In a modest-sized university lab in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, researchers are using a tiny drill to scrape away enamel from a 2,500-year-old tooth.

Researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University say the tooth belongs to one of two human skulls that they have used as models to digitally reconstruct faces to understand what the region’s early inhabitants might have looked like.

The skulls, both belonging to men, were excavated from Kondagai, an ancient burial site about 4km (2.5 miles) from Keeladi – an archaeological site that has become a political flashpoint in India.

Tamil Nadu state department archaeologists say an urban civilisation dating back to 580BC existed in Keeladi, a claim that adds a new dimension to the story of the Indian subcontinent.

The Indus Valley Civilisation, that emerged over 5,000 years ago in the northern and central parts of present-day India, is the country’s first major civilisation – and narratives around urbanisation have so far been confined to the north.

But state archaeologists say the findings at Keeladi indicate for the first time that an ancient independent civilisation existed in southern India as well.

They say the people of Keeladi were literate, highly-skilled and engaged in trade across the subcontinent and abroad. They lived in brick houses and buried their dead along with daily necessities like food grains and pots in massive burial urns in Kondagai.

Archaeologists have excavated about 50 such urns from the site so far.

Researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University are now extracting DNA from human bones and other goods found in these urns to better understand who the inhabitants of Keeladi were and what their lifestyle was like.

But a more profound quest seems to be under way.

“We want to understand our ancestry and the migration routes of our ancestors,” says professor G Kumaresan, who heads the genetics department at the university. “It’s a journey towards answering the larger question of ‘who are we and how did we come to exist here’,” he adds.

• Ancient site stirs heated political debate on India’s past
• Did Iron Age ‘begin’ in India? Tamil Nadu dig sparks debate

The exercise of reconstructing faces of the 2,500-year-old skulls has revealed clues that can answer at least one part of this question.

“The faces mainly have features of Ancient Ancestral South Indians – a population group believed to be the first inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent,” says Prof Kumaresan.

The features also reveal traces of Middle-East Eurasian and Austro-Asiactic ancestries, hinting at global migration and the mixing of ancient population groups. But Prof Kumaresan says that more research is needed to properly establish the ancestries of Keeladi’s residents.

The facial reconstruction of the skulls began with researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University creating 3D scans of the skulls.

These digital scans were then sent to Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. Face Lab specialises in creating digital craniofacial reconstructions using forensic, artistic and scientific principles and technologies.

Experts at the lab used computer softwares to add muscles, flesh and skin to the scans of skulls, bringing out their facial features. These additions were made according to standard human anatomical proportions and measurements.

Then came the big challenge: adding colour to the images.

This brought up questions like which shade of brown should the men be, what colour should their eyes have and how should their hair look?

Prof Kumaresan says the standard practice of using colours that matched physical traits of people currently living in Tamil Nadu was followed, but the digital portraits still evoked lively discussions on social media.

They underscored longstanding divisions in Indian society – around race, culture and heritage.

Historical narratives championing Aryans (a term commonly used to describe people who settled in the northern part of India) as the “original citizens” of the country clashed with those that ascribed this title to Dravidians (a term used to describe people living primarily in India’s southern states).

India has always been plagued by a north-south divide that stems partly from the popular belief that Indian civilisation – and everything associated with it, like language, culture and even religion – took root in the north and shaped the rest of the country.

But Prof Kumaresan says the facial portraits of the Keeladi skulls reveal a message that’s more complex and inclusive.

“The message we can all take home is that we are more diverse than we realise, and the proof of this lies in our DNA,” he says.

This isn’t the first time that researchers in India have attempted to recreate faces from ancient skulls.

In 2019, scientists reconstructed faces of two skulls found at a cemetery in Rakhigarhi – an important Indus Valley Civilisation site in India. But the sketches lack colour and other physical traits.

“As humans, we have a fascination with faces – our ability to recognise and interpret faces is part of our success as a social species,” says Caroline Wilkinson, who headed the Face Lab team that worked on the Keeladi men.

“These facial depictions also encourage the audience to understand ancient remains as people rather than artefacts, and to establish a connection through personal narrative rather than a wider population history,” she adds.

At the Madurai Kamaraj University, efforts are under way to study Keeladi as thoroughly as the Indus Valley Civilisation.

“So far, we have learnt that the people of Keeladi were involved in agriculture, trade and cattle-rearing. They kept deer, goats and wild pigs and ate lots of rice and millets,” says Prof Kumaresan.

