A mitochondrial DNA study of 13 individuals from Europe and Asia suggests that Neanderthals were already on the verge of extinction in Europe when modern humans arrived. “This indicates that Neanderthals may have been more sensitive to the dramatic climate changes that took place in the last Ice Age than was previously thought,” said Love Dalen of the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Scientists have completed a nuclear DNA study of “Oetzi the Iceman,”  the 5,300-year-old frozen mummy discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. His genes show that Oetzi suffered from the oldest documented case of infection with Lyme disease.

A British couple has been arrested in Egypt for attempting to smuggle 19 artifacts, including funerary figurines, pottery, lamps, inscribed stones, coins, and manuscripts, out of Cairo International Airport.

This report from Vietnam states that an elaborate incense burner has been discovered at Tien Son Cave. Tien Son Cave is known for its spectacular stalactites and stalagmites and their unusual acoustic qualities.

The clearing of scrubland in Cork County, Ireland, has revealed houses from the pre-famine period. Three sides of the dwellings had been cut out of the face of Windmill Rock, along with unusual niches cut into the walls. “One-roomed cottages were the usual dwelling place for the poorest people in society in the nineteenth century,” explained Terri Kearney of the Skibbereen Heritage Centre.

A burnt fragment of wood has been unearthed in a remote cave on Scotland’s Isle of Skye. Archaeologist Rod McCullagh of Historic Scotland thinks it could be the remains of the bridge to a 1,500-year-old stringed instrument.

A jury in Franklin County, Ohio, has ruled that the Low Adena Tablet, a sandstone tablet carved by American Indians some 2,000 years ago, belongs to the Ohio Historical Society. Records at the Ohio Historical Center indicate that Edward Low, who discovered the tablet in 1942 in West Virginia, donated the tablet in 1971. He asked for its return in 2007.

Rock art discovered in Brazil is thought to be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old and has been dubbed the oldest in the New World. “It shows that about 11,000 years ago, there was already a very diverse manifestation of rock art in South America, so man probably arrived in the Americas much earlier than normally accepted,” said Walter Alves Neves of the University of Sao Paulo.

An ochre pebble discovered near the remains of Homo sapiens in a South African cave is being hailed as the world’s oldest known abstract art. The engraved lines would have appeared red when they were carved some 100,000 years ago.

The wall of a temple dating to 2500 B.C. has been found at Tel Abu Tabeer, located in Iraq’s Sumerian city of Ur.

In southern Greece, the site at the Alepotrypa Cave has yielded a Stone Age village, burials, a lake, and a large ritual chamber. “We don’t quite know what was going on with the ritual activities, but it seems they were burning sacrificed animals, smashing pots and other pottery, and building large fires inside the cave,” said Mike Galaty of Millsaps College.

Records of abnormal weather patterns that were kept by Islamic scholars between 816 and 1009 B.C. are helping modern scholars study climate change.

The collapse of Classic Maya society coincided with a period of decreased rainfall, according to paleoclimatoloigsts Martin Medina-Elizalde and Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton. Archaeologist Lisa Lucero of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, adds that climate change could have contributed to changes in the social and political orders and eventual collapse of the Classic Maya kings.

Looted Maya artifacts have been returned to Guatemala after U.S. immigrations and customs agents confiscated them in Houston, Texas.

A 1,000-year-old etching has been found on the floor of a building at the Maya site of Dzibilnocac in southeastern Mexico. The 58 rectangles may have been used as a game board or as a schematic representation of the universe.

A new research chair for Kimberley rock art has been endowed at the University of Western Australia, in the newly formed Center for Rock Art Studies. “There’s so much work to do that we have enough work for a generation or two of archaeologists,” said Krishna Sen, dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has reportedly decided to allow artifacts that have not been put to use by museums or claimed by owners to be sold to collectors. In a statement, the Ministry claimed the change would allow more artifacts to be seen in other institutions. Critics of the new measure say that the financial value of artifacts to collectors could override their historical significance.

An eleventh-century medallion thought to have been worn by Portuguese traders has been found in the stomach of a baby shark that was captured in southern Malaysia.