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Deep in a swamp in the Russian republic of Tuva, SNSF-funded archaeologist Gino Caspari has discovered an undisturbed Scythian burial mound. All the evidence suggests that this is not only the largest Scythian princely tomb in South Siberia, but also the earliest - and that it may be harbouring some outstandingly well-preserved treasures.

Deep in a swamp in the Russian republic of Tuva, SNSF-funded archaeologist Gino Caspari has discovered an undisturbed Scythian burial mound. All the evidence suggests that this is not only the largest Scythian princely tomb in South Siberia, but also the earliest - and that it may be harbouring some outstandingly well-preserved treasures.

In a pioneering project, researchers studied the development of school curricula in Switzerland's three main language regions.

02. EPFL researchers have come up with an algorithm to analyze Mayan writing. This project could one day contribute to translating this complex and still partially unknown language. While some five million people still speak a language that evolved out of Mayan civilization in South America, the written language has suffered a different fate.

New data extracted from Greenland's glaciers show that methane in the atmosphere follows the waxing and waning of civilizations. Humans have been producing substantial amounts of greenhouse gases since long before the industrial revolution 2012. By studying the tiny amounts of gases trapped in air bubbles in Greenland's glaciers, researchers have been able to add details to an emerging picture of historical human induced environmental change that reaches as far back as the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty.

Scientists have discovered a new wreck on the bottom of the Lake Geneva. Underwater archaeology is benefiting from scanners developed for scientific research. "It's always a memorable moment when you find an unknown shipwreck. It's not on the maps, and after having gone around it, I didn't see any inscription on its hull," explains Evgeny Chernyaev, who was piloting the submersible.

Switzerland is not the democracy par excellence as thought, but only a mediocre one and ranks fourteenth when compared with twenty-nine established democracies.

Annual-resolved European summer climate has, for the first time ever, been reconstructed over the past 2,500 years. Tree rings reveal possible links between past climate variability and changes in human history. Climate change coincided with periods of socioeconomic, cultural and political turmoil associated with the Barbarian Migrations, the Black Death and Thirty Years' War.