Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University claim that they have discovered modern human teeth that are 400,000 years old in Qesem Cave in central Israel. The oldest-known Homo sapiens remains are 200,000 years old. “Based on t he evidence they’ve sited, it’s a very tenuous and frankly rather remote possibility,” commented Sir Paul Mellars of Cambridge University.  

Neanderthals cooked and ate grains and vegetables, according to a study of plaque buildup on their fossilized teeth.  And here’s a wrap-up of Neanderthal DNA research conducted in 2010.  

A 2,600-year-old burial chamber has been removed in a single block of earth from the Celtic hill fort at Heuneburg, Germany. Results of the excavation are due next summer, but the tomb is said to contain the remains of a woman and her gold and amber jewelry.  

Colorful bacteria and fungi keep a particular type of rock art in Western Australia from fading, even after 40,000 years. “These organisms are alive and could have replenished themselves over endless millennia to explain the freshness of the paintings’ appearance,” said Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland.  

Can cancer really be called a disease of the modern world? This article in The New York Times examines how researchers detect cancer in ancient skeletons.  

In 2007, an illegal excavation in a basement in southeastern Turkey turned up the mosaics of the lost city of Germenicia. “The mosaics have changed the future of the buried city. They are on the ground level of two-story magnificent villas built in the late-Roman period around 400 A.D. and will give us clues about the daily social life at the time,” said Seydi Küçükdagli, Provincial Culture and Tourism Director. The site will eventually become an open-air museum.  

Eighteen months after the federal artifact raids in the Four Corners region, has anything changed? More than 20 people were arrested, but no one went to jail. “The judges let everyone off the hook. I’m very disappointed. Everyone should have gone to jail and got heavy fines,” commented Forrest Chuch, director of the Utah division of Indian Affairs.  

Collections manager Catherine M. Wright of the Museum of the Confederacy opened a small glass vial that had been donated to the museum in 1896. A CIA code breaker was able to read the message, which was written in 1863, on the day that Vicksburg fell to Union forces.

DNA analysis of a finger bone discovered in southern Siberia suggests that another ancient human relative lived in Asia some 30,000 years ago. This group has been dubbed the Denisovans. Geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School talks about the Denisovans on NPR. 

In the wake of museum curator Marion True’s trial in Italy on charges of buying looted antiquities, Bernard Frischer of the University of Virginia thinks that museums and private investors should sponsor archaeological digs. He has written about his plan in The New York Times.  

Some Cypriots are concerned that the image of the nude Greek goddess Aphrodite on their new passports is too racy. “They are worried that civilians and diplomats could get into trouble, particularly traveling to very conservative Islamic countries,” reported the newspaper Phileleftheros.  

Here’s a short history of New Year’s Resolutions.  

Happy Holidays! The news will return on Tuesday, December 28.