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An international team of researchers including the University of Freiburg identifies engravings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as the oldest known scaled building plans in human history. Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.

Presentation of two research projects from the humanities and social sciences It is an unwritten law: scientific exchanges and interdisciplinarity are the basis for excellent research. How does interdisciplinary collaboration increase the gain in knowledge? What obstacles have to be overcome in everyday work? We take a closer look at these and other questions by presenting two research projects from the Humanities and the Social Sciences.

An Egyptian-German research team has uncovered yet another series of colorful ceiling paintings at the Temple of Esna in Upper Egypt. The researchers reported that the Egyptian restoration team, led by Ahmed Emam, succeeded in completely restoring and re-coloring a representation of the heavens. The images, executed in relief, include a complete depiction of the signs of the zodiac.

TUM researchers confirm assumed chamber An international research team has discovered a previously unknown chamber in the Cheops pyramid of Giza. As early as 2016 measurements had given reason to assume the existence of a hidden hollow space in the vicinity of the chevron blocks over the entrance. Now scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have used ultrasound and endoscopy to make an important contribution to confirming this assumption.

International research team creates largest genome analysis of ice-age ancestors to date Who resettled Central Europe after the last ice age when the ice sheets were at their greatest? This has been a topic of debate for over 100 years. Now an international research team led by the University of Tübingen and including the University of Göttingen, has conclusively proved the genetic history of European ancestors using the largest genome data set of European hunter-gatherers ever compiled.

Team headed by Freiburg researcher has discovered earliest use of steel in Europe - on Iberian stone pillars from the Final Bronze Age A study by an international and interdisciplinary team headed by Freiburg archaeologist Dr. Ralph Araque Gonzalez from the Faculty of Humanities has proven that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2900 years ago.

Analyzing the residue on vessels in a mummification workshop has given a team of researchers from LMU Munich and the University of fresh insights into how the ancient Egyptians embalmed the bodies of their dead. The archeologists have been able to determine what substances were used for which part of the body.

New archaeogenetic data allow exciting insights into the social order of the Aegean Bronze Age An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, achieves completely new insights into Bronze Age marriage rules and family structures in Greece.

An international team lead by researchers from the University of Tübingen, Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment in Tübingen and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have identified a previously unknown hunter-gatherer population in the Altai some 7,500 years ago which illustrates the high mobility between populations in Siberia and elsewhere in North Asia.

Humans have been using bear skins to protect themselves from cold weather for at least 300,000 years. This is suggested by cut marks on the metatarsal and phalanx of a cave bear discovered at the Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, Germany. This makes it one of the oldest examples of this type in the world.

Over 500 years, the economy developed better in parts of Europe where women married in their 20s instead of their teens, according to a study by economic historians Alexandra de Pleijt from Wa-geningen University in the Netherlands and Jörg Baten from the University of. Their study has been published in the journal World Development .

When prehistoric people re-sharpened cutting tools 300,000 years ago, they dropped tiny chips of flint - which today yield evidence of how wood was processed by early humans. The small flint flakes were discovered at the Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen, Lower Saxony. Now, a multidisciplinary team led by the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP) in Tübingen has analyzed this very old material for the information it can provide.

Researchers use speleothems as a source of information on historic climate / Hydroclimate volatility and increase in natural forest fire events are linked Scientists are trying to uncover and analyze evidence from the past in their search for a better assessment of future climate trends. In a joint international research project, researchers have been studying the effects of the sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred about 8,200 years ago, the so-called 8.2-kiloyear event, with the help of mineral deposits present in White Moon Cave in Northern California.

The gold in objects from Troia, Poliochni - a settlement on the island of Lemnos, located about 60 kilometers off the coast of Troia - and Mesopotamian Ur has the same geographical origin and was traded over long distances. This is the conclusion reached by an international team of researchers who used an innovative mobile laser method to analyze samples of famous Early Bronze Age jewelry from Troia and Poliochni for the first time.

Ancient fish teeth discovered at the archaeological site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Israel provide earliest evidence of our prehistoric ancestors deliberately cooking foodstuff Nutrition and the ability to prepare foodstuffs helped facilitate the evolution of the human species. Considered particularly relevant to the development of the genus Homo in this context are the processes of cooking.

Archeologists from the universities of Freiburg and Mainz identify one of the largest known sacred buildings of the Etruscans Freiburg, Nov 10, 2022 An interdisciplinary team headed by archeologists Dr. Mariachiara Franceschini of the University of Freiburg and Paul P. Pasieka of the University of Mainz has discovered a previously unknown Etruscan temple in the ancient city of Vulci, which lies in the Italian region of Latium.

In the 1860s, the chemists, Lothar Meyer and Dmitri Mendeleev, independently presented the first periodic system. Since then, the well-known tabular arrangement of the elements has been the guiding principle of chemistry. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences and the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics at the University of Leipzig provides computational approaches based on extensive data sets from the Reaxys chemistry database that explain the development of the first periodic systems.

Early Bantu speakers crossed through the dense Central African Rainforest 4,000 years ago The study used novel computational approaches and linguistic data from more than 400 Bantu languages to reconstruct the historic migration routes. The project was a collaboration between scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Archaeological investigations offer up new findings on the history of Parthian settlements in Iraqi Kurdistan The mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly in modern Iraqi Kurdistan was one of the major regional centres of the Parthian Empire, which extended over parts of Iran and Mesopotamia approximately 2,000 years ago.