Every object has a tale to tell. Working to fill gaps in the historical record, researchers aim to uncover the stories of artifacts left behind from bygone eras.
At the site of Must Farm, a stilt village built above a boggy river in the wetlands of eastern England some 2,850 years ago, a wooden spoon in a half-eaten bowl of porridge reveals a tragic and urgent scene. Excavations in 2016 indicated that the residents rushed from their homes to flee a fire.
While some of the structures in the village burned down, oxygen-starved conditions preserved items such as textiles that rarely survive, providing glimpses into what ordinary life was like millennia ago.
Now, a new cache of items found at another excavation site is illustrating what life was like for ancient Roman soldiers.
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Talk about big shoes to fill. Archaeologists at the Roman Magna Fort in northern Britain have unearthed a collection of massive footwear (above).
Excavations at the fort’s ruins, located just south of the Scottish border and built around AD 85 to protect major roadways, found shoes that belonged to men, women and children who once inhabited the site.
Eight of the shoes are a US men’s size 13 or larger, sparking questions about the fort’s resident soldiers that researchers are still investigating.
“When the first large shoe started to come out of the ground, we were looking for many explanations, like maybe it's their winter shoes, or people were stuffing them, wearing extra socks,” said Rachel Frame, a senior archaeologist leading the excavations. “But as we found more of them and different styles, it does seem to be that these (were) just people with really large feet.”
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Researcher Jared Towers has twice observed baffling orca behavior. The killer whales appeared to be offering gifts of food to humans.
Towers compared his own experiences — an orca delivering a dead seal pup to his boat, for one — with those of other researchers and discovered 34 cases of killer whales presenting food to humans between 2004 and 2024.
Now, he and his colleagues are trying to determine why these highly intelligent creatures want to interact with humans. Could the orcas be motivated by curiosity, playfulness or something more sinister?
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CNN’s Wolf Blitzer made his first long-distance call to the International Space Station this week to interview NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain about their research and recent spacewalk. The duo shared why “you can’t beat the view” while floating above Earth. |
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Astronomers have spotted a galaxy that has remained unchanged for 7 billion years, a celestial time capsule in an ever-changing universe.
Rather than expanding and merging with other galaxies, the “fossil galaxy” became virtually inactive after an initial burst of star formation.
Scientists don’t yet understand why certain galaxies suddenly stopped forming stars, but these cosmic relics are helping astronomers glean what the first galaxies were like when the universe was in its infancy.
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Looking for a small security setup to help keep tabs on your home? Our partners at CNN Underscored, a product reviews and recommendations guide owned by CNN, suggest the Blink Mini 2 security camera. The compact camera lets you check on your furry companion while you’re out and about, and it even has a speaker for two-way communication.
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Towering flightless birds that stood 10 feet tall disappeared from New Zealand about 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers arrived.
Now, genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences is aiming to bring the South Island giant moa back from extinction. The Dallas-based company announced in April the birth of three dire wolf pups — a species that went extinct some 12,500 years ago — and has its sights set on resurrecting the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger as well.
With long necks and potentially nasty defensive kicks, the powerful birds (above) were hunted for their meat and decorative feathers, and their bones were harvested to make tools.
In collaboration with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre and investors like “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson, the company plans to retrieve ancient DNA from nine moa species to decode the giant moa’s genetic makeup.
The process of resurrecting a lost giant is not only challenging, but many scientists also argue the resources could be better used to help critically endangered species instead.
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Get your weekly curiosity fix here:
— Archaeologists in Peru unveiled the site of Peñico, an ancient city that thrived more than 3,000 years ago. Artifacts include conch-shell trumpets that were once used for calling upon the gods.
— Chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Zambia are dangling blades of grass or sticks from their ears and behinds in an apparent fashionable display, suggesting it’s not just humans who like to follow trends.
— The US Department of Agriculture is opening a “fly factory” to breed millions of sterile flies to fight invasive, flesh-eating New World screwworms that nest in the wounds of livestock and slowly eat them alive.
Did you enjoy this newsletter? Let us know! You can say hello at sciencenewsletter@cnn.com.
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