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Chickens outnumber all other species of birds by an order of magnitude and they are humanity9s single largest source of animal protein for humans. Yet for 2 centuries, biologists have struggled to explain how the chicken became the chicken. Now, the first extensive study of the bird9s full genome concludes that people in northern Southeast Asia or southern China domesticated a colorful pheasant sometime after about 7500 B.C.E. People then carried the bird across Asia and on to every continent except Antarctica. The research team also found that the modern chicken9s chief ancestor is a subspecies of red jungle fowl named Gallus gallus spadiceus.

In 1587, more than 100 men, women, and children settled on Roanoke Island, in what is now North Carolina. War with Spain prevented speedy resupply of the colony—the first English settlement in the New World, backed by Elizabethan courtier Sir Walter Raleigh. When a search-and-rescue mission arrived 3 years later, the town was abandoned and the colonists had vanished. Despite more than a century of intensive digging, no trace has been found of the colonists9 town—only the remains of a small workshop and an earthen fort that, according to a study to be published later this year, may have been built after what is commonly called the Lost Colony. Now, after a long hiatus, archaeologists plan to resume digging this fall, hoping to find the colonists9 abandoned town and learn more about early English ventures into the New World.

For archaeologists, Afghanistan is virtually off-limits for fieldwork, as Taliban forces battle the Kabul government. Yet U.S. and Afghan researchers are now finding thousands of never-before-cataloged ancient sites in the country, which for more than a millennium served as a crucial crossroads linking East and West. The discoveries promise to expand scholars9 view of long-vanished empires while giving the battered nation a desperately needed chance to protect its trove of cultural heritage. In a collaboration funded by the U.S. Department of State, archaeologists are analyzing commercial satellite data along with U.S. spy satellite and military drone images, which offer a fine-grained view of remote sites that are too dangerous for researchers to visit. At a meeting in Boston last month of the American Schools of Oriental Research, team members said they have more than tripled the number of published archaeological features in the country, to more than 4500. The discoveries range from caravanserais, huge complexes designed to house travelers and built from the early centuries B.C.E. until the 19th century, to networks of ancient canals invisible from the ground. Meanwhile, octogenarian archaeologists are emerging from retirement to add information from decades-old fieldwork to the site inventory.

Some of the last isolated tribes are emerging from Peru's rainforests.

The world's cats and dogs disappeared overnight, millions of people would mourn their furry friends. If beef cattle suddenly ceased to exist, it would create economic crises in America, Argentina and Australia. It's a thought experiment whose answers show just how much human civilization has come to rely on a single species. Without chickens, humans would face "a starving world," says Olivier Hanotte, a molecular biologist at the University of Nottingham in UK, who has studied the spread of the chicken around the globe. Close to one-third of the world's meat supply and nearly all of its eggs would vanish. Pandemics and riots could ensue, unleashing a crisis of enormous proportions. Here, Lawler investigates whether humanity could survive without chickens.

This paper investigates perceptions of ethnicity, religion and language within the archaeological community of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Research was conducted using responses to an appendix (consisting of six questions) to questionnaires distributed as a part of the project, Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe 2012–2014: Bosnia and Herzegovina, implemented by Cultural Heritage without Borders, Sarajevo, between 2012 and 2014, as well as the core data collected within the questionnaire itself. After presentation and analysis, the data are compared with two preexisting datasets: similar research conducted during 2009–2010 within Bosnia and Herzegovina’s archaeological community; and, where comparable data have been collected, the views obtained for the Bosnia and Herzegovina component of the project Strategies of symbolic nation-building in West Balkan states in late 2011. Although a census was undertaken within Bosnia and Herzegovina throughout September 2013—the first since 1991—the results were not publicly available at the time of writing.

