Medieval Blue is Remade
Science News opens a new book on an old pigment, reconstructing a botanical purple-blue hue that had puzzled medievalists for ages: The pigment, called folium, […]
anthropology
Science Art: Korowaar, page 488 of The Cruise of The Marchesa, 1889.
This image is from the British Library archive, a book called The Cruise of the Marchesa … With maps and … woodcuts drawn by J. […]
Science Art: Ancient Roman time keeping, sun path hora by Darekk2
Click to embiggen A chart of the sky, showing how Ancient Romans measured time in the year 8 CE – meaning, what hora it was […]
The cryptocurrency of ancient Yap.
Science reveals the strange similarities, found by archaeologist Scott Fitzpatrick of the University of Oregon, between the very modern cryptocurrency markets and the very ancient […]
The birth of city-states (and government itself) didn’t happen like we thought.
New Scientist reviews research that shows the first governments weren’t born as a consequence of agriculture. Instead, they might have had more to do with […]
Re-remembering Robinson Crusoe.
Because, according to National Geographic, we didn’t remember him right the first time. Or at least we attribute a heck of a lot to the […]
Ancient human hanky-panky mapped out.
Science Daily tracks where (and when) the first modern humans made babies with Denisovans and Neanderthals: Most non-Africans possess at least a little bit Neanderthal […]
Modern humans and Neanderthals go back further together than we thought.
Science Daily talks about our ancient brothers, the Neanderthals who were us, 100,000 years ago: Today in Nature the team publishes evidence of interbreeding that […]
Science Art: Idolo de ignota localidad, Idolo de Arica, Idolo de ignota localidad.
Click to embiggen. Three idols, from the Anales del Museo Nacional de Chile, published between 1892 and 1910. I found them in the Biodiversity Heritage […]
Maybe… just maybe… we’re getting as much sleep as we always did.
It sure doesn’t feel like it, but Scientific American has some research to suggest that all these screens and electric lights really aren’t ruining our […]
First contact for health’s sake.
Peruvian officials have, Science Daily reports, made like technologically advanced aliens and had first contact with a very isolated tribe: Peru’s Ministry of Culture begins […]
Science Art: Fig. 3, The Pocket Cephalometer, or Compass of Coordinates, by Dr. Gustave Le Bon, c.1878.
This is a demonstration of an instrument used to measure “cephalic index,” or how big a person’s head was. This was, at this point in […]
SONG: Vulnerable Ape Theory (Going to a Blues Show with the Young Earth Creationists)
SONG: “Vulnerable Ape Theory (Going to a Blues Show with the Young Earth Creationists)”. [Download] ARTIST: grant. SOURCE:Based on “Vulnerability made us human: how our […]
The Vulnerable Ape theory of human origins.
PhysOrg turns the “brutal caveman” stereotype on its head, with a new look at our earliest ancestors as sensitive folks who got a leg up […]
The thing that really sets human beings apart: our chins.
Thanks to Science Daily, I’ll never think of my beard the same way again. They’ve got new insight into the evolution of humankind’s most uniquely […]