Two fever-causing bacteria may have worsened Napoleon's disastrous retreat from Russia in 1812, researchers suggest after analyzing DNA from the teeth of Napoleonic soldiers 🦷🦠🇷🇺⚔️

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#Napoleon #History #MedicalResearch #BacterialInfections #Russia1812

Ancient Humans Introduced Wolves 🐺 to Remote Baltic Sea Island 🌊🏝️ 5,000 Years Ago

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#AncientHumans #Wolves #BalticSea #Archaeology #History

🧐 Viewing historical propaganda that glorifies dictators can lessen negative emotions about past atrocities, a study in the European Journal of Social Psychology suggests.

🤔 Researchers found that mixing images of a smiling Adolf Hitler with photos of Holocaust atrocities reduced guilt and increased positive emotions in modern German viewers, showing propaganda's lasting emotional impact.

🔬 The study, which involved 860 participants across multiple experiments, also found that such propaganda amplified positive emotions like happiness and calmness, making the images potentially more impactful than initially thought.

⚠️ Researchers emphasize caution with media, noting that images can be crafted for emotional impact and not always reflect the full truth, especially with advancements like AI image generators.

#History #Propaganda #Psychology

🚢 DNA analysis has identified four more sailors from Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition, bringing the total identified to six.

🚢 Three sailors from HMS Erebus died at Erebus Bay, while one sailor from HMS Terror, Harry Peglar, was found 130 kilometers away.

🚢 This research resolves a 166-year-old mystery regarding one sailor's identity and sheds new light on the final stages of the doomed mission.

🚢 The identified sailors are Harry Peglar, William Orren, David Young, and John Bridgens.

#FranklinExpedition #ArcticExploration #History

🌍 Tens of thousands of languages may have existed between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, a period described as a linguistic "golden age."

📈 Language diversity increased alongside human population growth for most of the Holocene, peaking between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, before a rapid decline.

🏛️ The decline in linguistic diversity began with the expansion of large states and empires, well before modern European colonialism.

surviving languages are a small, historically biased sample of past linguistic diversity.

#LanguageDiversity #Linguistics #History

* 🦠 DNA from two ancient mummies in northern Chile has revealed the first known ancient smallpox genomes in the Americas.
* 📜 The near-identical genomes, from individuals living between 1492 and 1631, suggest they were infected during the same outbreak, providing rare molecular evidence of smallpox spread by European colonization.
* 🧬 This discovery fills a gap in smallpox's evolutionary history and supports historical accounts, anchoring a specific strain in colonial Chile where historical records are scarce.

#AncientDNA #Smallpox #History

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💀 Archaeologists discovered a unique 17th-century grave in Pień, Poland, belonging to a young high-society woman (aged 17-19) buried away from the village.

🔒 The grave contained a padlock on her big toe, a practice to prevent the deceased from returning from the dead, and a sickle placed across her neck to deter her from rising.

📝 The find, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, sheds light on widespread fears of the undead and "anti-demonic" burial practices in post-medieval Poland, often applied to individuals seen as outsiders or those whose deaths were considered unusual.

#Archaeology #History #Poland

👑 Archaeologists are re-examining evidence from First Dynasty Egyptian kings (c. 3078–2900 BCE). New forensic analysis of 46 skulls from royal burial sites at Umm el-Qaab suggests 18 show signs of potentially lethal injuries, lending credence to the theory of "retainer sacrifice" where individuals were killed to serve royalty in the afterlife.

💀 The study, published today in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, identifies linear fractures and sharp force injuries on the skulls, indicating traumatic blows to the head. This challenges earlier doubts due to a lack of evidence for the cause of death.

✨ This research revives the theory first proposed by British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in the 1920s. The findings suggest this practice of ritualistic killing may have begun early in ancient Egyptian culture, with individuals possibly volunteering, being chosen, or forced to die.

#AncientEgypt #Archaeology #History