Uncovering the Past: Science's Big Reveals of 2025

In 2025, scientists played detective, cracking old mysteries that had puzzled people for ages. They dug up secrets from the ground and even from ancient bodies, giving us new clues about the past. One big find was about the giant stone heads on Easter Island. Researchers figured out how the Polynesians carved these massive statues by studying an old quarry. Meanwhile, in Pompeii, a new staircase was found, helping to rebuild what the city looked like before the big volcano eruption. Up in the Peruvian Andes, scientists used drones and tiny plant analysis to guess who made the strange "band of holes" pattern. But not all questions got clear answers. For example, experts are still trying to figure out how Jane Austen died by studying her writings. In Austria, a leaky crypt led to the discovery of a well-preserved mummy. Turns out, it was an aristocrat named Franz Xaver Sidler von Rosenegg, not a clergyman as people thought. The mummy was preserved using an unknown method, and scientists also found out what a mysterious glass object inside him was.The Hjortspring boat, a 2, 000-year-old ship found in Denmark, had always been a mystery. But new studies show it traveled farther than anyone thought, and a fingerprint found on it might belong to one of its crew members. Speaking of old ships, the HMS Endurance, which sank in 1915, wasn't doomed by its broken rudder. Instead, it had structural weaknesses that caused it to sink. Ernest Shackleton, the explorer, knew about these issues but set sail anyway. In Siberia, two mummified wolf pups from the Ice Age were thought to be early dogs. But new research shows they were actually wild wolf cubs that never interacted with humans. This changes what we know about when dogs were first domesticated. Napoleon's failed invasion of Russia in 1812 was a big disaster. Scientists found new clues about what caused so many soldiers to die. Besides battle, starvation, and disease, they discovered that two more bacteria, Salmonella enterica and Borrelia recurrentis, might have played a role. Other cool discoveries in 2025 include identifying the mystery volcano that cooled the Earth in 1831, tracing the potato's origins to a wild tomato, and finding out that the Song of Wade, an old epic, wasn't full of supernatural creatures as people thought.