by Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, register for free here.
Every ancient object has a story to tell.
When researchers unearth a piece of land during excavation, a new window opens into the past. Each piece recovered is a small clue that often leads to a larger enigma that begs to be solved.
For example, construction workers recently discovered an almost 2,000-year-old statue while building a parking lot in the United Kingdom. First, one of the crew found a marble head of a Roman woman, and two weeks later her bust surfaced nearby, reassembling the pieces.
But how was the statue, probably bought by the ninth Earl of Exeter in the 1700s for his country estate, Burghley House, placed outside? Until further evidence turns up, it remains a “complete mystery”, according to the estate.
These historical connections allow us to find common ground with people who lived thousands of years ago. And sometimes, an entire place can be found frozen in time, expanding the way we understand everyday life as it happened hundreds of years ago.
We are a family
Must Farm was a thriving Bronze Age stilt village, perched above a river in eastern England, when it burned down 2,850 years ago — just nine months after its inhabitants built it.
The site, known by experts as “Britain’s Pompeii”, has preserved rare information that reveals a new, less hierarchical portrait of Bronze Age society. Must Farm (above) was excavated in 2016.
Extensive research near Peterborough has revealed well-preserved life fragments, including an abandoned spoon in a half-eaten bowl of porridge, along with other artefacts such as wooden buckets and pottery.
“One of those buckets … on the bottom of it were loads and loads of cutting marks so we know that there were people living in that Bronze Age kitchen when they needed a cutting board right away , tipping that bucket upside down,” said Chris Wakefield, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.
Dig this
When paleontologists decided to take a closer look at the skull of a tiny 270-million-year-old amphibian buried in a fossil collection, they made a bit of a rainbow connection with Kermit the Frog.
The fossil, with its wide eyes and cartoonish grin, bore such a striking resemblance to Jim Henson’s beloved Muppets character that the newly recognized species has now been named Kermitops gratus.
The slightly bruised skull sat unstudied in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for 40 years before being examined by researchers. And the specimen might help researchers solve an evolutionary puzzle about early amphibians that lived before the dinosaurs.
Around the globe
Astronomers have spied two streams of ancient stars that likely helped build the Milky Way galaxy billions of years ago.
Scientists discovered the amazing wonders using the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, which enabled them to do a little “galactic archaeology” at the heart of our home galaxy.
Known to Hindu deities as Shakti and Shiva, the streams were probably parts of other galaxies that merged with the Milky Way in its beginnings between 12 billion and 13 billion years ago.
Speaking of stars, NASA is expecting a violent explosion called a Nova that will cause a “new star” to appear in the night sky anytime between now and September.
A force of nature
When a supervolcano erupted 74,000 years ago, it probably triggered a climate change that could have been felt by early humans in Africa.
At first, the researchers thought the eruption might have been intense enough to trigger a volcanic winter, which could have wiped out many of our ancient ancestors.
Microscopic fragments of volcanic glass found alongside stone tools and animal remains near Ethiopia’s Sinfa River have shown how people lived – and adapted – after the eruption.
Now, new analysis has shown that the high conditions caused by the cataclysmic event may have triggered a critical period when mankind left Africa to live around the world.
Amazing creatures
Giant pandas have distinctive patterns, but it turns out that not all of them are black-and-white.
A handful of bears with brown and white fur live in one mountain range in China.
With only 11 reported sightings of the creatures in Shaanxi province’s Qinling Mountains since a ranger first spotted one in 1985, researchers thought the unusual coloring was the result of inbreeding.
By studying pandas in the wild and in captivity, including a male brown panda named Qizai, researchers discovered that a recessive genetic trait – similar to those associated with blue eyes or red hair in humans – is behind the brown fur.
Inquiries
You can do a double take after reading these stories:
— About 25 million years ago, there was an evolutionary change involving a “jumping gene” that led to the existence of great apes and, eventually, humans lost their tails.
— A 4,000-year-old stone vial found in southeastern Iran is probably the oldest red lipstick tube.
— Despite a faulty metal detector, a treasure hunter found the largest gold nugget believed to have ever been found in England.
— An unusual “horned devil comet” will be visible in the sky during the total solar eclipse, but experts recommend keeping an eye out for it until the end of March instead.
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