This year’s Top 10 Discoveries reach us from vastly different cultures and across eons. Some raise new questions about what it means to be human and what separates us from our species’ relatives. Others bring us face to face with individual people, their travels, their faith, their hold on power. Several, covering matters as diverse as slavery and the origins of art, come to us via newly applied scientific methods. Taken together, this year’s discoveries present an array of insights into endeavors, large and small, spanning millions of years.
-
(Courtesy John Hawks/Wits University)
-
(© MPK-WTAP)
-
(© Kinez Riza)
-
(Courtesy Robert Fortuna/The National Museum of Denmark)
-
(Courtesy © Denis Gliksman, Inrap)
-
(Michael Quinton/Minden Pictures/National Geographic Creative)
-
(Courtesy BLfD, Photo: Thomas Stöckl)
-
(Courtesy Hannes Schroeder, Photo: Jay B. Haviser, St Maarten Archaeological Centre)
-
(Courtesy INAH)
-
(Photo by Michael Lavin. Courtesy Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation (Preservation Virginia))