“Interestingly, we have found evidence that they also consumed dates, even though the date palm isn’t ubiquitous in Tamil Nadu at present,” he adds.

But the most challenging task for his team remains extracting sufficient DNA from human skeletons found at Kondagai to create a gene library. Because the skeletons are badly degraded, the DNA extracted from them is low and of poor quality. But Prof Kumaresan is hopeful that some good will come out of these endeavours.

“Ancient DNA libraries are like portals to the past; they can reveal fascinating insights about life as it was and life as we know it to be,” he says.

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Vitamin supplements can be an efficient way to add vitamins lacking in our diet. But they’re not a silver bullet.

The market for vitamin and mineral supplements is estimated to be worth $32.7bn (£24.2bn), and over 74% of Americans and two-thirds of Britons admit to using them in an effort to improve their health.

However, the pills are mired in controversy, with some studies suggesting they have no discernible health benefits, and others finding they could even harm you. So what does the evidence really say? Should we all be taking vitamin supplements, or just some of us? Does anyone even need to take them?

Why do people take vitamins and minerals?

Vitamins and minerals are compounds that our bodies do not make, but which are nevertheless essential for our health. As we cannot make them, we must get them from our food. Examples include vitamin A; which is vital for good eyesight and maintaining healthy skin; vitamin C, which is essential for a healthy immune system, and vitamin K; which is necessary for blood clotting. Essential minerals, meanwhile, include calcium, magnesium, selenium, potassium, and others. Vitamins and minerals are classed as micronutrients because we only need them in small amounts compared to macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.

It’s fair to say that no supplement will ever replace a healthy and balanced diet. The best way, therefore, of meeting the body’s requirement for vitamins is through eating plenty of leafy green vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, dairy, and fish. However, research also shows that many of us are not managing to adhere to this practice. The rise of fast food, along with ultra-processed products, means convenience often triumphs over a fresh home-cooked meal.

“The average American is eating half of the fruits and vegetables that are recommended,” says Bess Dawson-Hughes, a senior scientist at the US Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, and professor of medicine at Tufts University. “So if you’re leaning in that direction, then you are probably missing out on some essential nutrients.”

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Could multivitamins help fill this nutritional gap? The answer, as you might expect, is complicated. The theory that dosing up on vitamin C could help stave off the common cold spread across the Western world in the 1970s, thanks to people like Linus Pauling, a Nobel prize-winning chemist who claimed that taking up to 50 times the recommended dose of vitamin C could treat anything from influenza, to cardiovascular diseases, cataracts, and even cancer. Although the notion that overdosing on vitamin C could cure the cold has been thoroughly debunked, many still cling to this belief.

Fast forward to today, and influencers are pushing supplements that contain up to 500% or even 1,000% the recommended daily allowance of micronutrients, despite the fact that vitamin supplements in general lack regulation, contain unlisted ingredients, and are not backed up by randomised controlled trials – the gold standard of medical research.

“Mega-dosing” on vitamins and minerals can be dangerous. For instance, there have been instances of people being taken to hospital from taking dangerously high levels of vitamin D. Consuming too much vitamin D can cause mild symptoms, such as thirst and needing to urinate more frequently, but in severe cases it can cause seizures, coma, and death.

The clinical trials that have been done on vitamins and minerals sometimes have contradictory results

Meanwhile, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US, excess vitamin A can cause “severe headache, blurred vision, nausea, dizziness, muscle aches, and problems with coordination. In severe cases, getting too much preformed vitamin A can even lead to coma and death.” 

The clinical trials that have been done on vitamins and minerals sometimes have contradictory results, and suggest that whether you will benefit from taking vitamin supplements depends on who you are, as well as the exact micronutrient the supplement contains.

The clinical trials done on vitamins and minerals

Some of the earliest trials focused on antioxidants, molecules that neutralise harmful chemicals known as free radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules that react with and rip apart cells and DNA. It might seem to make sense that boosting your intake of antioxidants would help stave off illness, yet studies have consistently showed this is not the case. For example double-blind, placebo-controlled trials led by JoAnn Manson, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, found that the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E had no effect on preventing cancer or cardiovascular disease.

