<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum - History]]> https://www.scivillage.com/ Sun, 27 Sep 2026 02:29:39 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Finding light’s true nature (historical investigations)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21420.html Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:22:10 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21420.html https://www.astronomy.com/science/findin...ue-nature/

INTRO: Light exhibits some of the strangest properties in our cosmos. It manifests as both a wave and a particle, and its speed in a vacuum is invariant. While physicists now fully grasp the way light interacts with the universe, this understanding has not always been so solid.

Untangling its peculiar behavior has led to the formulation — and discarding — of several bizarre theories, all of which once seemed reasonable. One such theory is that of a weightless, transparent, rigid, frictionless, and ubiquitous substance, “luminiferous ether,” which scientists thought necessary for the transmission of light waves.

To detect this elusive ether, Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley, working at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, performed a comprehensive set of experiments between April and October 1887 using an ingenious apparatus in an effort to measure the effects of Earth’s motion through this medium. But despite numerous adjustments and modifications, every attempt failed to detect any ether. With these experiments, Michelson and Morley unwittingly placed the final nail in the coffin of the widely held idea.

Today, their findings are considered possibly the most significant negative result in the history of science: By killing off the idea of the ether, their work paved the way for Albert Einstein and the ideas that would define modern physics.... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.astronomy.com/science/findin...ue-nature/

INTRO: Light exhibits some of the strangest properties in our cosmos. It manifests as both a wave and a particle, and its speed in a vacuum is invariant. While physicists now fully grasp the way light interacts with the universe, this understanding has not always been so solid.

Untangling its peculiar behavior has led to the formulation — and discarding — of several bizarre theories, all of which once seemed reasonable. One such theory is that of a weightless, transparent, rigid, frictionless, and ubiquitous substance, “luminiferous ether,” which scientists thought necessary for the transmission of light waves.

To detect this elusive ether, Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley, working at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, performed a comprehensive set of experiments between April and October 1887 using an ingenious apparatus in an effort to measure the effects of Earth’s motion through this medium. But despite numerous adjustments and modifications, every attempt failed to detect any ether. With these experiments, Michelson and Morley unwittingly placed the final nail in the coffin of the widely held idea.

Today, their findings are considered possibly the most significant negative result in the history of science: By killing off the idea of the ether, their work paved the way for Albert Einstein and the ideas that would define modern physics.... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[The oldest private correspondence in human history dates to 4,000 years ago]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21361.html Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:04:18 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21361.html https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/live-from-...-years-ago

INTRO: The oldest private correspondence in human history is about marriages and divorces, trade and tax evasion, livestock breeding or weaving… Women’s voices stamped in clay four millennia ago offer eerily topical accounts of the affairs of the day.

Their names were Suhkana, Kunnaniya, Lamasha or Hattitum. They were wives, widows, cattle breeders, accountants or religious devotees, and they lived in Mesopotamia – 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found thousands of letters written on clay tablets. The messages sent or received by these women convey their emotions, their anger, fatigue, enthusiasm or anxiety.

The historian and archaeologist Cécile Michel, a senior researcher specialising in Mesopotamia at the ArScAn1, has compiled the oldest private correspondence in the history of humanity. And has sorted out part of it to allow us to walk in the shoes of some 30 women, sharing their daily lives.

In Ashur (present-day Qal’at-Sherqat, in northern Iraq) and Kanesh (present-day Kültepe, in Turkey, see map below) lived families of traders, whose members sometimes took off for several months, travelling hundreds of kilometres from home to sell fabrics, oil, tin, spices… “There were about 10,000 people living in Ashur at the beginning of the second millennium BC and 30,000 in Kanesh, forming the core of a network of about 40 Assyrian trading posts in Anatolia,” the researcher explains.

The only way to keep in touch with loved ones, to oversee the construction of a house or a family’s daily life from a distance, was by writing. These populations mastered cuneiform script, using the tip of a reed to etch characters into tablets of wet clay. The tablets were then placed in clay envelopes, closed and stamped with a small cylinder seal that identified the sender.

