Significance: We offer here an answer to one of the most intriguing questions in ancient Mediterranean history: the timing/contexts and incentives of early Phoenician expansion to Mediterranean and Atlantic regions in Africa and Europe ∼3,000 years ago. This was enabled by a rare opportunity to analyze a very large sample set of ancient silver items from Phoenicia. An interdisciplinary collaboration combining scientific methods with precise archaeological data revealed the Phoenicians’ silver sources. We propose that Phoenicians brought silver to the Levant from southwest Sardinia ∼200 years before they de facto settled there, and later, gradually, also from Iberia. We show that the quest for sliver was a major trigger for a long “precolonization” phase, during the 10th to 9th centuries BCE.

Lead has been central to technological development for centuries; however, its release into the environment and subsequent human exposure pose significant public health risks. The review presented here critically assesses the contemporary environmental lead risk as global lead production and use are rapidly increasing, largely driven by the rising demand for electrification. We show that environmental lead exposure persists today due to legacy contamination, ongoing coal usage, and insufficient protection of workforces during production, use, and recycling of lead-acid batteries and other lead-containing products, particularly in low- and middle- income countries. We estimate that contemporary childhood lead exposure alone leads to an annual global economic loss exceeding $3.4 trillion (2021 US dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity), with pronounced disparities between high- and low- and middle- income countries. To prevent a large-scale resurgence in lead exposure, we identify four critical areas for urgent policy intervention.

Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a severe recurrent affective mood disorder characterized by a wide range of lifelong mood swings, varying between depressive and manic states. BD affects more than 1% of the world’s population irrespective of nationality, ethnic origin, or socioeconomic status and is one of the main causes of disability among young people, leading to cognitive and functional impairment and raised mortality, particularly death by suicide. Trace elements play a vital role in many biochemical and physiological processes. Compelling evidence shows that element toxicity might play a crucial role in the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disorders, but their involvement in mood disorders has been scarcely studied. In the present investigation, we determined the concentration of 26 elements in the serum of BD patients before and after treatment and in postmortem brain samples from BD patients and compared them with matched controls. The only element that was reduced significantly in the serum following treatment was vanadium (V). Furthermore, the concentration of Al, B, Cu, K, Mg and V were significantly lower in the pre-frontal cortex of BD patients compared with those of the controls. A comparison of Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients between the elements in the serum and brain of BD patients and control groups pointed to boron and aluminum as being involved in the disease. These results suggest that there is a disturbance in the elements’ homeostasis and the inter-elements’ relationship in the brain of BD patients and advocate a thorough examination of the possible involvement of chemical elements in different stages of the disease.

Forty years ago, in a seminal paper published in Science, Settle and Patterson used archeological and historical data to estimate the rates of worldwide lead production since the discovery of cupellation, approximately 5000 years ago. Here, we record actual lead exposure of a human population by direct measurements of the concentrations of lead in petrous bones of individuals representing approximately 12 000 years of inhabitation in Italy. This documentation of lead pollution throughout human history indicates that, remarkably, much of the estimated dynamics in lead production is replicated in human exposure. Thus, lead pollution in humans has closely followed anthropogenic lead production. This observation raises concerns that the forecasted increase in the production of lead and other metals might affect human health in the near future.

The structural depression that occupies the Okavango Basin in southern Africa comprises a depo‐centre within the intracratonic Kalahari Basin where sediments of the Cenozoic Kalahari Group have accumulated. The Okavango Basin has been formed due to stretching and subsidence at an area of diffused deformation, southwestwards to the main East African Rift System (EARS). Sediments from two full Kalahari Group sequences, located on opposite sides of the Gumare Fault that forms a major fault within the Okavango Basin, were studied to determine their provenance and chronology. Terrestrial Cosmogenic Nuclide (TCN) ²⁶Al/¹⁰Be burial dating was used to constrain a chronostratigraphical framework, and Pb, Sr, and Nd isotopic ratios combined with geochemical and sedimentological analyses were applied to track the source areas of the sediments.Results indicate the following sequence of basin filling: (a) Accumulation between ca. 4–3 Ma during which the currently downthrown (southern) block received a mixture of sediments mostly from the Choma‐Kalomo, Ghanzi‐Chobe, and Damara terranes, and possibly from the Lufilian Belt and/or Karoo basalts during earlier stages of deposition. Simultaneously, the upthrown (northern) block received sediments from more distant Archean sources in the Zimbabwe and/or Kasai cratons, (b) Hiatus in sedimentation occurred at both sites between ca. 3–2 Ma, (c) Sediments on both sides of the Gumare Fault share a similar source (Angolan Shield) with minor distinct contributions to the downthrown block from the Kasai Craton and local sources input to the upthrown block, and (d) Regional distribution of aeolian sand since at least 1 Ma. The change in source areas is attributed to rearrangements of the drainage systems that were probably linked to vertical crustal movements on the margins of the Okavango Basin. The tectonically induced morphodynamics controlled the landscape evolution of the endorheic basin where vast lakes, wetlands and salt pans have developed through time.