The tall tales of Sinbad the Sailor, who plied the Indian Ocean from Arabia to Africa to India and beyond, once held little interest for scholars of ancient East-West relations. Researchers focused instead on the so-called Silk Road—the land route across Central Asia. Now, the southern maritime trade route of ancient times is emerging from the shadows. Archaeologists are picking through Southeast Asian swamps, diving off Sri Lankan reefs, and digging on African beaches. They aim to track how plants, animals, trade goods, people, and ideas moved around the ocean from 2000 B.C.E. until 1500 C.E. Already the research is uncovering a lost story of Indian Ocean trade that went far beyond the simple exchange of gems and spices and forged surprisingly modern connections among cultures. The work is shifting researchers' focus from the great empires at either end of the Silk Road—Rome and China—to the vibrant societies in between. Key sites include Khao Sam Kaeo, which is perhaps the oldest city in Southeast Asia; an ancient shipwreck off Sri Lanka; and sites along the East African coast that reveal the origins of the Swahili culture.

For as long as there has been civilization, there have been mind-altering drugs. Alcohol has been around for at least 10,000 years, but recent advances in chemical analysis of old pots reveal that other psychoactive drugs were present at the dawn of the first complex societies some 5000 years ago in the ancient Middle East. Ancient people from Turkey to Egypt experimented with local substances such as blue water lily, while imports like cannabis and opium made from poppies spread through early international trade networks. Armed with the new data, archaeologists are probing just how these drugs impacted early societies and beliefs. Some argue that the impact of these psychoactive substances has been underestimated, and that a drug culture was central to ritual in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, and the Levant.

A new front has opened in the destruction of archaeological heritage in the Middle East. Across northern Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State (IS) group devastated antiquities during its reign of terror starting in 2014. The IS group has now been routed by Iraqi and Syrian forces, curbing the destruction but allowing archaeologists a firsthand look at an aftermath that is grimmer than many had expected. Meanwhile, the assault on antiquity has extended to Yemen, 2000 kilometers to the south, another archaeological treasure house riven by conflict. A Saudi-led bombing campaign combined with terrorist attacks has destroyed or severely damaged more than 60 sites, including what some archaeologists consider the world9s oldest dam. Yemeni officials, backed by German researchers, say that the Saudi-inflicted damage appears to be a conscious effort to wipe out Yemen9s rich heritage.

Who helped build the first trading networks in the earliest civilization? Scholars long thought that wandering nomads moving their flocks in the Near East helped spur urban growth by bringing stone, wood, and metals to the plains of Mesopotamia. That assumption was built, in part, on studies of modern-day nomads in Anatolia, Iraq, and Iran. Thanks to recent isotopic analyses from ancient sites, that view is under siege. Archaeologists like Emily Hammer from the University of Pennsylvania suggest that pastoralists did not stray far from home until long after cities like Ur and Mari flourished around 2000 B.C.E. That assertion, however, has met with skepticism from many researchers, who insist that nomads played a key role in the birth and evolution of the first cities.

Researchers agree that the red jungle fowl gave rise to the barnyard chicken somewhere in South Asia. But they agree on little else. Some contend that domestication took place 8000 years ago; others suggest that tame chickens are only 4000 years old. Some say the bird was domesticated only once; others look to several independent centers of domestication. The genes of isolated populations of red jungle fowl are now being sequenced (see sidebar) as part of a larger effort to understand the world9s most common bird and biggest source of animal protein. The proliferation of factory farms, mass bird deaths from avian influenza, and dwindling diversity in chickens have raised concerns about this critical source of food.

Humans first took the leap from village life to urban sprawl in Mesopotamia sometime during the 4th millennium B.C.E. in what archaeologists call the Uruk phase, named after a southern Iraq metropolis. But recent excavations in Kuwait, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia provide mounting evidence that the origin of the urban revolution is to be found in the prior era, called the Ubaid, which lasted from 5500 B.C.E. until about 4000 B.C.E. Some archaeologists argue that crop irrigation and the resulting food surplus spurred the rise of cities, while others cite the appearance of kings, colonial domination, or spread of a common religion. But the new Ubaid finds add weight to the hypothesis that growing contact among different groups was the spark that eventually ignited the urban revolution, suggesting that the Ubaid was a time of mutual exchange among independent peoples rather than control asserted by a single sophisticated group.