“Wrapped in leather or cloth, they were transported on the backs of donkeys,” Michel recounts. “A regular caravan took about six weeks to cover 1,000 kilometres. For urgent matters, it was possible to hire a private messenger with a mule who could deliver the mail in three weeks.”

The scientist has helped decipher 12,000 of the 22,000 tablets found at the Kanesh site. In a society based on trade, a great many of the messages concern money and merchandise. For example, a woman named Shishahshushar received this note from her husband: “Why did you write this: ‘Apart from 20 sacks of wheat and 15 sacks of barley that Kudubis gave me, there is nothing else!’? Where are the 40 minas of copper in the form of sickles and the 2.5 minas of tin that Ili-ishar and Huluba brought to Shana? This is urgent! Send me a report if they fail to get payment for the outstanding debts…”

The letters bear witness to an entire very modern-style social and economic system, which already included bearer cheques (redeemable by any adult) and limited partnerships, some of whose active associates were merchants.

“In this society, people took out many loans, for commercial purposes or personal necessity,” Michel explains. When grain reserves were exhausted and parents no longer had enough to feed their families, they would go into debt. And if they couldn’t meet the repayment deadlines, they would sometimes offer the creditor a family member, a child or woman, as a slave to discharge the debt. “When local sovereigns ascended to the throne, they would sometimes enact measures for the general cancellation of debts, freeing these slaves,” she adds.

Marriage contracts in some regions – for example in Ashur and the southern Babylonian city of Nippur (present-day Niffer, or Nuffar) – seem surprisingly modern. Husbands and wives enjoyed equal rights. Both could receive inheritances, lend money and purchase houses and slaves. Either party could request a divorce, and each would pay the same compensation fees... (MORE - details)]]> https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/live-from-...-years-ago

INTRO: The oldest private correspondence in human history is about marriages and divorces, trade and tax evasion, livestock breeding or weaving… Women’s voices stamped in clay four millennia ago offer eerily topical accounts of the affairs of the day.

Their names were Suhkana, Kunnaniya, Lamasha or Hattitum. They were wives, widows, cattle breeders, accountants or religious devotees, and they lived in Mesopotamia – 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found thousands of letters written on clay tablets. The messages sent or received by these women convey their emotions, their anger, fatigue, enthusiasm or anxiety.

The historian and archaeologist Cécile Michel, a senior researcher specialising in Mesopotamia at the ArScAn1, has compiled the oldest private correspondence in the history of humanity. And has sorted out part of it to allow us to walk in the shoes of some 30 women, sharing their daily lives.

In Ashur (present-day Qal’at-Sherqat, in northern Iraq) and Kanesh (present-day Kültepe, in Turkey, see map below) lived families of traders, whose members sometimes took off for several months, travelling hundreds of kilometres from home to sell fabrics, oil, tin, spices… “There were about 10,000 people living in Ashur at the beginning of the second millennium BC and 30,000 in Kanesh, forming the core of a network of about 40 Assyrian trading posts in Anatolia,” the researcher explains.

The only way to keep in touch with loved ones, to oversee the construction of a house or a family’s daily life from a distance, was by writing. These populations mastered cuneiform script, using the tip of a reed to etch characters into tablets of wet clay. The tablets were then placed in clay envelopes, closed and stamped with a small cylinder seal that identified the sender.

“Wrapped in leather or cloth, they were transported on the backs of donkeys,” Michel recounts. “A regular caravan took about six weeks to cover 1,000 kilometres. For urgent matters, it was possible to hire a private messenger with a mule who could deliver the mail in three weeks.”

The scientist has helped decipher 12,000 of the 22,000 tablets found at the Kanesh site. In a society based on trade, a great many of the messages concern money and merchandise. For example, a woman named Shishahshushar received this note from her husband: “Why did you write this: ‘Apart from 20 sacks of wheat and 15 sacks of barley that Kudubis gave me, there is nothing else!’? Where are the 40 minas of copper in the form of sickles and the 2.5 minas of tin that Ili-ishar and Huluba brought to Shana? This is urgent! Send me a report if they fail to get payment for the outstanding debts…”

The letters bear witness to an entire very modern-style social and economic system, which already included bearer cheques (redeemable by any adult) and limited partnerships, some of whose active associates were merchants.

