The tragic tale of Harold, the king who lost #England to William the #Conqueror in an infamous battle, still looms large in British popular culture. But that story may need a reset, according to new research.

The Battle of Hastings in 1066 ended the short rule of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king, and ushered in William, Duke of Normandy, as England’s leader, forever changing the country, as the well-worn story is told on TV, podcasts and in classrooms. New analysis of manuscripts, however, casts the nature of Harold’s devastating defeat in a fresh light.

The arduous 200-mile (322-kilometre) march that King Harold and his men made before facing off with William, which supposedly left his troops depleted and ill-prepared to fight, never actually happened, says Tom Licence, a professor of medieval history and literature at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. Instead, Licence argues, the troops made that journey southward by ship.

“1066 is still one of the few dates that virtually everyone knows,” said Rory Naismith, a professor of early medieval English history at the University of Cambridge in the United #Kingdom who wasn’t involved in the research. “It is a watershed in English #history, when one political regime was defeated and very soon replaced by another, with huge consequences for the cultural and institutional identity of the kingdom. The developments of 1066 are therefore crucial to understanding everything that came after.”

Reexamining the record

The idea that Harold’s men covered nearly 200 miles in 10 days after a hard-won battle at Stamford Bridge, near York, against Viking leader Harald Hardrada, another rival for the throne, had long struck Licence and other historians as improbable, given the distances involved.

The story of the dramatic overland march was largely a Victorian interpretation that had stuck, Licence said. Its origins stem from a misunderstood reference to Harold’s fleet being sent home in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, an account of key events written in old English by clergy of the time. In the earlier interpretation, “sent home” was assumed to mean disbanded, with ships sent home to their port of origin. While reviewing the chronicle Licence found repeated reference to home, meaning London, where King Harold was based.

“It dawned on me that when he says, ‘The fleet came home,’ he doesn’t mean the fleet was sent to its various ports. The fleet was sent to its home, London,” he said, referring to one of the authors of the chronicles

To recap: Harold first sailed his fleet northward, Licence said, where he successfully battled the Viking leader Harald Hardrada and his Norwegian force on September 26, 1066. He then returned with it to London. “Rather than exhausting his men on that march south, which of course has been blamed for the English defeat, he had the chance to rest them,” Licence added.

Then, Harold and some of his men traveled overland south toward Hastings to confront the Duke of Normandy. Meanwhile, Licence argued, Harold also sent ships to Hastings to attempt a pincer movement to trap William from the south, but the fleet arrived too late to change the course of the devastating battle that took place on October 14.

Naismith said he agreed with the new interpretation. “The English had a large seagoing fleet of ships, and there is plentiful evidence for sailing up and down the east coast in the era of the Norman Conquest,” he said. “A larger role for these ships in the events of 1066 makes a lot of sense and demonstrates Harold’s ability to use the resources available to him.”

The English army’s march southward has always been part of Harold’s romantic identity, said Duncan Wright, a senior lecturer in medieval archaeology at the Newcastle University in England. Harold is known as the last Anglo-Saxon king who strove valiantly against invading threats, but whose efforts were ultimately futile, Wright added. The march has inspired large-scale reenactments, including one in 2016 for the 950th anniversary that involved 1,066 people.

“Indeed, the English today remain very fond of a ‘brave loser,’” he said via email.

“This new reading also goes to show the lasting legacy of Victorian understandings of the past, and the way in which factoids can develop into historical canon; when we question such traditions, it can result in valuable new comprehensions of the past, as we see here,” he added via email.

The new interpretation shows that King Harold was a competent commander, Licence said, not reckless and impulsive: “I think it was a coin toss, really. It could have been William that day. It could have been Harold.”

Historians have debunked another long-standing story associated with the Battle of Hastings. A famous scene in the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the battle from a Norman perspective, shows Harold shot with an arrow in the eye. In fact, the earliest sources describe Harold being hacked to death at the hands of four Norman knights.

The Bayeux Tapestry will travel from France and go on display in Britain for the first time later this year at London’s British Museum.

Licence will present his work at a conference at the University of Oxford on Tuesday, March 24, and the research will also feature in a forthcoming biography of King Harold written by Licence.