A millennium ago, what is now East St. Louis, Illinois, was an affluent neighborhood of Native Americans, set amid the largest concentration of people and monumental architecture north of what is now Mexico. To the east was another concentration of enormous earthen mounds and people—the settlement called Cahokia by today9s archaeologists—and to the west across the Mississippi was a third center of mounds and houses at what is modern St. Louis. Cahokia proper was the only pre-Columbian city north of the Rio Grande, and it was large even by European and Mesoamerican standards of the day. Now new excavations suggest a far larger, complex metropolis. But a new highway and a bridge over the Mississippi will soon destroy the remnants of the site. The $2.5 million dig is yielding big surprises for researchers, who had thought that the 19th century industrial city here wiped out the ancient remains.

Revolutionizing Egypt's ScienceScientists are carrying Egypt's 25 January revolution, which led to the downfall of longtime president Hosni Mubarak and his dictatorial regime, to the country's universities and research institutes. They are demanding academic freedom, a living wage, an end to corruption, and a clear strategy to help Egypt tackle the coming challenges. The interim government, overseen by the army, is listening. Egypt's current leaders are not waiting for a new elected government, expected to take over sometime in 2012, to make changes. They say that the revolution's ultimate success depends on jump-starting the flagging economy and that one crucial way to do that is to transform the country's troubled research establishment.

As U.S. legislation requiring the return of Native American remains to tribes turns 20, a new controversy is threatening the tenuous relations between the scientific and Native American communities.

Madagascar was long considered the last major landmass, besides Antarctica, settled by humans. But in a Science Advances paper published this week, researchers report ancient butchered bones showing that people made the lush island their home 8500 years ago, an astonishing 6 millennia earlier than once thought. The discovery, by a team led by James Hansford of the Zoological Society of London, also rekindles a contentious debate over whether humans are responsible for the extinction of Madagascar9s unique megafauna, including massive lemurs and the world9s largest bird, which flourished largely in isolation after the island broke away from the Indian subcontinent 88 million years ago. That controversy is part of a wider disagreement among scholars as to whether human hunters inevitably kill off large mammal species when they arrive in a new land.

An ambitious drive is under way to settle a long-standing controversy among archaeologists and anthropologists. Considered the realm of crackpot theorists until recently, the idea of prehistoric contact between Polynesians and South Americans has gone mainstream. A new generation of researchers is using DNA analysis of varied organisms such as humans, chickens, and sweet potatoes to add compelling data to a case previously based on more nebulous linguistic and artifact similarities. Given current views of Polynesian expansion (see "Changing Time in the South Pacific"), many researchers now think it likely that Polynesians reached South America by about 1200 C.E., after the settlement of Easter Island, and several centuries before Europeans arrived around 1500 C.E. Some skeptics point out that there is still no incontrovertible evidence that Polynesians went to South America and then returned to Pacific islands, and contact with North America remains questionable (see "Northern Exposure in Doubt"). But many researchers agree that resistance to the idea of prehistoric contact is starting to crumble, giving archaeologists a chance to rethink the way technology and innovations spread in prehistory.

Recent digs in Iran and Central Asia have uncovered a plethora of ancient cities that traded goods and technologies overland with one another and their more famous neighbors. Now discoveries in Oman and the neighboring United Arab Emirates (UAE) are beginning to show that there was a southern sea route as well, which funneled raw materials such as copper and manufactured goods such as textiles across the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Those links reached deep into the eastern Arabian Peninsula. Much is still unknown, including whether Indus traders actually penetrated deep into Arabia, the identities of the sailors who first plied the Indian Ocean, and just how extensive that contact was. But clues continue to emerge from numerous archaeological digs in Oman and the UAE, a region that has become a hotbed of excavation. Work here and in the western Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and India reveals that this early Arabian culture was a nexus point for the far-flung civilizations of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. This special Focus package also discusses a bevy of archaeological surprises being discovered in Omani soil and fortified coastal settlements that suggest that the Indus Civilization, once considered an insular society, shipped goods to the east.

