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An international research team has found that black eye make-up used between the ninth and seventh centuries BCE in the northwest of today's Iran contained natural graphite and manganese oxide - unlike the typical kohl of the time used across the Ancient Near East, which was often based on lead. The team, led by Silvia Amicone from the Archaeometry working group at the University of Tübingen, discovered the unique formula while analyzing samples from the Kani Koter cemetery on the eastern border of the former Assyrian Empire.

An international research team has published a new study on one of the oldest known sites for the processing of animal meat by humans in the southern Balkans. At Marathousa 1, an archaeological site in the Greek Megalopolis Basin, researchers not only found numerous stone tools that provide clues to human behavior but also remains of the extinct straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus.

Mercury is not only similar in size to our moon, it is also gray and covered in craters. The special thing about the planet closest to the sun is hidden in its interior: Considering its small size, Mercury has a disproportionately large iron core. A phenomenon that is difficult to explain using traditional theories of planet formation.

If economic inequality increases within a country, the risk of civil war breaking out grows. This is the finding from a study by the Chair of Economic History at the University of following analysis of data stretching over two centuries and covering a total of 193 countries. The study has been published in the Review of Income and Wealth .

People coming from the north settled South America. The first hunter-gatherers entered the continent from the region of what is Colombia today and then spread out from there. An international research team from the University of , the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia have now found genetic evidence of a previously unknown, early population.

Certain detergent additives known as aminopolyphosphonates can be transformed into glyphosate and other problematic substances when wastewater is treated. A research team led by Professor Stefan Haderlein of the Geoand Environmental Center at the University of has made this fundamental finding. To achieve this, the team carried out comprehensive experiments in the laboratory which also included conditions found in wastewater.

An international research team led by the University of Tübingen's Dr. Márton Rabi has found that the giant crocodile Deinosuchus - often called the "terror crocodile" or "greater alligator" - was such a successful predator that it posed a threat even to large dinosaurs. Deinosuchus lived in the wetlands and coastal areas of North America in the Cretaceous period, 82 to 75 million years ago.

Pathogenic salmonella inject effector proteins into the cells of the stomach and intestinal tissue in order to penetrate and multiply there. The bacteria, which are usually ingested with food, cause dangerous gastrointestinal inflammation and even systemic infections, especially in children and the elderly.

For the first time ever, a team of researchers has found chemical evidence that wine was actually drunk in Troy, verifying a conjecture of Heinrich Schliemann , who discovered the legendary fortress city in the 19th century. In addition, the researchers from the Universities of Tübingen, Bonn and Jena found that not only members of the Trojan elite but the common people too drank wine.

A newly developed laboratory tool can, within hours, help to identify specific viruses which can be used to destroy variants of the dangerous pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus. Viruses of bacteria, known as bacteriophages, offer an alternative approach to antibiotics in treating multiresistant pathogens.

A new study indicates that human behavior around 45,000 to 29,000 years ago contributed to a change in the composition of scavenging animal species living nearby. While smaller scavenging animals such as foxes and some bird species benefited from the presence of humans, large scavengers such as hyenas and cave lions tended to be displaced.

Real-time observation of certain biochemical processes in blood vessels from mice has revealed a previously unknown similarity between atherosclerosis, also known as vascular calcification, and bone growth. A research team led by Professor Robert Feil at the University of Tübingen's Interfaculty Institute of Biochemistry discovered that a molecular signaling pathway that plays an important role in bone growth can slow down the development of atherosclerosis in blood vessels.

Researchers led by Alexandros Karakostis from the Institute for Archaeological Science and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen suggest that changes in the brain could have enabled early humans to use tools with precision, thus setting in motion the biocultural evolution that led to today's humans.

The changes scientists expect in the climate could cause the toxic metals naturally occurring in soils to become more mobile, destabilize ecosystems and increasingly enter the human food chain via agriculture. Such scenarios are particularly likely to occur in slightly acidic soils, which make up around two thirds of all soils.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications examines the use of ochre in southern Africa and shows that the earth mineral has been used there as a dye and for ritual purposes for almost 50,000 years. The researchers analyzed 173 samples from 15 Stone Age sites and reconstructed methods of ochre extraction, the use of ochre, and transportation networks, considering local strategies and long-distance exchange.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications examines the use of ochre in southern Africa and shows that the earth mineral has been used there as a dye and for ritual purposes for almost 50,000 years. The researchers analyzed 173 samples from 15 Stone Age sites and reconstructed methods of ochre extraction, use and transport networks, with local strategies and long-distance trade playing a role.

The Roman-era temple of Esna, 60 kilometers south of Luxor in Egypt, is undergoing extensive restoration work in an Egyptian-German cooperation project.

Chemicals are omnipresent today: they enter our bodies through food, air or the skin. But how do these complex mixtures of chemicals affect our health? In a study published in the journal Science, a research team from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Tübingen has shown that chemicals that occur in complex mixtures and in concentration ratios as found in humans act together.

On the early Earth, the atmosphere did not yet contain oxygen; nevertheless, the iron dissolved in the oceans was oxidized in gigantic quantities and deposited as rock, for example as banded iron ore in South Africa. Various bacteria excrete insoluble iron via their own metabolic reactions: Some, the phototrophic iron oxidizers, gain energy by oxidizing the iron with the help of sunlight, and others by converting the iron with nitrate as an oxidizing agent.

Take some carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen plus electricity from renewable sources - a bacterium and baker's yeast need little more to produce proteins for human nourishment and the essential vitamin B9 in a conventional laboratory bioreactor system. This was the result achieved by a research team led by Professor Lars Angenent from Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Tübingen during the further development of his power-to-protein system.