New research upends history of battle that doomed the last Anglo-Saxon king

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: A Nation of Artists, a major American art exhibition for the 250th anniversary of the United States

King Harold’s 200-mile march to Battle of Hastings a ‘myth’: research

King Harold’s legendary 200-mile march across England to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is a “myth” that likely never happened, according to research published Saturday.

In arguably the most famous battle in English history, the Anglo-Saxon leader was defeated by William the Conqueror, who became the first Franco-Norman king of England, at Hastings on October 14, 1066.

The decisive clash, which marked the start of the Norman conquest of England, is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, set to be brought to London from France this year.

Ahead of the tapestry’s exhibition, starting in September 2026, new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) revealed that the tale of Harold’s famed march to the fight was a “misunderstanding”.

The account of the march, as taught in British classrooms and museums, rests on what a UAE historian argues is a misinterpretation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a written record of medieval English history.

The Chronicle recounts that Harold’s ships “came home”. For at least 150 years, historians understood that to mean the king dismissed his fleet in September 1066.

That shaped the narrative that Harold and his troops were forced to march over 200 miles (320 kilometres) from Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire in the northeast to Hastings on the south coast to ward off the Norman invasion.

But Tom Licence, a professor of medieval history and literature at UEA, found the ships returned to their home base in London and remained operational, which suggests that they were likely used by Harold during his journey and to defend against the invasion.

“I checked the evidence for him having sent the fleet home and found that it was just a misunderstanding. I went looking in the sources for evidence of a forced march and found there wasn’t any,” said Licence, who will present the findings at the University of Oxford on Tuesday.

According to Licence, the story of Harold and his men traversing the vast distance in 10 days is “implausible”.

The historian also pointed to other early accounts which describe Harold sending hundreds of ships to Hastings after William’s landing, suggesting he still had a fleet at his disposal.

“Harold’s campaign was not a desperate dash across England, it was a sophisticated land-sea operation. The idea of a heroic march is a Victorian invention that has shaped our understanding, or misunderstanding, of 1066 for far too long.”

The 68-metre-long (224-foot-long) Bayeux Tapestry, on loan from France, will be on display at the British Museum for 10 months.

The casts, which scholars call “imprints of pain,” dramatically capture the position each resident was in when they died in 79 AD. The reproductions were created by pouring liquid plaster into the voids left by the decomposed bodies in the hardened ash.

Curators wanted to “give dignity to these people who are like us -- women, children, men -- who died during the eruption, but at the same time make it understandable,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, adding that they want people “to understand what really happened in Pompeii.”

Invented by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863, the technique to create the plaster casts faithfully preserves the position, expression of pain and clothing details of the victims, making them unique testimonies. It is still used by the team of scholars conducting research at the archaeological park of Pompeii.

Pompeii is the only known site that allows the recovery of this type of evidence, enabling visitors to see the reproduction of objects that were destroyed and the people who lived and died at that moment.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius killed an estimated 2,000 residents within the city, with total regional casualties reaching up to 16,000. The city of Pompeii was covered by ash, then later solidified by pyroclastic flows.

During the excavations in Pompeii, the remains of over a thousand victims of the eruption were found trapped in their homes or shelters, buried by a rain of pumice stones and volcanic rock, or killed by the collapse of roofs and walls under the weight of the volcanic debris, which reached a height of about three meters (about 10 feet.)

The 22 casts were chosen among the best preserved remains. The victims were found across the city, from the inner areas to the gates and roads leading out of the town, where the inhabitants fled in search of safety.

“They have a strong emotional impact on visitors and can be very moving,” said Silvia Martina Bertesago, archaeologist at the Pompeii Archaeological Park.

“Through the analyses we can carry out today with increasingly advanced techniques, we can also understand their age and sex, but also whether they had particular diseases or particular types of diet,” she said.

The exhibition is housed in the porticoes of the Palestra Grande, located opposite the Amphitheatre. As well as an area dedicated to human remains, it also includes displays of findings such as plants and food that remained buried for centuries under meters of ash and lava.

Study authors Yosef Garfinkel, a professor in archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Sarah Krulwich, a research assistant and MA student at the university’s archaeology department, examined pottery fragments from 29 Halafian sites, excavated over a 100-year period from 1899.

They found that in nearly every one of the 375 fragments that depict flowers, the number of petals is determined by this doubling sequence, which divides a circle into symmetrical units.

