news

Along with humans, birds are the only permanent bipeds in the animal kingdom to possess an extraordinary sense of balance. How do these direct descendants of the dinosaurs maintain this stability, particularly during their sleep - scientists have recently succeeded in unravelling the mystery.

A collaborative effort between the newly established research institute, Paleotechnic, and several national laboratories (INRAE, University of Orléans) has led to the discovery of a dam, a water treatment facility, and a hydraulic elevator, which would have enabled the construction of the Step Pyramid of Saqqara.

Since 2022, anthropology has been in the spotlight at CNRS. Caroline Bodolec, the deputy scientific director behind this initiative, looks back at the main mediation actions around the discipline after it "put on a show" on April 30, 2024. The CNRS Sciences humaines & sociales "Sharing Anthropology" focus ended on April 30.

The emergence in the Neolithic of patrilineal 1 social systems, in which children are affiliated with their father's lineage, may explain a spectacular decline in the genetic diversity of the Y chromosome 2 observed worldwide between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago. In a study to be published on 24 April in Nature Communications, a team of scientists from the CNRS, MNHN and Université Paris Cité 3 suggest that these patrilineal organisations had a greater impact on the Y chromosome than mortality during conflict.

Inrap archaeologists conducted an excavation at Marliens, some twenty kilometers east of Dijon, prior to the extension of a gravel pit (Eqiom) in the Ouche valley, a tributary of the Saône. The three excavated areas, representing a total surface area of 60,000 m², yielded a series of occupations ranging from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age.

Digital reconstruction of the rampart network from the northern section of the Khaybar walled oasis 4,000 years ago. Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project, M. Bussy & G. Charloux The North Arabian Desert oases were inhabited by sedentary populations in the 4 and 3 millennia BCE. A fortification enclosing the Khaybar Oasis-one of the longest known going back to this period-was just revealed by a team of scientists from the CNRS 1 and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU).

Publication involving a former ENS de Lyon PhD candidate and the EVS laboratory, in the journal Marine Geology . Earliest Evidence of Port-Related lead pollution in Bronze Age Greece First discovery of brown coal in a stratigraphic context at the end of the Bronze Age Lechaion's harbour archaeological chronology pushed back by at least 5 centuries New perspectives on regional economy and trade during the LBA/EIA transition Lechaion in Corinth, Greece, is the largest ancient port in Greece.

Between 13,000 and 9,650 years ago, the Natoufian culture developed on the eastern Mediterranean coast of northern Israel. According to recent discoveries, these hunter-gatherers were the first to use red pigments of organic origin. "It was a great surprise to discover such ancient and well-preserved pigments of organic origin" , confides Laurent Davin, archaeologist at the Laboratoire Technologie et ethnologie des mondes préhistoriques (Temps) 1 and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-author of the study just published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Before modern humans settled definitively in Europe, other human populations left Africa for Europe beginning approximately 60,000 years ago, albeit without settling for the long term. This was due to a major climatic crisis 40,000 years ago, combined with a super-eruption originating from the Phlegraean Fields volcanic area near current-day Naples, subsequently precipitating a decline in ancient European populations.

Contrary to prior assumptions, ancient Egyptian painters did at times push the boundaries of convention. Artistic creations supposed to be copies of canonical images were in fact often adapted and reworked during their execution. This discovery was made using new, portable chemical imaging tools that leave the artworks intact.

Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team 1 , are the subject of an article published on 9 June in Nature Scientific Reports .

While Notre-Dame de Paris is being rebuilt, scientists and restorers are working hand in hand to better understand and preserve its stained glass decoration Research engineer Karine Boulanger and heritage curator Élisabeth Pillet are part of the Glass working group of the scientific project set up by the CNRS and the Ministry of Culture.

Publication of the LGL-TPE in the journal Nature, on July 26, 2023. Communication of CNRS-INEE on August 1st, 2023. Paleogenomic analyses carried out on individuals from the Neolithic burial site of Gurgy "les Noisats" (Yonne), in the Paris Basin, have enabled the family trees of two families to be reconstructed on an unprecedented scale.

Since the beginning of 2022, a study of the archaeology of the building led by the Inrap is engaged on the bell tower and the western facade of the cathedral of Nîmes. It is an exceptional opportunity to deepen our knowledge of this emblematic building of the city of Nîmes, by studying closely its elevations.

Hipparchus' star catalog is the earliest known attempt to accurately determine the positions of fixed stars. Researchers have just found fragments of this missing text in an old manuscript. They show that Hipparchus' data were significantly more accurate than those of another catalog composed centuries later.

They prove that Hipparchus' data were significantly more accurate than those of another catalogue composed centuries later. Researchers from the CNRS, Sorbonne Université and Tyndale House (affiliated with the University of Cambridge) have recently found fragments of the Star Catalogue composed by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus during the 2nd century BC.

The donkey has shaped the history of humankind, both as a source of power for farm work, and of transportation in sometimes hard to reach areas. To understand the history of the donkey's domestication, teams at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse (CNRS/ Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier) and scientists 1 from 37 laboratories around the world worked together to build and analyse the most complete panel of genomes ever studied for this animal.

In Colmar, the Inrap is excavating the cathedral square and uncovering the old cemetery of the Saint-Martin collegiate church. The initial research provided first-rate information on the population of Colmar in the medieval period. In the heart of the city, the redevelopment project of the Cathedral Square, carried by the City of Colmar, has motivated the prescription of a preventive archaeological excavation by the State (Drac Grand-Est).

The modern horse was domesticated around 2200 years BCE in the northern Caucasus. In the centuries that followed it spread throughout Asia and Europe. To achieve this result, an international team of 162 scientists collected, sequenced and compared 273 genomes from ancient horses scattered across Eurasia.

Since the 1960s, the Jebel Sahaba cemetery (Nile Valley, present-day Sudan) has become the emblem of organised warfare during prehistory. Re-analysis of the data, however, argues for a succession of smaller conflicts. Competition for resources is probably one of the causes of the conflicts witnessed in this cemetery.