Michelle Moran's Blog, page 92

Cows are key to 2,500 years of human progress

by Jamie Doward

The Romans, as Monty Python famously acknowledged, have done many things for us. Contrary to popular wisdom, however, improving our diet was not one of them.

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Missing link between man and apes found

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent Homo habilis lived 2.0-1.6 million years ago and had a wide distribution in Africa Photo: SPL

The new species of hominid, the evolutionary branch of primates that includes humans, is to be revealed when the two-million-year-old skeleton of a child is unveiled this week.

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Roman Emperor Octavian Augustus Named as Egyptian Pharaoh on Philae Victory Stele

A new translation of a Roman victory stele, erected in April 29 BC, shows Octavian Augustus's name inscribed in a cartouche (an oblong enclosure that surrounds a pharaoh's name) – an honour normally reserved for an Egyptian pharaoh.

Ancient Roman gluten death seen

(ANSA) - Rome, April 1 - An Italian doctor claims to have found the first Italian case of death from gluten intolerance in a female skeleton uncovered at an Ancient Roman site.

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Roman finds made during work on access road

Pieces of the past have been unearthed during the first stages of construction of the East Kent Access Road.

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Inca cemetery holds brutal glimpses of Spanish violence

Photo by M. Murphy

By Bruce Bower

If bones could scream, a bloodcurdling din would be reverberating through a 500-year-old cemetery in Peru. Human skeletons unearthed there have yielded the first direct evidence of Inca fatalities caused by Spanish conquerors.

Read the rest on Science News.

'I pray lovely creature, comply!' 300-year-old stash of erotica found hidden in Lake District manor house

A secret hoard of lewd pamphlets written to titillate the common man more than 300 years ago have been discovered in a manor house.

Read the rest on the Daily Mail.

Andean mummies afflicted with arsenic

By Dan Vergano

Andean mummies reveal arsenic poisoning afflicted people in northern Chile for thousands of years, a hair analysis shows.

Read the rest on USA Today.

Stone Age Scandinavians unable to digest milk

by Anders Götherström

The hunter-gatherers who inhabited the southern coast of Scandinavia 4,000 years ago were lactose intolerant. This has been shown by a new study carried out by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University. The study, which has been published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, supports the researchers' earlier conclusion that today's Scandinavians are not descended from the Stone Age people in question but from a group that arrived later.

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CLEOPATRA'S TOMB DISCOVERED!

In a discovery sure to be heralded across the globe as one of the biggest finds of the twenty-first century, Egyptologists have discovered the final resting place of Cleopatra.

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