Archaeologists unravel mystery of buried Byzantine bucket

LONDON — Archaeologists say they have cracked the mystery of a 1,500-year-old bucket unearthed from an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site, with new analysis revealing it contained cremated human and animal remains — suggesting it was used to bury an important person.
The Bromeswell bucket is a 6th-century artifact that was discovered in 1986 at Sutton Hoo, an Anglo-Saxon royal burial site in Suffolk, England.

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Newly Discovered Footprints Dramatically Re-date When Humans First Came to Americas

A new study published in the journal Science Advances confirms that the peopling of the Americas began much earlier than originally thought. Back in 2021, a series of footprints were discovered within the mud of a paleolake bed which had long ago dried up. A 2021 study hypothesized that the prints meant the arrival of settlers to North America occurred somewhere between 23,000 and 21,000 years earlier than previously believed. Now, the new study has confirmed that the footprints were made between 20,700 and 22,400 years ago. "It's a remarkably consistent record," explained lead author Vance Holliday, who was also a co-author on the initial study. "You get to the point where it's really hard to explain all this away. As I say in the paper, it would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that's in error.'Halliday undertook the study for a second time because there was some controversy over the use of ancient pollen and seeds to determine the footprints' age. For this new study, he and his researchers analyzed the mud itself. 'Mud never lies,' Halliday said, explaining that it always holds up to radiocarbon analysis. This most recent study makes the third paper and third laboratory to confirm the timeframe of the footprints' creation. 'It would be serendipity in the extreme to have all these dates giving you a consistent picture that's in error,' Halliday said. The discovery is particularly notable for its lack of artifacts, leading Halliday to posit that the footprints were left by nomadic hunter-gatherers trudging through the lake bed. 'These people live by their artifacts, and they were a long way from where they can acquire replacement material,' he explained. 'They're not just randomly losing artifacts. It's logical…If you're passing through, carrying your gear, you're not leaving it by chance.' The footprints predate the Clovis people, which have long been believed to be the oldest North American humans on record. 'When you stand there and see the prints, you understand they undermine everything you've learned. They're not gesture steps—they're a revolution in human arrival history,' Holliday said. Newly Discovered Footprints Dramatically Re-date When Humans First Came to Americas first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 21, 2025

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9 hours ago

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Weight loss in your 40s and 50s can help slash your chronic disease risk, researchers say

Working to lose weight in your 40s and 50s may help to reduce your risk of developing a chronic disease, a new study reveals. Researchers based in the U.K. and Finland say they found health benefits in people who lost an average of 6.5 percent of their body weight in early middle age and maintained that weight loss throughout a period of 12 to 35 years. Those benefits especially include a lessened risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes as well as an overall lower risk of death from chronic disease. 'The benefits of lifestyle-based weight management are widely discussed even though studies have found it surprisingly difficult to demonstrate health benefits beyond the prevention of diabetes,' University of Helsinki professor Dr. Timo Strandberg said in a statement. Strandberg was the lead author of the study which was published recently in the journal JAMA Network Open, the open-access journal of the American Medical Association. To reach these conclusions, the study tracked and analyzed the health of 23,000 white Europeans who were between the ages of 30 and 50 years old using data from three studies, conducted from 1985 to 1988, from 1964 to 1973, and between 2000 and 2013. They sorted the participants into four groups: people with persistent healthy weight, people who were overweight but became a healthy weight, people who were healthy and became overweight, and people who were overweight the entire time. 'Measurement of weight and height was conducted at a time when surgical and pharmacological weight-loss interventions were nearly nonexistent,' the authors noted. The cause of weight loss was not assessed, but given the age of the participants and lack of diagnosed disease, it was more likely intentional than caused by severe chronic conditions or frailty.' In one study, a reduction in body mass from overweight to normal weight over six years in mid-life was tied to a lower risk of developing chronic diseases. There was also a 48 percent lower risk for chronic illness compared to those who remained overweight, which largely held even after excluding participants who developed diabetes during follow-up. Another study showed a 57 percent risk for chronic illness. A third study, with the longest follow-up period, showed that weight loss in mid-life was associated with a 19 percent reduction in overall mortality. 'I'm certain that overall prevention of overweight and obesity starting in early life is absolutely the best thing to do,' Stranberg told The Independent. 'Our study indirectly proves this by showing that persistent healthy weight over the life-course is best.' He said that he hopes the findings will inspire people to see that lifestyle changes can lead to a longer life. 'This is particularly important today as more people are overweight than when the collection of our research data began 35 years ago,' he said in the statement.

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10 hours ago

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Sunrise at Stonehenge draws druids, pagans and revelers to celebrate the summer solstice

LONDON (AP) — As the sun rose Saturday on the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, a crowd erupted in cheers at Stonehenge where the ancient monument in southern England has clocked the summer solstice over thousands of years. The orange ball crested the northeast horizon behind the Heel Stone, the entrance to the stone circle, and shone its beam of light into the center of one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments. The solstice is one of the few occasions each year when visitors are allowed to walk among the stones, which are otherwise fenced off. The crowd gathered before dawn at the World Heritage Site to mark the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, beating the heat during the U.K.'s first amber heat-health alert issued since September 2023. Temperatures later topped 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in Surrey, 80 miles (128 kilometers) east of Stonehenge, the hottest temperature recorded in the U.K. so far this year. About 25,000 sun devotees and other revelers, including druids, pagans, hippies, locals and tourists, showed up, according to English Heritage which operates the site. More than 400,000 others around the world watched a livestream. 'This morning was a joyous and peaceful occasion with the most beautiful sunrise," said Richard Dewdney, head of operations at Stonehenge. 'It is fantastic to see Stonehenge continuing to enchant and connect people.' Stonehenge was built in stages 5,000 years ago on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain approximately 75 miles (120 kilometers) southwest of London. The unique stone circle was erected in the late Neolithic period about 2,500 B.C. Some of the so-called bluestones are known to have come from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 150 miles (240 kilometers) away, and the altar stone was recently discovered to have come from northern Scotland, some 460 miles (740 kilometers) away. The site's meaning has been vigorously debated. Theories range from it being a coronation place for Danish kings, a druid temple, a cult center for healing, or an astronomical computer for predicting eclipses and solar events. The most generally accepted interpretation is that it was a temple aligned with movements of the sun — lining up perfectly with the summer and winter solstices. Brian Melley, The Associated Press