“In this society, people took out many loans, for commercial purposes or personal necessity,” Michel explains. When grain reserves were exhausted and parents no longer had enough to feed their families, they would go into debt. And if they couldn’t meet the repayment deadlines, they would sometimes offer the creditor a family member, a child or woman, as a slave to discharge the debt. “When local sovereigns ascended to the throne, they would sometimes enact measures for the general cancellation of debts, freeing these slaves,” she adds.

Marriage contracts in some regions – for example in Ashur and the southern Babylonian city of Nippur (present-day Niffer, or Nuffar) – seem surprisingly modern. Husbands and wives enjoyed equal rights. Both could receive inheritances, lend money and purchase houses and slaves. Either party could request a divorce, and each would pay the same compensation fees... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[Not all roads lead to Rome: Study challenges what we think we know about Roman roads]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21345.html Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:42:50 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21345.html https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1144000

INTRO: A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Queen Mary University of London, and other European institutions analysed a dataset representing almost 300,000 kilometres of Roman roads across the former empire, creating the most detailed quantitative picture yet of how the Roman road network was structured.

The study, published in Nature Communicationsfff on 15 September, challenges the idea that roads of the empire were uniformly straight and the famous saying that “all roads lead to Rome.” The analysis draws on "Itiner-e, The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads" and applies network centrality, a method for measuring how important a given point is to overall connectivity, to model the empire's road system.

"The study shows that Roman engineers adapted road construction to the landscape. While they favoured straight routes where possible, the roads were generally less straight than major modern ones. Mountains, valleys, rivers and settlements all helped shape their routes, while engineering techniques such as terracing, rock cutting, retaining walls and bridges allowed roads to cross challenging terrain,” says Dr. Adam Pazout from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, lead author of the study.

"The research reveals a sophisticated network in which provincial capitals often acted as vital crossroads, mediating regional overland communications. Crucially, these results are robust when we account for gaps and inconsistencies in the archaeological records," adds Dr. Matteo Mazzamurro from Queen Mary University of London.

The consistently high centrality of provincial capitals and main roads suggests that the development of the network involved complex, system-level decision-making. Rome itself was not the dominant hub of the Empire’s land transport network, and the late antique capital Byzantium was more central to empire-wide land mobility... (MORE - no ads)]]> https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1144000

INTRO: A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Queen Mary University of London, and other European institutions analysed a dataset representing almost 300,000 kilometres of Roman roads across the former empire, creating the most detailed quantitative picture yet of how the Roman road network was structured.

The study, published in Nature Communicationsfff on 15 September, challenges the idea that roads of the empire were uniformly straight and the famous saying that “all roads lead to Rome.” The analysis draws on "Itiner-e, The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads" and applies network centrality, a method for measuring how important a given point is to overall connectivity, to model the empire's road system.

"The study shows that Roman engineers adapted road construction to the landscape. While they favoured straight routes where possible, the roads were generally less straight than major modern ones. Mountains, valleys, rivers and settlements all helped shape their routes, while engineering techniques such as terracing, rock cutting, retaining walls and bridges allowed roads to cross challenging terrain,” says Dr. Adam Pazout from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, lead author of the study.

"The research reveals a sophisticated network in which provincial capitals often acted as vital crossroads, mediating regional overland communications. Crucially, these results are robust when we account for gaps and inconsistencies in the archaeological records," adds Dr. Matteo Mazzamurro from Queen Mary University of London.

The consistently high centrality of provincial capitals and main roads suggests that the development of the network involved complex, system-level decision-making. Rome itself was not the dominant hub of the Empire’s land transport network, and the late antique capital Byzantium was more central to empire-wide land mobility... (MORE - no ads)]]> <![CDATA[Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21306.html Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:09:42 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21306.html https://knowablemagazine.org/content/art...st-threads

INTRO: When an abstract-looking ivory artifact emerged from the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany in 2015, archaeologists didn’t know quite what to make of it. Previously, this same cave had yielded what may be the world’s oldest musical flutes, as well as one of humanity’s earliest pieces of figurative art, the iconic Venus of Hohle Fels. At first glance, this strange new discovery — a 20-centimeter rod perforated with four small holes — seemed comparatively unspectacular. But it has since revealed far more about the lives of Europe’s prehistoric hunter-gatherers than its unassuming appearance would have suggested.

