
Ancient horse-dung bacteria is helping locate where Hannibal crossed the Alps - benbreen
http://theconversation.com/how-ancient-horse-dung-bacteria-is-helping-our-team-locate-where-hannibal-crossed-the-alps-57135
======
awinter-py
Awesome & terrifying. The scary side of this is when you wonder: how much
trace evidence of the past is evaporating unseen because we don't know how to
use it yet?

Archaeologists have been on a fundraising kick for the last few years to
discover and preserve new ice age sites being uncovered by climate change.
That's cool but this trace chemical analysis is even cooler.

Also check out the research on doggerland, the submerged landscape between
england and norway. We are fairly sure from pollen and topography that this
land was inhabited ~13kya, and have recovered some artifacts from dredging and
fishing, but underwater archaeology is optimized for excavating wrecks; the
techniques don't exist yet to discover ancient human habitation of submerged
land.

------
mentatghola
That is some fascinating sh*t.

