Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University has proposed a mad-cow-like disease, or TSE, spread by cannibalism may have contributed to the demise of the Neanderthals. Evidence of Neanderthal cannibalism 100,000 years ago was discovered at the cave site of Moula-Guercy in France in 1999. “TSEs could have thinned the population, reducing numbers and contributing to their extinction in combination with other factors (such as climate change and the emergence of modern humans),” he said.  

Forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson has used Johann Sebastian Bach’s bones and computer modeling to rebuild the composer’s face for the Bachhaus museum in Eisenach, Germany. Bach died in 1750, and his bones were excavated in 1894.  

The Rensselaer County Historical Society was evacuated yesterday while police investigated a Civil War-era cartridge box.  

An engraved seal dating to the eighth century B.C. was uncovered in Jerusalem’s City of David. The seal bears the name of a public official in Hebrew.  

The search for Nazi gold and the Amber Room in the German village of Deutschneudorf has stopped, according to this report from Russia. One of the men on the treasure hunting team has reportedly said that “scientists should become involved in the excavation to make it more credible.”

The nearly complete cranium known as Toumai was discovered in Chad in 2001. Some scientists claim the seven-million-year-old fossils represent the earliest hominid ever found, meaning that the evolutionary split between apes and humans happened earlier than previously thought. Critics say that Toumai did not have the brain capacity to be classified as a hominid.  

An Iranian news agency reports that 100 prehistoric artifacts taken from Pakistan in 1946 by British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler for a museum exhibition were discovered at an antiques fair in Italy. The items were given to the Pakistani ambassador in Rome.  

A California fire in 2003 gutted the nineteenth-century Dyar House in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Artifacts from the park had been held in the basement of the house. They are now being recovered by a hazardous materials crew supervised by archaeologists.  

In Huntington Beach, California, 174 bone fragments, thousands of stone artifacts, and 83 features have been uncovered at the site of a new residential community. The bone fragments are thought to be 8,500 years old.   The Los Angeles Times also weighs in on this story.  

National Park Service archaeologist Jeff Burton is leading an investigation of a Japanese internment camp in Hawaii.  

Here’s another article on the composition of Maya blue, used to decorate pottery, figurines, murals, and sacrificial victims. “The interest in Maya blue stems from the fact that it is a very durable pigment – more durable than most natural dyes and pigments. It also stems from the fact it wasn’t immediately obvious how it was made and what the key ingredients were,” said Gary Feinman, curator of anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum.  

A Minnesota homeowner was surprised by bones and fabric in his crawl space.  

An archaeologist and an anthropologist will assist authorities with the recovery of human remains at Haut de la Garenne, a children’s care home on the Channel Islands.  

High-definition photographs have been taken of the Shroud of Turin. “It is like looking at the Shroud through a microscope. You can see the threads, the fibers that make these threads, the damage that the shroud has suffered over the years,” said technical supervisor Mauro Gavinelli.