In fact, some studies suggest that mega-dosing on antioxidants can actually harm health. For example, the evidence is mounting from randomised clinical trials that taking large quantities of beta-carotene supplements can increase your risk of lung cancer, especially if you are a smoker. Meanwhile a trial by Manson showed that mega-dosing on vitamin E is linked to an increased risk of haemorrhagic stroke.

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“Vitamin E has a blood thinning effect, so high doses of vitamin E make the blood less able to clot, which raises the risk of bleeding in the brain,” says Manson.

“There is also a risk that in extremely high doses [of] antioxidants can actually become pro-oxidant, so they actually enhance oxidation.”

Taking very high doses of an isolated micronutrient can also interfere with the absorption of other similar micronutrients. For example, one of the reasons that taking too much beta-carotene is thought to be harmful is that it interferes with the absorption of other carotenoids such as lutein, found in leafy green vegetables like spinach and kale.

Why vitamin D is important

Taking more than the recommended daily allowance of antioxidants is not recommended. But what about other vitamins? One nutrient many people don’t get enough of is vitamin D, a molecule that is essential for building and maintaining healthy bones. Vitamin D isn’t technically a vitamin, as our body can make enough of it as long as our skin receives plenty of sunlight. We can also get it from certain foods. 

Because we don’t get a lot of sunlight in the winter months, the public health recommendation in the UK is that everyone supplements with vitamin D from October through March. In fact there is an argument that anyone living north of 37 degrees latitude, equivalent to the US city of Santa Cruz, should take a vitamin D supplement in the winter. This would also apply to anyone living more than 37 degrees south of the equator.

It may be that vitamin D affects the biology of tumour cells to make them less invasive and less likely to lead to metastasis – JoAnn Manson

One of the main studies to look at vitamin D was Manson’s Vital trial, which involved than 25,000 US adults. It investigated whether taking daily dietary supplements of vitamin D or omega-3 fatty acids reduced the risk of developing cancer, heart disease, and stroke in people with no prior history of these illnesses.

While vitamin D supplements did not affect overall prevalence of cardiovascular disease, strokes, or cancer, there was a 17% reduction in deaths from cancer in the group that took vitamin D. When Manson focused solely on individuals who had been taking vitamin D for two years or more, there was a statistically significant 25% reduction in cancer deaths, and a 17% reduction in advanced metastatic cancer.

“It may be that vitamin D affects the biology of tumour cells to make them less invasive and less likely to lead to metastasis, but it doesn’t affect the first diagnosis of cancer,” says Manson.

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The Vital trial has also shown that vitamin D supplements significantly reduce the rate of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.

As vitamin D is vital for maintaining healthy bones, it has frequently been claimed that daily vitamin D pills could prevent bone fractures, particularly in elderly people. An early 2000s clinical trial in France found that older people, especially women in a care home setting, may benefit from vitamin D supplementation.

However, subsequent evidence has been mixed. The Vital trial found that vitamin D did not prevent bone fractures, while two other studies, the Vida study, and the D-Health study, also found no significant benefit of taking vitamin D supplements for fractures or falls. However, it could be that the participants of the trials did not benefit because they already had sufficient vitamin D levels, according to Dawson-Hughes.

Popping a daily multivitamin could be beneficial for health, particularly for older adults

“None of these trials selected elders with low vitamin D status as a criterion for entry, and it turned out that they were taking place in the time frame when vitamin D was being hyped as the cure for everything, and at least in the United States, vitamin D sales were escalating,” says Dawson-Hughes. 

“As a result, the starting vitamin D status of most of the trial participants was already in the desired or optimal range.”

When should you take a multivitamin?

Intriguingly, evidence is starting to grow that popping a daily multivitamin could be beneficial for health, particularly for older adults.

Manson’s physician’s health study II, which began over 20 years ago, found that the risk of being diagnosed with cancer was 8% lower in people who took a daily multivitamin for 11 years. The greatest benefit was in older participants who were above the age of 70, who had an 18% reduction in cancer with the multivitamin assignment compared to the placebo group.

“It may be because the diet of older people is a little poorer,” says Manson. “Or there may be poor absorption of vitamins and minerals, and so this is a group that seems to benefit more.” 

Meanwhile, in Manson’s 2023 Cosmos trial, people who took daily multivitamins had a 60% reduction in cognitive decline over three years compared to the placebo group. They have also been shown to be linked to a reduction in cataracts.

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“These are all age-related diseases – cancer, cataracts and cognition-related memory loss – and multivitamins have been linked in randomised trials to reducing all of them,” says Manson.  

