In a cave overlooking the ocean on the southern coast of South Africa, archaeologists discovered thousands of stone tools, created by ancient humans roughly 20,000 years ago. By examining tiny details in the chipped edges of the blades and stones, archaeologists are able to tell how the tools were made-- which revealed that people were sharing crafting techniques over wide distances.

In a new paper published in Nature, evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100 kilometers (km) of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ago, a thousand years before the arrival of the first farmers.

Seafaring hunter-gatherers were accessing remote, small islands such as Malta thousands of years before the arrival of the first farmers, a new international study has found. Published in Nature, the research team found hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100km of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ago, a thousand years before the arrival of agricultural practises.

A new study uses digital tools to analyze nearly 1,000 Syriac manuscripts from the British Library, focusing on how scribes and editors selected and rearranged parts of texts—a practice known as excerpting. The researcher introduces a new measurement called Excerpts Per Manuscript (EPM) to track how often this happened. This approach reveals that the people who copied and compiled these manuscripts were not just preserving texts—they were actively shaping what future generations would read and remember. By highlighting these editorial choices, the study shifts attention away from authors alone and shows that scribes played a key role in organizing knowledge, adapting texts for new purposes, and influencing how Syriac literary culture developed over time.

In the Amazon, gold mining is a thriving business, pushing deep into the rainforest and indigenous lands. Small-scale operations set up primarily illicitly and operated in the shadows use mercury, a substance with neurotoxic properties, for gold extraction. Now, a team of researchers examined if trees native to the Peruvian Amazon could be used as biomonitors for gold mining activities. By examining mercury concentrations in tree rings, they concluded that some species could bear witness to illegal mining activities.