Fashioned from the tusk of a mammoth more than 35,000 years ago, this perforated baton — a type of artifact called a lochstab — was initially interpreted as a symbolic object associated with prestige or power. But Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the item, wasn’t so sure.

Noticing that each of the baton’s holes was lined with carefully carved spiral grooves, he began to suspect that the lochstab might have been a tool used by twisting some other material through these perforations. “If you’re pushing something through a hole and rotating it ... you’re very quickly in the world of fiber,” says Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Sure enough, when he and his colleagues tried threading cattail fibers through these holes, they found that the grooves helped to orient the strands. Within 10 minutes, the group had woven the fibers into five meters of thick, strong rope.

Yet while these experiments might have helped to solve one archaeological mystery, they also highlighted a much larger problem. The inhabitants of Hohle Fels must have manufactured significant quantities of rope, yet none of it has survived, and all that remains is the most durable component of this ancient production system — the ivory lochstab.

“There’s certainly a lot of bias in what we’re viewing in the archaeological record, because we are focusing on the things that preserve,” says paleoanthropologist Emma Finestone at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. As a consequence, archaeologists rely heavily on stone tools and bone artifacts to reconstruct our prehistory, while objects made from less durable plant and animal products remain largely overlooked. Yet these soft technologies played a huge role in shaping the survival strategies and daily lives of our ancestors.

“We’re missing 90 percent-plus of what is happening during a [prehistoric] day, and a lot of that uses technology that we don’t think about,” says Bruce Hardy, a paleoanthropologist at Kenyon College in Ohio. The problem facing archaeologists, therefore, is how to study a technology that they can’t actually find... (MORE - details)]]> https://knowablemagazine.org/content/art...st-threads

INTRO: When an abstract-looking ivory artifact emerged from the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany in 2015, archaeologists didn’t know quite what to make of it. Previously, this same cave had yielded what may be the world’s oldest musical flutes, as well as one of humanity’s earliest pieces of figurative art, the iconic Venus of Hohle Fels. At first glance, this strange new discovery — a 20-centimeter rod perforated with four small holes — seemed comparatively unspectacular. But it has since revealed far more about the lives of Europe’s prehistoric hunter-gatherers than its unassuming appearance would have suggested.

Fashioned from the tusk of a mammoth more than 35,000 years ago, this perforated baton — a type of artifact called a lochstab — was initially interpreted as a symbolic object associated with prestige or power. But Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the item, wasn’t so sure.

Noticing that each of the baton’s holes was lined with carefully carved spiral grooves, he began to suspect that the lochstab might have been a tool used by twisting some other material through these perforations. “If you’re pushing something through a hole and rotating it ... you’re very quickly in the world of fiber,” says Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Sure enough, when he and his colleagues tried threading cattail fibers through these holes, they found that the grooves helped to orient the strands. Within 10 minutes, the group had woven the fibers into five meters of thick, strong rope.

Yet while these experiments might have helped to solve one archaeological mystery, they also highlighted a much larger problem. The inhabitants of Hohle Fels must have manufactured significant quantities of rope, yet none of it has survived, and all that remains is the most durable component of this ancient production system — the ivory lochstab.

“There’s certainly a lot of bias in what we’re viewing in the archaeological record, because we are focusing on the things that preserve,” says paleoanthropologist Emma Finestone at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. As a consequence, archaeologists rely heavily on stone tools and bone artifacts to reconstruct our prehistory, while objects made from less durable plant and animal products remain largely overlooked. Yet these soft technologies played a huge role in shaping the survival strategies and daily lives of our ancestors.

“We’re missing 90 percent-plus of what is happening during a [prehistoric] day, and a lot of that uses technology that we don’t think about,” says Bruce Hardy, a paleoanthropologist at Kenyon College in Ohio. The problem facing archaeologists, therefore, is how to study a technology that they can’t actually find... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[Cannibalism returned to the menu multiple times in Neolithic Europe]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21290.html Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:34:25 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21290.html https://www.popsci.com/science/neolithic...sm-europe/

EXCERPTS: As researchers explained in a study recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, a range of methods and motivations for cannibalism existed among Neolithic peoples prior to the Bronze Age.

