Daily briefing: Iron-Age human bones were made into tools before interment

NATURE BRIEFING

15 June 2026

Newly uncovered bones hint at how Iron Age Britons treated their dead. Plus, AI models have failed to beat human mathematicians at research-level problems and the everyday items that make great scientific tools.

By

Flora Graham

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A human leg bone (far right) and three arm bones unearthed in Scotland show signs of having been worked to sharp points. (Laura Castells Navarro)

Mysterious mortuary processing in Iron Age

The remains of an adult buried some 2,000 years ago in what is now Scotland show signs that her brain might have been removed and her bones modified as tools , before her skeleton was carefully reassembled and interred. The finding adds to the mystery of how Iron Age Britons treated their dead: few human remains have survived from that period.

The Independent | 5 min read

Reference: Antiquity paper

AI can’t beat humans at rigorous maths test

Four artificial intelligence models have failed to match top mathematicians in a test of research-level maths problems. The test posed models — including OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.5 Pro — questions that research teams had solved, but not yet published. Then they gave the AI answers to mathematicians to formally grade. The best-performing model solved six of the ten problems, but three of the questions stumped every AI competitor . It seems that the systems were “missing one more critical and unexpected idea that the human solution uses to close the last gap”, says mathematician Johannes Schmitt.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: First Proof test results

Vaping after smoking worse than quitting

Data from more than 4.5 million people in South Korea indicates that former smokers who used electronic cigarettes had a higher risk of both lung cancer incidence and lung cancer-related death , compared to those who quit completely. But both groups had lower rates of death than those who continue to smoke cigarettes.

New Scientist | 5 min read (paywall) or read the short Nature Research Highlight

Reference: Nature Medicine paper

Features & opinion

Communities should shape the economy

In The Common Good Economy, economist Mariana Mazzucato sets out how communities can actively shape economic decisions and not just endure their consequences . Mazzucato challenges the idea that economic policy should remain the exclusive domain of detached experts and corporate elites and calls for markets and governments to reorganize their systems around social needs. If her vision was put into practice, “it would directly confront today’s economic power structures, thus opening the path towards political transformation”, writes economist Clara Mattei in her review. “That is a good thing.”

Nature | 7 min read

A neutral ground for science to thrive

The International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy, founded in 1964 by Pakistani Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, “has always been a scientific oasis in a rather chaotic world”, says its director Atish Dabholkar . As a United Nations organization with a mandate to strengthen engagement with scientists from the developing world, the Centre “continues to be one of the few places where scientists from countries in conflict may take refuge”. Now, Dabholkar wants to help the organization build relationships “based on partnership rather than patronage”, with countries such as India, China and Brazil that have built vibrant scientific ecosystems.

Nature India | 9 min read

Watching where the animals go

Millions of animal species have sometimes been treated as if they are as fleeting ephemera, living brief and transitory lives in ‘uninhabited’ wilderness. Now researchers are turning to ever-more sophisticated AI and wildlife-tracking technologies to understand animals’ complex relationships with place , notes explorer and writer Ryan Huling. For example, Movebank is a free database of animal tracking information hosted by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior that grows by nearly 12 million records each day.

Nature | 14 min read

Image of the week

Researchers at the biotechnology company Biohub used the dual laser phase plate to greatly increase the contrast in when imaging a protein called apoferritin. Credit: Holger Müller, Jessie Zhang/UC Berkeley

After 15 years of debate over its feasibility, scientists have demonstrated that a technology called a laser phase plate can sharpen the resolution of protein-structure images produced by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). The technology should extend the cryo-EM technique to a broader range of proteins than was previously possible, and simplify experiments that reconstruct protein behaviour in the cellular environment. ( Nature | 5 min read )

Reference: Science paper & bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01929-3

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