A group of scientists in Germany have studied a type of black pitch named birch tar (sometimes called birch bark pitch), claimed to be the “oldest synthetic substance made by early humans”. This substance has been found in Neanderthal sites and was used as an adhesive in tools and artefacts. It also has waterproofing and […]
An international team of scientists have compiled data from studies of human remains in 180 archaeological sites in Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, and Sweden, dated between around 8000 – 4000 years ago – believed to be the time when farming replaced hunter-gathering in Europe. They found evidence of many head injuries from blunt […]
A group of researchers from various USA universities has used crowd sourced photos and computer models to predict the effects of climate change on the frequency of rainbows up to the year 2100. The researchers gathered thousands of photos of rainbows from publicly available photo sharing sites and matched the photos to rainfall, cloud cover […]
When archaeologists find buried human skeletons in an excavation they are usually able to identify them as male or female according to their bone structure and DNA. The Black Trowel Collective of American, a group identifying themselves as “anarchist archaeologists,” are now claiming that “archaeologists must centre the fluidity of gender in their archaeological practice”. […]
An international team of scientists asked people from 10 widely different cultures to rate how pleasant they found 10 distinctive scents. The research was carried out in diverse communities across the world, including hunter-gatherer societies, agricultural societies and urban societies. The scents were presented in the form of identical odour dispensers shaped like pens, so […]
A group of researchers from French and Swedish institutions have studied brain activity patterns in people learning a manual task involving using a new tool and learning to analyse sentences with complex syntax. They found that learning the new tool-using task was associated with improvement in language skill, and training in analysing complex sentences improved […]
Stone tools show lush green Arabia, according to Science (AAAS) News 1 September 2021 and Science Alert 2 September 2021 and Nature 1 September 2021, 10.1038/s41586-021-03863-y. An international team of researchers have studied two sites in the Nefud Desert in northern Saudi Arabia and found thousands of stone tools, along with many animal fossils. The […]
Pandemic? Taliban? It Must Be Global Warming. For the last couple of decades global warming has been blamed for every natural disaster, but currently the dominant doom and gloom stories are the coronavirus pandemic and the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. And, yes, there are some people who claim there is a link between global warming […]
Lockdown suicidal thoughts jump, found by study of people in lockdown in the State of Victoria (Australia) last year, according to ABC News 25 June 2021 and Journal of Psychiatric Research 4 June 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.05.080. The research team reported: “In September-2020, among 1157 Victorians, one-third reported anxiety or depressive disorder symptoms, one-fifth reported suicidal […]
Aging and death inevitable, claim scientists, according to reports in ScienceDaily and University of South Denmark (SDU) News 16 June 2021 and Nature Communications 16 June 2021, doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23894-3. A large international team of scientists has analysed data on patterns of births and deaths from nine human populations and 30 primate (gorillas, chimps, baboons, etc.) […]