“For decades, prehistoric cannibalism has tended to be interpreted as a single type of behavior,” Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of Mérida, explained in a statement. “Our work shows that it is not possible to speak of a single form of ‘Neolithic cannibalism’, because similar archaeological evidence may conceal very different social realities.”

[...] Although many bones show similar butchering techniques and boiling preparations, each cave’s specimens highlighted different practices and contexts. At Malalmuerzo, it appears that a single, brutal act of collective violence involving victims across many age groups took place about 5000 BCE. However, the remains at Carigüela span multiple Neolithic time periods, and even include a pair of skulls fashioned into drinking cups. The most recent cannibalism occurred in Majolicas around 3800 BCE, but doesn’t appear directly tied to violence. Instead, some of the bones are stained red—likely using a rare mineral called cinnabar—which points to ritualistic or funerary motives.

Combined with other archaeological findings, it now appears that cannibalism during the European Neolithic historically occurred in three eras:the late sixth millennium BCE, the middle fifth millennium BCE, and the end of the third millennium BCE. Although traceable to these periods, it still remains unclear why the communities engaged in the practices and rituals... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.popsci.com/science/neolithic...sm-europe/

EXCERPTS: As researchers explained in a study recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, a range of methods and motivations for cannibalism existed among Neolithic peoples prior to the Bronze Age.

“For decades, prehistoric cannibalism has tended to be interpreted as a single type of behavior,” Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of Mérida, explained in a statement. “Our work shows that it is not possible to speak of a single form of ‘Neolithic cannibalism’, because similar archaeological evidence may conceal very different social realities.”

[...] Although many bones show similar butchering techniques and boiling preparations, each cave’s specimens highlighted different practices and contexts. At Malalmuerzo, it appears that a single, brutal act of collective violence involving victims across many age groups took place about 5000 BCE. However, the remains at Carigüela span multiple Neolithic time periods, and even include a pair of skulls fashioned into drinking cups. The most recent cannibalism occurred in Majolicas around 3800 BCE, but doesn’t appear directly tied to violence. Instead, some of the bones are stained red—likely using a rare mineral called cinnabar—which points to ritualistic or funerary motives.

Combined with other archaeological findings, it now appears that cannibalism during the European Neolithic historically occurred in three eras:the late sixth millennium BCE, the middle fifth millennium BCE, and the end of the third millennium BCE. Although traceable to these periods, it still remains unclear why the communities engaged in the practices and rituals... (MORE - missing details)]]> <![CDATA[Did the evolution of language take a huge leap around the fireplace?]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21236.html Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:11:33 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21236.html https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...fireplace/

EXCERPTS: A new study in Science reconstructs the rise and fall of language diversity over the past 12,000 years. Its models suggest that humanity reached a linguistic “golden age” between roughly 1000 B.C.E. and C.E. 1000, when perhaps 20,000 to 75,000 languages coexisted — several times the roughly 7,600 spoken and signed today.

Then diversity plunged abruptly. While it’s tempting to blame colonialism, this was not the prime factor. The researchers argue that the collapse began well before European colonialism, as expanding states and multinational empires spread their languages, institutions, populations and diseases across previously independent communities. Colonial powers did later accelerate that process but may not have started it.

[...] Expanding powers, whether Rome around the Mediterranean, the Han dynasty across much of China, or later Arab-Islamic states across the Middle East and North Africa, carried dominant languages into newly conquered or absorbed communities. Latin, varieties of Chinese and Arabic spread through government, trade, religion and education, often displacing smaller local languages over generations.

Language loss did not necessarily require mass killing or a formal ban. Conquered or absorbed populations could survive while gradually abandoning their own speech. A state language might become necessary for social advancement, while children increasingly learned it instead of the language spoken by their grandparents. Over generations, a small language could disappear even as its former speakers became part of a larger population.

