More stories

  • in

    How mudlarks are uncovering thousands of years of London’s history

    Mudlarking, once a trade of the Victorian poor, has evolved into a modern-day hobby that captivates everyday Londoners and history enthusiasts. What began as a desperate means of survival, scouring the Thames foreshore for anything of value, has become a way to connect with the city’s deep and layered past.
    In London Museum’s new exhibition, Secrets of the Thames, over 350 artefacts recovered from the river’s muddy banks, many on public display for the first time, are brought together to tell a remarkable story. Visitors are invited to step into the world of the mudlarks: amateur archaeologists, urban explorers and passionate storytellers who uncover fragments of daily life spanning centuries.
    “What mudlarks do is really important to preserve history as soon as it’s found,” says Alessio Chicconi, a palaeontologist who has unearthed thousands of artefacts since taking up mudlarking during lockdown.
    The Thames is uniquely suited to mudlarking. The river’s tidal nature, rising and falling twice daily, constantly stirs and reshapes the foreshore, periodically revealing and concealing layers of history. Its anaerobic mud slows the decay of organic materials like leather and wood, creating rare opportunities for preservation. The result is a time capsule stretching from prehistoric flint tools to 17th-century shoes.Advertisement
    Beyond the tangible finds, what draws many mudlarks back to the river is a deep sense of connection to Britons of the past. “It’s quite incredible when we find these objects, to think that I am the first person to touch it in 4000 years,” says Chicconi. Each item, no matter how ordinary it might seem, holds the story of a life once lived and offers a glimpse into everyday moments. It invites an appreciation for the supposedly mundane: a clay pipe, a pin, a shard of pottery. And in the quiet ritual of searching the foreshore, Secrets of the Thames reveals not just the artefacts left behind, but the timeless human desire to be remembered. As Chicconi puts it, “History will find a way to bring up your name.”  
    London Museum’s Secrets of the Thames exhibition is open until 1 Mar 2026.

    Topics: More

  • in

    Mammoth tusk flakes may be the oldest ivory objects made by humans

    A mammoth skeleton at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, GermanyDANIEL NAUPOLD/dpa/Alamy
    Archaeologists excavating 400,000-year-old rock in western Ukraine have uncovered fragments of what could be the oldest human-made ivory objects ever found. These artefacts would have been too soft to use as cutting tools, but they could have been used as teaching aids, the researchers suggest.
    “If the interpretations are correct, they add to an apparently increasing appreciation of the intelligence of pre-modern humans,” says Gary Haynes at the University of Nevada. More

  • in

    Mammoth tusk flakes may be the oldest ivory objects made by humans

    A mammoth skeleton at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, GermanyDANIEL NAUPOLD/dpa/Alamy
    Archaeologists excavating 400,000-year-old rock in western Ukraine have uncovered fragments of what could be the oldest human-made ivory objects ever found. These artefacts would have been too soft to use as cutting tools, but they could have been used as teaching aids, the researchers suggest.
    “If the interpretations are correct, they add to an apparently increasing appreciation of the intelligence of pre-modern humans,” says Gary Haynes at the University of Nevada. More

  • in

    Mammoth tusk flakes may be the oldest ivory objects made by humans

    A mammoth skeleton at the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart, GermanyDANIEL NAUPOLD/dpa/Alamy
    Archaeologists excavating 400,000-year-old rock in western Ukraine have uncovered fragments of what could be the oldest human-made ivory objects ever found. These artefacts would have been too soft to use as cutting tools, but they could have been used as teaching aids, the researchers suggest.
    “If the interpretations are correct, they add to an apparently increasing appreciation of the intelligence of pre-modern humans,” says Gary Haynes at the University of Nevada. More

  • in

    Our drive for adventure and challenge has ancient origins

    The drive to explore has taken humans to most of the habitable planetMarco Bottigelli/Getty Images
    The Explorer’s GeneAlex Hutchinson (Mariner Books (UK, 10 April; US, on sale now))
    Approximately 50,000 years ago, our ancestors – the first modern humans – set out from their African homeland in droves. We don’t know for sure what prompted this mass uprooting (sometimes known as “the Great Human Expansion”), but our species’ staggering geographic spread is proof of its success.
    In relatively short order, humans made it to more or less “every habitable corner of the planet”, writes Alex Hutchinson, a journalist,… More

  • in

    A nebula’s X-ray glow may come from a destroyed giant planet

    The decades-long mystery of a never-ending explosion of X-rays around the remains of a dead star may have finally been solved. The radiation probably originates from the scorching-hot wreckage left behind by a giant planet’s annihilation.

    This discovery stems from four decades of X-ray observations of the Helix Nebula, located 650 light-years from Earth. The stream of X-ray radiation remained effectively constant over at least 20 years, researchers report in the January Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The best explanation, the scientists say, is that the ruins of a Jupiter-sized world continuously fall onto the nebula’s white dwarf star, getting frazzled and glowing in X-rays. More

  • in

    Unusually tiny hominin deepens mystery of our Paranthropus cousin

    The thigh and shin bones of Paranthropus robustusJason L. Heaton
    A fossilised left leg unearthed in South Africa belongs to one of the smallest adult hominins ever discovered – smaller even than the so-called “hobbit”, Homo floresiensis.
    The diminutive hominin was a member of the species Paranthropus robustus. This was one of several species of Paranthropus, a group of ape-like hominins that shared the African landscape with the earliest representatives of our human genus, Homo, between about 2.7 and 1.2 million years ago. Paranthropus had heavily built skulls that housed small brains and large teeth – which some species… More

  • in

    A controversial book about human diversity shows how biology unites us

    The racial divide in track events is down to factors other than geneticsHannah Peters/Getty Images
    AdaptableHerman Pontzer (Allen Lane)
    Fancy eating the real paleo diet? Rotten meat should be top of your menu, preferably with a generous helping of maggots. Dietary records “from every continent and climate are alive with maggots, worms and the soft, smelly flesh of decaying animals. Many groups preferred rotten meat to fresh,” says evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer. “The more it stank, the better.”
    In fact, we seem to have evolved to eat rotten meat. Our stomachs are much more acidic than most other… More