“The strict adherence to these numbers, which are repeated in examples from different sites over hundreds of kilometers, cannot be accidental, and indicates that it was done intentionally,” Garfinkel told CNN.

The Halafians may have developed this form of mathematical reasoning — based on the progressive doubling of numbers — in response to managing village communities that had existed in the Near East for some 4,000 years and had become economically complex, the researchers said.

“The ability to divide space evenly, reflected in these floral motifs, likely had practical roots in daily life, such as sharing harvests or allocating communal fields,” Garfinkel said in a press statement.

In the study, the authors note that it wasn’t until the third millennium BC that texts supply undisputed data on various mathematical systems. The Sumerians, in what is now Iraq, used a numerical system based on the number 60 — of the kind still used in timekeeping — and it has been suggested that a pre-Sumerian system existed, which used the number 10 as the base.

But the researchers said the Halafian use of the numbers four, eight, 16 and 32 does not fit either of these systems and “may reflect an earlier and simpler level of mathematical thinking that was in use in the Near East in the 6th and 5th millennia BC.”

“These patterns show that mathematical thinking began long before writing,” Krulwich said in the statement. “People visualized divisions, sequences, and balance through their art.”

The study contributes to the academic field of ethnomathematics, which identifies mathematical knowledge embedded in cultural expression by prehistoric or non-literate communities.

This is not the first time it has been suggested that artifacts other than written documents may indicate early mathematical thinking.

Some experts believe that evidence of string-making by Neanderthals more than 40,000 years ago indicates that our Stone Age ancestors had an understanding of mathematical concepts like pairs and sets, as well as other basic numeracy skills.

Garfinkel said his team’s discovery constitutes a foundational step in the maturation of human thought, and that understanding how to do basic division would have been necessary for the later emergence of more complex mathematics.

“Like everything in human development, aspects of mathematics also developed in an evolutionary way from the simple to the more complex,” he said.

He and Krulwich also said in the statement that the Halafian pottery is unique in being an early instance of humans applying an understanding of symmetry to art. None of the images depicts edible crops, implying their purpose was aesthetic rather than agricultural or ritualistic.

“These vessels represent the first moment in history when people chose to portray the botanical world as a subject worthy of artistic expression,” they said. “It reflects a cognitive shift tied to village life and a growing awareness of symmetry and aesthetics.”

However, Jens Høyrup, Senior Associate Professor Emeritus at Roskilde University, Denmark, who specializes in Mesopotamian mathematics and was not involved in the study, is less convinced by the archaeologists’ argument.

He described the symmetry of the Halafians’ floral depictions as “an isolated incident of mathematical technique” rather than evidence of broader mathematical reasoning.

“If you have to divide a circle nicely, at first you make a diameter — then it’s two. Then you divide the other way, so you have four,” he told CNN. “It doesn’t amount to any search for a geometric ascending sequence, it’s simply halving.”

“They have a sense of symmetry, that’s clear. But we cannot decide from there that they had a mathematical system,” he adds. “There’s no higher mathematics; it’s just the simplest way to make divisions.”

By Jasmin Sykes

These ancient designs may be the first evidence of humans doing math

The year human evolution’s greatest mystery got a face


Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025.

Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the scientific community in 2010, when it revealed a previously unknown human population that had, in the distant past, encountered and interbred with our own species, Homo sapiens. This enigmatic group became known as the Denisovans after Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains, where the pinkie finger was found.

Despite intimate knowledge of this population’s genetic makeup, traces of which millions of people carry today, scientists knew nothing about the appearance of the Denisovans, or where they lived or why they disappeared. The discovery, and the questions it unleashed, galvanized a generation of geneticists, archeologists and paleoanthropologists.

Some of that work paid off this year, and scientists at last put a face to the Denisovan name by extracting new clues from another well-known fossil: a prehistoric human skull that didn’t seem to fit with any known group. Now, other jigsaw pieces have begun to fall into place.

Enter ‘Dragon Man’

When the skull came to light in Harbin in northeastern China in 2018 after being stashed for safekeeping at the bottom of a well for decades, some scientists had a hunch that it might be Denisovan.