European colonial expansion after about 1500 CE intensified this process, sometimes through the deliberate suppression of Indigenous languages and religion. But the study argues that the decline had already been underway for many centuries. “It takes much less than a colonial powerhouse to destroy linguistic diversity,” Blasi told Scientific American.

“The languages we see today are the survivors of a massive and highly selective historical bottleneck,” added Russell Gray, a co-author, said in a Yale press release... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...fireplace/

EXCERPTS: A new study in Science reconstructs the rise and fall of language diversity over the past 12,000 years. Its models suggest that humanity reached a linguistic “golden age” between roughly 1000 B.C.E. and C.E. 1000, when perhaps 20,000 to 75,000 languages coexisted — several times the roughly 7,600 spoken and signed today.

Then diversity plunged abruptly. While it’s tempting to blame colonialism, this was not the prime factor. The researchers argue that the collapse began well before European colonialism, as expanding states and multinational empires spread their languages, institutions, populations and diseases across previously independent communities. Colonial powers did later accelerate that process but may not have started it.

[...] Expanding powers, whether Rome around the Mediterranean, the Han dynasty across much of China, or later Arab-Islamic states across the Middle East and North Africa, carried dominant languages into newly conquered or absorbed communities. Latin, varieties of Chinese and Arabic spread through government, trade, religion and education, often displacing smaller local languages over generations.

Language loss did not necessarily require mass killing or a formal ban. Conquered or absorbed populations could survive while gradually abandoning their own speech. A state language might become necessary for social advancement, while children increasingly learned it instead of the language spoken by their grandparents. Over generations, a small language could disappear even as its former speakers became part of a larger population.

European colonial expansion after about 1500 CE intensified this process, sometimes through the deliberate suppression of Indigenous languages and religion. But the study argues that the decline had already been underway for many centuries. “It takes much less than a colonial powerhouse to destroy linguistic diversity,” Blasi told Scientific American.

“The languages we see today are the survivors of a massive and highly selective historical bottleneck,” added Russell Gray, a co-author, said in a Yale press release... (MORE - missing details)]]> <![CDATA[For ancient Romans, pooping was a group activity]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21211.html Sat, 29 Aug 2026 21:29:36 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21211.html https://www.popsci.com/science/ancient-roman-toilets/

EXCERPTS: Imagine answering the call of nature in a dark, stinking chamber alongside dozens of strangers, all while making pleasant conversation. When it’s time to wipe, perhaps you reach for a communal sponge on a stick, hoping that the person before you rinsed it well. You’re also hoping that the hole you’re sitting over won’t suddenly release rats, or flames.

This might sound like some kind of punishment or endurance challenge today, but in Ancient Rome this was just a standard public restroom. So what exactly was it like to use a Roman toilet? Here are all the smelly details.

At home, the poorest Romans relieved themselves in chamber pots. Some apartment buildings were equipped with a shared pit toilet on the ground floor, while wealthier homes might have their own private ones. Unfortunately, these private toilets were often placed near the kitchen, likely because it was also on the lowest level of a Roman home and close to a source of water for washing.

While some of these latrines connected to pipes that moved waste underground, very few drained into Ancient Rome’s sewer system. [...] As Rome’s population grew, public toilets were installed in high-traffic areas for the free access of all (although in practice, they were used mostly by men). By the third century, the city had 144 such facilities. Known as foricae (singular forica), they are also found in other Roman settlements, such as Ostia and Pompeii.

Foricae were generally connected to city sewers and equipped with running water. [...] From there, the sewers carried waste off into the river or ocean, where it ran the risk of contaminating water sources. The second-century physician Galen warned against eating fish from “the outlets of rivers which clean out the sewers, the tavern, and the baths,” suggesting that at least some Romans were aware of the health risks.

[...] Inside a forica, stone benches lined the walls, with open holes to sit on over the drainage channel below. ... The absence of privacy in these open rooms was a nonissue for the Romans, who also slept, ate, and bathed in view of one another.

[...] Lacking modern long-distance communication, Romans relished any opportunity for connecting with each other in person, even in the restroom. Ancient writers like the first-century satirist Martial described foricae as a hub for socialization.

