat — and cook with — American apple varieties.One day in 2004, Brooke Hazen noticed something unusual about one of his Golden Delicious apple trees. “Some people are lucky enough in their career to have their own bud mutation variety that they get to name,” says Hazen. “Out of the thousands of trees I have, one branch on one tree decided to do its own thing.” What it did was yield an apple with the typical green-yellow skin but an unusual pink patch where it faced the sun and a sweetness and fragrance...

Astronauts face significant perils while in space. Multiple studies indicate that humans who spend long enough in orbit may experience a range of health maladies that include weight loss, immune system weakening, loss in bone density, vision loss, and even mysterious headaches. However, new research is revealing how an ancient food product used for millennia may help alleviate some of the risks that astronauts face, and it tastes good too. In a joint project between the European Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, and the Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of Agricultural Economics, a team of researchers and astronauts...

"This is the earliest evidence for the loss of seasonal egg laying yet identified in the archaeological record," says Dr Robert Spengler, leader of the Domestication and Anthropogenic Evolution research group at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Germany, and principal investigator on the study."This is an important clue for better understanding the mutualistic relationships between humans and animals that resulted in domestication."The research team collected tens of thousands of eggshell fragments from archaeological sites along the main Central Asian corridor of the Silk Road. Using a method of biomolecular analysis known as ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) they were...

National Beer Day is celebrated every year on April 7th. This unofficial holiday was first celebrated in 2009 via social media activity by a man named Justin Smith. Shortly after, a beer drinking app called Untappd created a National Beer Day badge that was awarded to users. And the hashtag has been trending on social media ever since. But why April 7th? National Beer Day will be celebrated on Sunday, April 7, 2024. New Beer’s Eve is Saturday, April 6, 2024. April 7th was selected as National Beer Day because it marks the date that the Cullen-Harrison Act went into...

The Industrial Revolution started more than 100 years earlier than previously thought, new research suggests, with Britons already shifting from agricultural work to manufacturing in the 1600s. Seventeenth century Britain can be understood as the start of the Industrial Revolution, laying down the foundations for a shift from an agricultural and crafts-based society to a manufacturing-dominated economy, in which networks of home-based artisans worked with merchants, functioning similarly to factories. The period saw a steep decline in agricultural peasantry and a surge in people who manufactured goods, such as local artisans like blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights, alongside a burgeoning network...

Çatalhöyük is noteworthy because it is one of the first human proto-cities to have been built. Full of densely packed mud brick houses covered in paintings and symbolic decorations, its population hovered around 8,000. That made it one of the biggest settlements of its era, somewhere between an outsized village and a tiny city. People, mud-brick homes through ceiling doors, and they navigated sidewalks that wound around the city’s rooftops.Archaeologists have discovered an oven structure in the area called "Mekan 66”. Around the largely destroyed oven, wheat, barley, pea seeds, and a handful find that could be food were found.Analyses...

The rise of farming in late Stone Age Europe was no smooth transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles but a bloody takeover that saw nomadic populations wiped out by farmer-settlers in a few generations, a new study has found.In fact, twice in just a thousand years, the population of southern Scandinavia was entirely replaced by newcomers to the area, whose remains bear next to no trace of their predecessors in DNA profiles, analyzed by an international team of researchers."This transition has previously been presented as peaceful," explains study author and palaeoecologist Anne Birgitte Nielsen of Lund University...Using a technique called shotgun sequencing,...

Recent research challenges the traditional view of early human diets in the Andes, suggesting a shift from “hunter-gatherers” to “gatherer-hunters.” The study, analyzing remains from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik’aya Patjxa sites in Peru, reveals an 80 percent plant-based and 20 percent meat diet among early Andeans. This finding, based on isotope chemistry and statistical modeling, contradicts previous beliefs and influences current perceptions of diets such as the Paleodiet. It also indicates a need to reassess archaeological frameworks globally. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The commonly used term “hunter-gatherers” for describing early humans should be revised to “gatherer-hunters” in the context of the...

A team of anthropologists at Université Bordeaux has found evidence of nine distinct cultures living in what is now Europe during the Gravettian period. In their study, reported in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the group analyzed personal adornments worn by people living in the region between 24,000 and 34,000 years ago...Prior research has shown that humans have been adorning themselves for thousands of years. In this new effort, the researchers looked at the types of adornments that were worn by people living in Europe during the Gravettian period—a time during the Paleolithic when a culture known as the Gravettian...

Indoctrination or Ignorance? 28-Year-Old Woman Learns You Can Eat Fruit From a Tree

Watch as Otzi, a 5000-year-old mummy, is brought to life and preserved with 3D modeling. (Aired February 17, 2016)He was stalked, attacked and left to die alone. Murdered more than 5,000 years ago, Otzi the Iceman is Europe's oldest known natural mummy. Miraculously preserved in glacial ice, his remarkably intact remains continue to provide scientists, historians, and archeologists with groundbreaking discoveries about a crucial time in human history. But in order to protect him from contamination, this extraordinary body has been locked away, out of reach, in a frozen crypt—until now. NOVA joins renowned artist and paleo-sculptor Gary Staab as...

...Archaeologists already knew that the São Luís area, also called Upaon-Açu, meaning "big island" in the Tupí-Guaraní Indigenous languages, held traces of prehistoric human activity. For instance, a prehistoric jawbone was discovered at Farm Rosane in the 1970s and other artifacts found in São Luís have dated to 6,000 years ago, Wellington Lage, the lead archaeologist of the recent excavations, told Live Science. The remains were attributed to the Sambaquian peoples. This group relied on marine resources and built shell mounds with leftover food refuse that reached up to 100 feet (30 meters) high.The latest excavation, which began in June...