Archaeological analysis suggests an arms race in ironworking and cavalry spurred bureaucracy and bigger populations From Science June 28, 2022 by Michael Price War is hell. It breaks apart families, destroys natural resources, and drives humans to commit unspeakable acts of violence. Yet according to a new analysis of human history, war may also prod …
a previously unknown period from 80 to 20 thousand years ago is shown to have diffuse interbreeding across the entire continent of Africa.
Simplifies an understanding of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, language, religion, self-awareness, free will, and the experience of being human for the last three million years.
The Last Reality Show Jan. 19th 2021: Sun sets on a bruised America
Election 2020 Roots of American Dynamism European Enlightenment∞Stone Age America American Dreaming
In February, I awoke from a nightmare with a vision that the country, without anyone realizing it, had taken on the orange coloration produced by DJT’s facial tanning lotion.
CREDITS: (GRAPHIC) A. CUADRA/SCIENCE; EUROPE’S LOST FRONTIERS PROJECT/EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL; (PHOTOS, LEFT TO RIGHT) NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES (ROM) LEIDEN (1); MANON BRUININGA Article by Andrew Curry, Science 31 Jan 2020: Vol. 367, Issue 6477, pp. 499-503
The genetics of mental illness, and particularly schizophrenia, is fraught with the history of the eugenics movement in the 1920’s and 30’s. In 1928 twenty states had compulsory sterilization laws, most including “lunatics” among the target population. This popular movement was based on the assumption that mental illnesses are caused by a small number of …
“WORKROOM” Bethlem Royal Hospital of London (1860) founded 1330 … you find yourself in a long and wide gallery, on either side of which are a large number of little cells where lunatics of every description are shut up, and you can get a sight of these poor creatures, little windows being let into the …
“What brings you in today?” you ask after a new patient sits down in your office. The first order of business is a chronology of the present illness. Precisely when did the problem start? What was happening both at that moment and more generally in his/her life? Then the present illness prompts targeted questions about …
A rule of human evolution research is that the milestones in the progression of becoming human are always getting earlier. The most prominent of those backward-creeping milestones is the date of the appearance of our own Homo sapiens species. Driven by new dating techniques, the fossils in Jebel Irhoud Morocco were revealed to be 300,000 …
Knowing my interest in human evolution, my son’s Texan mother-in-law gave me the brochure of an exhibit at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas that she visited, entitled “First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figurestone.” The brochure contained many pictures of beautifully rendered paleolithic hand axes as well as naturally formed sculptures that had been “framed” by …
Every once in a while, an article captures my imagination. Such is the case with one written by Axel Timmermann & Tobias Friedrich entitled “Late Pleistocene climate drivers of early human Migration” (Nature, Vol. 538: 6 Oct. 2016). This is big data applied to a most fascinating topic. Here is the abstract: On the basis …
In a review article in this week’s Science (358:1269), a review article by Christopher Bae, Katarina Douka, and Michael Retraglia review the progress in elucidating the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa. Abstract: The traditional “out of Africa” model, which posits a dispersal of modern Homo sapiens across Eurasia as a single wave at …
Two other posts on dogs, domestication and human evolution: here and here Also in the November 17th issue of science, an article about the history of inequality by Lizzie Wade. Summary Economic inequality has deep roots. A new study concludes that its ancient hotbed was the Old World: Societies there tended to be less equal …
It is generally assumed that the natural social organization of humans is the hierarchy that is the hallmark of the primate order of which, of course we are a member. I have posted evidence that the principle feature that has distinguished our hominin tribe from the beginning is the evolution of a democratic, egalitarian social …
This morning I stumbled upon these paragraphs from my book that provide a shocking contrast to the hysteria into which we suddenly have been cast. The theme of the book is that, over the course of six million years, we have ascended from apes as a result of a naturally selected collective instinct for justice, …
I grew up in New York City, the son of a physician. As a boy I had a Jewish friend who told me that his father was a Marxist, and, of course, I hadn’t the foggiest idea what that was. So I was very curious to meet this exotic man when my friend invited me …
I have never been one that would conceive of going on a religious pilgrimage, but have just returned from an American pilgrimage. It would be a purely secular journey in any other country, but the very essence of America dwells in the spiritual realm of ideas. The very heart of the American ethos was forged …
The May 20th Issue of Science is entitled The Urban Planet. The lead article starts out: In 2014, 54% of the world’s population, or 3.9 billion people, lived in urban areas. That’s up from one-third in 1950, and forecasters say the proportion will rise to 66% by 2050. More than half of urbanites live in …