[...] Foricae could also be quite scary. Hydrogen sulfide and methane gas rising from the cesspits were known to suddenly burst into flames, not unlike the natural phenomenon of burning marsh gas. Superstitious Romans imagined demons lurking in the darkness under the toilet seats. Many toilet walls bore images of Fortuna, the goddess of luck, just in case.

[...] When it came to wiping, Romans had several options. The humblest was leaves or moss. One could also scrape oneself clean with discs of pottery called pessoi, made by rounding off the edges on broken potshards.

A gentler method was a natural sea sponge on a stick, known as a tersorium, which means “wiper” in Latin, or xylospongium, “sponge stick” in Ancient Greek. These were likely found in public foricae. After using a sponge stick, you would rinse it off in the running water channel if there was one, or else in a provided bucket of water or vinegar, and pass it to the next person.

As horrifying as this might sound, remember that the Romans didn’t know about germs. If something looked clean, they likely assumed it was... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.popsci.com/science/ancient-roman-toilets/

EXCERPTS: Imagine answering the call of nature in a dark, stinking chamber alongside dozens of strangers, all while making pleasant conversation. When it’s time to wipe, perhaps you reach for a communal sponge on a stick, hoping that the person before you rinsed it well. You’re also hoping that the hole you’re sitting over won’t suddenly release rats, or flames.

This might sound like some kind of punishment or endurance challenge today, but in Ancient Rome this was just a standard public restroom. So what exactly was it like to use a Roman toilet? Here are all the smelly details.

At home, the poorest Romans relieved themselves in chamber pots. Some apartment buildings were equipped with a shared pit toilet on the ground floor, while wealthier homes might have their own private ones. Unfortunately, these private toilets were often placed near the kitchen, likely because it was also on the lowest level of a Roman home and close to a source of water for washing.

While some of these latrines connected to pipes that moved waste underground, very few drained into Ancient Rome’s sewer system. [...] As Rome’s population grew, public toilets were installed in high-traffic areas for the free access of all (although in practice, they were used mostly by men). By the third century, the city had 144 such facilities. Known as foricae (singular forica), they are also found in other Roman settlements, such as Ostia and Pompeii.

Foricae were generally connected to city sewers and equipped with running water. [...] From there, the sewers carried waste off into the river or ocean, where it ran the risk of contaminating water sources. The second-century physician Galen warned against eating fish from “the outlets of rivers which clean out the sewers, the tavern, and the baths,” suggesting that at least some Romans were aware of the health risks.

[...] Inside a forica, stone benches lined the walls, with open holes to sit on over the drainage channel below. ... The absence of privacy in these open rooms was a nonissue for the Romans, who also slept, ate, and bathed in view of one another.

[...] Lacking modern long-distance communication, Romans relished any opportunity for connecting with each other in person, even in the restroom. Ancient writers like the first-century satirist Martial described foricae as a hub for socialization.

[...] Foricae could also be quite scary. Hydrogen sulfide and methane gas rising from the cesspits were known to suddenly burst into flames, not unlike the natural phenomenon of burning marsh gas. Superstitious Romans imagined demons lurking in the darkness under the toilet seats. Many toilet walls bore images of Fortuna, the goddess of luck, just in case.

[...] When it came to wiping, Romans had several options. The humblest was leaves or moss. One could also scrape oneself clean with discs of pottery called pessoi, made by rounding off the edges on broken potshards.

A gentler method was a natural sea sponge on a stick, known as a tersorium, which means “wiper” in Latin, or xylospongium, “sponge stick” in Ancient Greek. These were likely found in public foricae. After using a sponge stick, you would rinse it off in the running water channel if there was one, or else in a provided bucket of water or vinegar, and pass it to the next person.

As horrifying as this might sound, remember that the Romans didn’t know about germs. If something looked clean, they likely assumed it was... (MORE - missing details)]]> <![CDATA[Humans have used fire far longer than anyone realized]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21156.html Sat, 22 Aug 2026 17:27:04 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21156.html https://www.snexplores.org/article/oldes...n-fire-use

INTRO: A cave in Africa seems to host the oldest known traces of humans using fire. Burnt remnants of animal bones hint that groups of Homo erectus used fires here as long as 1.8 million years ago.