DNA sequences from the group had been detected in the genomes of present-day Asians, but not Europeans, suggesting that this region was where the Denisovans predominantly lived.

Based on its distinctive shape, the researchers attributed the skull to a newfound species they called Homo longi or “Dragon Man.” The dozen or so Denisovan fossils that had been identified since 2010 using DNA were too small and fragmentary to warrant an official species name.

Getting ancient DNA from the skull, which was estimated to be 146,000 years old, was the key to understanding whether there was a link between Dragon Man and the Denisovans. However, it proved to be tricky.

A team led by Qiaomei Fu, a geneticist and professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, tested six bone samples from Dragon Man’s lone surviving tooth and the cranium’s petrous bone, a dense piece at the base of the skull that’s often a rich source of DNA in fossils. However, the samples yielded no results.

But Fu, who as a young researcher had been part of the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, that first discovered the Denisovans, reported in June that her team had been able to retrieve Denisovan genetic material from an unexpected source: Dragon Man’s dental calculus — the gunk left on teeth that can over time form a hard layer and preserve DNA from the mouth.

That information wasn’t a slam-dunk result. The genetic material researchers had retrieved was mitochondrial DNA, which, unlike nuclear DNA, is only inherited through the maternal line, providing an incomplete picture of an individual’s genomic ancestry. This finding meant, potentially, that Dragon Man could have been a mix of two species, something that’s not unprecedented. In 2018, scientists revealed a fossilized bone from Denisova Cave that belonged to a girl with a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan dad.

However, the team also recovered protein fragments from the petrous bone samples, which — though less detailed than DNA — suggested the Dragon Man skull belonged to a Denisovan population.

Together, the two lines of evidence “cleared up some of the mystery surrounding this population,” Fu told CNN in June when the research was published. “After 15 years, we know the first Denisovan skull.”

The DNA finding makes it likely that Homo longi will become the official designation for the dozen or so other Denisovan fossils, Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist and research leader in human evolution at London’s Natural History Museum, said in an email.

Ryan McRae and Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologists at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, agreed, although they said the name Denisovan would likely persist as a popular name, much like how most people call Homo neanderthalensis Neanderthals today.

“While more work needs to be done to build the body of evidence and give scientists a more complete view of Denisovan anatomy, habitat, and behaviour, being able to link complete fossils with the molecular evidence is a huge step forward,” McRae and Pobiner wrote in an annual list of the top stories in human evolution.

Additional evidence could be in hand, waiting to be identified, researchers suggest, and with it 2026 could be set for more groundbreaking revelations.


A portrait of a Denisovan

A skull fossil, with its telltale bumps and ridges, can reveal a great deal about what an individual looked like, according to John Gurche, a paleoartist who creates reconstructions of ancient human ancestors for museums, including the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History. He recreated Dragon Man’s face for National Geographic.

Assuming the Dragon Man skull belonged to a typical Denisovan individual, scientists said the ancient human would have had pronounced brow ridges, large teeth and lacked our high foreheads. But, if dressed in modern attire, this prehistoric relative may not have drawn too many stares on a subway train.

Gurche said that he uses known relationships between soft and bony tissue in humans and apes to recreate facial features, such as the breadth of the eyeball, dimensions of nasal cartilage and the thickness of soft tissue in some parts of the face. More challenging were features about which the skull “offers little information,” including the form of the lips and ears, and placement of the hair.

With molecular evidence now linking Dragon Man to the Denisovans, it will be easier for paleoanthropologists to identify other potential Denisovan remains, including skull fossils from sites in China that have long defied classification.

More revelations could come from another skull fossil discovered in China in 2022, which hasn’t been formally described in scientific literature. It’s the third skull to be unearthed at the site known as Yunxian in China’s Hubei province and is thought to date back around one million years. The other two craniums were found in 1990.

A digital reconstruction published in September of the second skull, which was badly squashed, from the site suggested it was an early ancestor of Dragon Man, meaning the lineage could have originated much earlier than previously thought.

The researchers’ wider analysis, based on the reconstruction and more than 100 other skull fossils, also significantly pushes back the timeline for the emergence of species such as our own, Homo sapiens, and Homo neanderthalensis, by 400,000 years.

