It’s almost impossible to imagine that an item of clothing worn thousands of years ago has survived to the present day. But the “Tarkhan Dress,” named for the town in Egypt where it was found in 1913, has endured—and has now been precisely dated using the latest radiocarbon dating technology. Researchers have determined that the very finely made linen apparel dates to between 3482 and 3103 B.C., making it the world’s oldest woven garment. Alice Stevenson, curator at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, says, “The dress has provided people with a real sense of the antiquity and longevity of the ancient Egyptian state and society.” To read more about research on the dress, go to “Dressing for the Ages,” from the May/June 2016 issue.

The end of the seventh century B.C. was a tumultuous period in Athenian history. Though once ruled by a king, the increasingly powerful region of Attica, home to Athens, had come to be presided over by aristocrats who maintained their hold on power through landownership and lifetime appointments. But as the century drew to a close, the political climate was primed for a new type of government—that of a single ruler, or tyrant. An evocative gravesite on the outskirts of Athens is a testament to this contentious moment in history.

Excavators at the Phaleron Delta necropolis have uncovered the remains of 80 men, shackled together at their wrists, lying in a mass grave. The most recent osteological studies have determined that the majority of the men were between 20 and 30 years old, although four were much younger, and that all 80 had been killed in the same manner—with a fatal blow to the head. The discovery of two small vases buried with them has allowed archaeologists to date the grave to the mid-to-late seventh century B.C., suggesting to project director Stella Chrysoulaki that the men were executed in the course of one of these attempts to gain political primacy. “For the first time,” Chrysoulaki says, “we can illustrate historical events that took place during the struggle between aristocrats in the seventh century and led, through a long process, to the establishment of a democratic regime in the city of Athens.”

A fifth of a mile inside Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France, a chamber holds several enigmatic ring-shaped structures made from whole and broken stalagmites. Radiocarbon dating of a burned bear bone found among them initially suggested they date to around 47,000 years ago. But this year, uranium-thorium dating that focused on the stalagmite tips and deposits that accumulated on them after they were broken found the structures were actually built around 176,000 years ago. Researchers concluded that since Neanderthals were the only humans living in the area at the time, they must have assembled them. “When we first got this date, I thought it was unbelievable,” says Jacques Jaubert, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux. “We had no idea that Neanderthals were operating so deep inside caves at this time.” While the structures also provide evidence of group collaboration, the reason they were built remains a mystery.