So where does this leave us in answering the question – who should take vitamins? Both Manson and Dawson Hughes argue that taking a vitamin pill is unnecessary for the majority of people, and that it is best to get the nutrients you need from eating a healthy, well-balanced diet. Vitamins from food sources are absorbed more easily by the body, plus you get the benefits of other nutrients in foods such as fibre, which is important for gut health. 

Although vitamins and minerals are essential for health, we only need tiny amounts of them to function properly, and studies clearly show that receiving over and above this amount has no benefit. However, clearly there are some of us who could benefit from a multivitamin pill, as long as the concentration of vitamins within it do not exceed the recommended daily allowance.

It is possible that older adults aged 60 or older may benefit from taking a daily multivitamin tablet to decrease their risk of cancer and slow their rate of cognitive decline

The NHS in the UK advises if you are pregnant you should take multivitamins and folic acid – which has been clinically proven to reduce neural tube defects in developing foetuses.

There is also good evidence that vegetarians or people who don’t eat a lot of fish could benefit from taking tablets containing omega-3 fish oils. The Vital study showed that people given omega-3 fish oils who had a low dietary intake of fish had a 19% reduction in major cardiovascular events compared to placebo. However, those who ate more than one-and-a-half servings of fish per week did not benefit. There are also certain conditions that interfere with the body’s ability to absorb vitamins, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, where individuals may benefit from taking vitamin supplements. Some medications such as metformin, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes, also affect vitamin absorption.

It is possible that adults aged 60 or older may benefit from taking a daily multivitamin tablet to decrease their risk of cancer and slow their rate of cognitive decline, although the jury is still out on this.

Finally, elderly people, especially nursing home residents – who tend to have a restricted diet and spend little time outdoors – may benefit from taking a mixture of vitamin D and calcium supplements to prevent osteoporosis and bone fractures. 

“The large French study that was done in nursing home residents showed that a simple replacement of those two nutrients resulted in a 40% reduction in hip fractures,” says Dawson-Hughes.

“That’s the evidence trail that I believe we need to get back to in order to find out whether community-dwelling adults would benefit, or whether other adults who are deficient in calcium and vitamin D would benefit. That’s what we really need to know, because an enormous proportion of the world’s population is deficient in both.”

Finally, Manson stresses that “mega-dosing”, or taking quantities of vitamins higher than the recommended daily allowance, is not recommended.

“It really is the case that more is not necessarily better,” she says.

“But multivitamins are very safe, so I think if anyone has concerns about whether they’re getting an adequately healthy balanced diet, taking a multivitamin could be a form of insurance to make sure they’re getting these essential vitamins and minerals.” 