However, the findings attracted some skepticism. More details about the third Yunxian skull would enable the team to test the accuracy of the reconstruction and its placement within the human family tree.
Oldest genome poses new questions

A 200,000-year-old tooth, similar in appearance to the molar still attached to Dragon Man’s skull, may be set to shake up what’s known about the Denisovans and the human family tree more broadly next year and beyond. Researchers found the tooth during an excavation of Denisova Cave in 2020.

Stéphane Peyrégne, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and his colleagues have since analyzed the molar and from it recovered a Denisovan’s full genome — a highly detailed set of genetic information that can reveal past genetic diversity and evolution.

It’s only the second time scientists have been able to sequence a “high coverage” genome from a Denisovan fossil — the first was from the finger fossil that revealed the Denisovans’ existence.

The scientists shared the genome analysis in October on what’s known as a preprint server, which allows study authors to post early versions of their work online, and is undergoing peer review by other researchers. Peyrégne declined to comment on the paper until it’s formally published next year. Stringer described the findings as “very important.”

The genome allows further investigation of Denisovan biological traits that may influence human health today. For example, a study published in August suggested that a Denisovan gene variant involved in the production of mucous and saliva may have helped Homo sapiens adapt to new environments.

The new genome is also much older than the first and allows geneticists to probe more deeply into Denisovan history and reconstruct relationships between different ancient populations.

The genome represents a Denisovan man who lived in a small group 200,000 years ago in Denisova Cave. The group’s analysis revealed that not only had his ancestors apparently interbred with early Neanderthals, but the individual also had ancestry from an unknown “super archaic” group for which there is currently no ancient DNA match.

McRae at the Smithsonian said traces of these “ghost lineages” have been found in the DNA of modern humans as well, and scientists aren’t sure who they are. They could represent other extinct hominins such as Homo erectus or Homo floresiensis, sometimes known as the “hobbit.”

“Or, it could represent hominins that we genuinely haven’t found in the fossil record. They’re ghosts until we have something to trace them back to,” he said via email.

Figuring out the identity of this group will be a fresh mystery for experts in human evolution to ponder in 2026.

By Katie Hunt, CNN

#Rome to charge visitors for access to Trevi Fountain.

Tourists will have to pay a two-euro entrance fee to get close to Rome’s famous Trevi Fountain, which draws vast crowds daily, Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said on Friday.

The monument, located in a public square, will still be able to be viewed from a distance for free, but closer access will be only for ticket holders, Gualtieri told a press conference.

“From February 1 we are introducing a paid ticket for six sites” in the Italian capital, including the Trevi Fountain, he said.

Entrance to the other five sites will cost five euros.

The backdrop to the most famous scene in Federico Fellini’s film “La Dolce Vita”, when actress Anita Ekberg takes a dip, the 18th-century fountain is top of the list for many visitors exploring the Eternal City.

Making a wish and tossing a coin into the water is such a tradition that authorities collect thousands of euros a week that are then given to the Caritas charity.

As a result of the fountain’s fame, the crowds in the square surrounding the Baroque masterpiece are often so deep that it is hard to get a proper look.

Between January 1 and December 8 some nine million tourists have visited the area just in front of the fountain -- an average of 30,000 people a day, Gualtieri said.

The area has been targeted by pickpockets and Rome officials have debated different ways of regulating access for years.

Rome residents will be allowed free access.

New #frescoes unearthed in villa near Pompeii show ‘extraordinary details and colours’.

The discoveries were made at the Villa Poppaea in Oplontis, a large residence dating from the mid-first century B.C. that may have belonged to Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of Emperor Nero, or to her family.

#Archeologists found a near complete peahen fresco, missing its head, and mirroring a previously found peacock fresco, as well as fragments of a theatrical comedy mask, complementing other theatrical tragedy masks from the same hall.

The excavations also revealed the imprint of trees in the villa’s garden, left by lava casts, and four rooms, adding to the 99 already excavated, including one thought to have been part of the villa’s thermal baths.

The discoveries “offer promising new research prospects for understanding the layout of the villa and studying long-term interactions between human settlers and the natural environment,” park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said.

The once-thriving city of Pompeii, near Naples, and its surroundings were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, but its remains have survived after being submerged for centuries by a thick blanket of ash and lava.

(Reporting by Claudia Cristoferi and Alvise Armellini, editing by Alex Richardson)