Archaeologists have long thought that Chinese civilization was born along the central plains of the Yellow River. But dramatic discoveries across China in the past 2 decades are challenging long-held views. From Manchuria in the north, to the Chengdu plain to the west, and to the coastal cities of the south, excavations are revealing a host of complex and distinct ancient cultures, each with its own artifacts and traditions. Striking carved faces found in Liangzhu are one example; other cultures developed enormous bronze statues, large stone ceremonial complexes, and a golden, whirling sun motif. Yellow River sites like Erlitou, believed since its discovery in 1959 to have been the long-lost first capital of China (see sidebar), remain key to understanding the first true urban centers in China. But other, far-flung cultures also contain the seeds of Chinese traditions.

Archaeology in ChinaAlthough far from the ancient centers of Chinese culture, some archaeologists believe that the remote region of Xinjiang in northwest China may hold the key to understanding early Chinese civilization because of its crucial role in trade. They argue that as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C.E., during the rise of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus civilizations, Xinjiang may have served as a critical bridge between East and West, funneling some combination of bronzemaking, wheat domestication, and other technologies toward the incipient Chinese culture. Those technologies may have helped jump-start Chinese urban life along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in the 2nd millennium B.C.E. (see p. [930][1]). That is a novel, even radical, idea among Chinese academics, many of whom still see Xinjiang as a distant region that enters history only when a unified China began to assert control in the early centuries B.C.E. Indeed, not so long ago, such discussion of outside influence on China's origins would have been at best frowned upon and at worst dangerous. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/325/5943/930

The pace of construction in China threatens to destroy sites ranging from Paleolithic campsites to Han royal tombs, and with them, a treasure trove of data critical for understanding the role of East Asia in early human migrations, animal and plant domestication, and urbanization. Halting or even slowing development in a society eager to emerge from rural poverty is not possible. Instead, archaeologists are exploring creative ways to collaborate with both government and developers, and using museums like the one in Jinsha, a 3000-year-old settlement with a surprisingly rich culture, to build popular support for preserving key sites. Thus China9s development boom is powering a new wave of archaeological discovery and appreciation even as it threatens sites. Courts are increasingly willing to enforce harsh penalties on looters (see sidebar). And in a dramatic departure from the past, local governments are now willing to lend support and funds to preserve sites.

A critique of papers in the session on Archaeology and War. Une critique d’articles concernant la session portant sur l’archeologie et la guerre.

Long in the shadow of its sister civilizations to the west, the Indus is emerging as the powerhouse of commerce and technology in the 3rd millennium B.C.E. But political and economic troubles dog archaeologists9 efforts to understand what made this vast society tick.

RAVENNA, ITALY-- Long dismissed as a backwater, the vast area between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley is now revealing a tapestry of wealthy urban centers that shaped humanity9s first concerted attempt at city life.

ASTROBIOLOGYA decade after NASA pledged to create a robust program to find and understand life in the universe, researchers face a debilitating budget crunch and skepticism within their own agency. ([Read more][1].) [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/5810/318

HAMOUKAR, SYRIA-- A solid tenet of archaeology is that civilization first sprang to life in the cities of southern Mesopotamia. But was there a parallel--or even earlier--development of urban culture to the north? (Read more.)

SPACE SCIENCEFlush with new discoveries, NASA's space and earth scientists now must figure out how to get by on $3 billion less than they expected--without triggering a civil war. ([Read more][1].) [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5767/1540

SPACE SCIENCENASA's new leader comes aboard with a deceptively big budget for science. But size is no substitute for a healthy portfolio. Can Michael Griffin remake the agency's human space flight program without eviscerating research?

The first scientific studies of Mesopotamia9s drained marshes in decades appear in this week9s issue of Science (see p. 1307). But it9s not easy finding a realistic and salable restoration plan--or gathering data in a dangerous environment.

For 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing.