For the ancient Maya, cracked mirrors were a path to the world beyond Some people fear that breaking a mirror can lead to seven years of misfortune. The history of this superstition may go back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who ascribed mysterious powers to reflected images.
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-....ancient-maya-mirrors

Historical data suggest hard knocks to human societies build long-term resilience Frequent disturbances to human societies boost the ability of populations to resist and recover from subsequent downturns, a Nature paper indicates. The study, which analyzes 30,000 years of human history, has implications for future population growth and resilience and for contemporary resilience-building initiatives.
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-....historical-hard-huma

Recreating the face of a 75,000-year-old female from a cave where Neanderthals buried their dead A new Netflix documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators led by the University of Cambridge.
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-....recreating-year-fema

Revised dating of the Liujiang skeleton renews understanding of human occupation of China The emergence of Homo sapiens in Eastern Asia has long been a subject of intense research interest, with the scarcity of well-preserved and dated human fossils posing significant challenges.
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-....dating-liujiang-skel

Scientists show that ancient village adapted to drought, rising seas Around 6,200 BCE, the climate changed. Global temperatures dropped, sea levels rose and the southern Levant, including modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai desert, entered a period of drought.
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-....scientists-ancient-v