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Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : For centuries, Muslims have believed with conviction that the heart is more than a biological pump—it is the spiritual and emotional core of the human being. This belief is not derived from myth or metaphor but from the unaltered, timeless verses of the Qur’an and the recorded sayings of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The Qur’an speaks repeatedly of the heart as the center of understanding, faith, remembrance, and moral decision-making. Allah says, “They have hearts with which they do not understand,” (Surah Al-A‘raf 7:179) and “It is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts within the breasts that are blind” (Surah Al-Hajj 22:46). These declarations are not poetic abstractions. They are statements of physiological, psychological, and spiritual truth, long before such truths were accessible to scientific inquiry.
And yet, for the better part of the modern era, mainstream science reduced the heart to a muscular organ, essential but mechanical, pumping blood throughout the body with no capacity for thought or emotion. This assumption took hold not just in Western medicine but across much of the global intellectual landscape, including the Muslim world, where scientific validation is too often seen as the final authority. The heart, in this reductionist view, was subservient to the brain—a vital servant, yes, but without any autonomous or higher function.
This was the dominant worldview—until science itself began to shift.
In the early 1990s, a groundbreaking discovery by neurocardiologist Dr. J. Andrew Armour challenged the orthodoxy. Armour and his colleagues uncovered a dense network of neurons—more than 40,000—embedded within the walls of the human heart. This complex neural system includes sensory neurons, motor neurons, and interneurons, much like the brain itself, and is capable of processing information, making decisions, and even learning independently of the central nervous system. Armour coined the term “intrinsic cardiac nervous system,” which researchers now refer to as the “heart brain.”
This discovery led to a new field of study: neurocardiology. From this field, a stunning realization has emerged—the heart does not simply obey orders from the brain. It sends more signals to the brain than it receives. Nearly 90% of the fibers in the vagus nerve, the primary communication highway between heart and brain, are afferent—carrying data from the heart to the brain. The heart informs the brain about the body’s physiological state and directly affects the function of brain regions responsible for emotional processing, threat assessment, and decision-making, including the amygdala, hypothalamus, thalamus, and prefrontal cortex. In other words, the heart has a say not only in how we feel but in how we perceive and react to the world around us.
This neural communication is not only functional but influential. Scientific studies by institutions such as the HeartMath Institute have shown that the heart’s rhythmic patterns can synchronize brainwave activity, leading to what researchers call “heart-brain coherence.” When people experience emotions like gratitude, compassion, and love, their heart rhythms become harmonious and wave-like, sending calming, stabilizing signals to the brain. This state is linked with improved cognitive function, emotional balance, and physical well-being. Conversely, negative emotions such as anger, fear, and anxiety create erratic heart rhythms that disrupt communication with the brain and impair mental clarity.
These findings echo the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), who said, “Truly in the body there is a morsel of flesh which, if it is sound, the whole body is sound, and if it is corrupted, the whole body is corrupted. Verily, it is the heart.” (Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim). Science is now confirming what revelation articulated long ago: the heart governs the well-being of the entire being—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
But there is more. Modern research also shows that the heart is involved in intuitive processes. In the famous Iowa Gambling Task, participants begin to unconsciously favor better choices before they can articulate why—often guided by subtle physiological cues, such as heart rate variability. The implication is that the heart is involved in real-time decision-making and prediction, well before the rational mind catches up. These “gut feelings,” long dismissed by science, are now understood to be rooted in the body’s neural networks, particularly those of the heart.
Perhaps most striking is the discovery that the heart produces hormones typically associated with the brain. The heart secretes oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” which is involved in social bonding, empathy, and trust. Researchers have found that concentrations of oxytocin in the heart can rival those found in the brain. Additionally, the heart plays a role in producing atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), a hormone that regulates blood pressure but also influences stress response in the brain. These chemical pathways further establish the heart not as an emotional bystander but as an endocrine organ with executive capabilities.
All of this—validated in peer-reviewed scientific journals, supported by hard data and lab experimentation—brings us back to the starting point of revelation. The Qur’an told us, “The Day when neither wealth nor children will benefit, except for one who comes to Allah with a sound heart” (Surah Ash-Shu‘arā 26:88–89). That “sound heart” is not just a religious metaphor. It is a literal condition of clarity, balance, coherence, and peace—scientifically measurable and spiritually transformative.
In our time, this truth is being embraced not only by Muslim scholars or imams but by increasing numbers of Western men and women—intellectuals, scientists, teachers, and students—who are turning to Islam after discovering the deep spiritual coherence of the Qur’an. Their conversions are not impulsive. They are the result of searching, studying, reflecting, and feeling. When asked why they accepted Islam, many reply in similar terms: “Because the Qur’an touched my heart.” They speak of the unmatched clarity, authenticity, and spiritual resonance they found in Islam—especially in a world that often seems morally hollow and spiritually exhausted.
These converts are not silent. They are visible, articulate, and engaged, using platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to explain how Islam changed their lives. They speak of a newfound sense of purpose, inner peace, and connection to the Divine—feelings that did not emerge from intellectual debate alone, but from something deeper and more visceral. The Qur’an did not speak to their minds first; it spoke to their hearts.
And perhaps that is the most important lesson in all of this. For too long, humanity has glorified the mind at the expense of the heart. Nations have rationalized wars, genocides, and exploitation in the name of strategy and logic, while silencing the voice of compassion. The mind, when severed from the moral compass of the heart, becomes a source of endless conflict. It invents problems to feel purposeful, and solves them with tools of control and destruction. The heart, on the other hand, thrives on gratitude, forgiveness, generosity, and love. It does not seek domination; it seeks peace.
If we, as individuals and as a civilization, wish to escape the cycles of tyranny, conflict, and spiritual emptiness, we must shift from the mind to the heart—not to abandon intellect, but to elevate it by reconnecting it to its source. Revelation is that source. Science, when honest, serves it. The Qur’an, preserved in its original form, remains the final and flawless testimony of that truth.
In a time of confusion, let us listen not only with our ears or minds, but with our hearts—for that is where truth resides, and where salvation begins.