The site is known as Wonderwerk Cave. It’s in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The oldest previously known traces of our early relatives using fire also came from there. Those dated to about 1 million years ago.

The new evidence comes from an earlier, deeper level of sediment in that cave. These traces of fire could be anywhere from 1.07 to 1.79 million years old. But “I’m very comfortable saying it was between 1.7 and 1.8 million years ago,” says Michael Chazan. This archaeologist works at the University of Toronto in Canada. He leads excavations at Wonderwerk Cave.

Chazan was part of a team that shared the new findings June 1 in PLoS One.

The researchers don’t think H. erectus lit the fires. The earliest evidence of people using iron pyrite to make sparks dates to about 400,000 years ago. So people in the Wonderwerk Cave probably carried in flames from wildfires, Chazan says. “This is not human ignition of fire. It’s collecting a fire on the landscape.” (MORE - details)]]> https://www.snexplores.org/article/oldes...n-fire-use

INTRO: A cave in Africa seems to host the oldest known traces of humans using fire. Burnt remnants of animal bones hint that groups of Homo erectus used fires here as long as 1.8 million years ago.

The site is known as Wonderwerk Cave. It’s in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The oldest previously known traces of our early relatives using fire also came from there. Those dated to about 1 million years ago.

The new evidence comes from an earlier, deeper level of sediment in that cave. These traces of fire could be anywhere from 1.07 to 1.79 million years old. But “I’m very comfortable saying it was between 1.7 and 1.8 million years ago,” says Michael Chazan. This archaeologist works at the University of Toronto in Canada. He leads excavations at Wonderwerk Cave.

Chazan was part of a team that shared the new findings June 1 in PLoS One.

The researchers don’t think H. erectus lit the fires. The earliest evidence of people using iron pyrite to make sparks dates to about 400,000 years ago. So people in the Wonderwerk Cave probably carried in flames from wildfires, Chazan says. “This is not human ignition of fire. It’s collecting a fire on the landscape.” (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[In 1926, a Russian biologist tried to create a human-chimpanzee hybrid]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21132.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:10:36 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21132.html https://www.popsci.com/science/human-chimpanzee-hybrid/

EXCERPTS: The controversial work began in French Guinea, now the independent nation of Guinea, according to research from Alexander Etkind, a science historian currently teaching at Central European University. In 1926, Ilya Ivanov visited the country with his son to catch several live adult chimpanzees. He then inseminated female chimpanzees with human sperm.

At one point, Ivanov also wanted to inseminate local women with ape sperm without their consent, under the guise of medical examinations at the community hospital, but he was blocked by French colonial authorities.

None of Ivanov’s experiments succeeded, and he returned to the Soviet Union with 20 chimpanzees in tow, though only four survived the trip. From a primate “nursery” near the Black Sea, Ivanov set out to recruit five consenting women for insemination with ape sperm under authorization from Soviet officials. By the time he identified the volunteers, there was only one ape left—an orangutan—and the experiment never proceeded.

In 1930, Ivanov was arrested and exiled on political charges unrelated to his experiments, and his attempts at interspecific hybridization ceased.

For scientists like James Mallet, an evolutionary biologist and expert on interspecific hybridization at Harvard University, Ivanov’s attempts at creating a “humanzee” are profoundly unethical.

“It’s a horrible thing to do to a human when you know it’s liable to cause problems for the offspring,” Mallet tells Popular Science. “People should be free to have the children they want and not be forced into it by scientists. I mean, that seems obvious to me.”

Mallet says that a human-chimp hybrid is theoretically possible but highly unlikely, given the roughly 6 million years of evolutionary divergence between the species.

[...] But why is a human-chimp hybrid so unlikely? Species are often separated by reproductive barriers that prevent mating or fertilization. If they do mate, different species can create offspring that are infertile or unable to survive. A dog can’t have babies with a cat, for example, and an elephant can’t cross-breed with a mouse.

But those barriers aren’t always absolute. [...] lions have been crossed with tigers to create “ligers.” Famously, Neanderthals mated with Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years ago before they disappeared. Today, many living humans carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA.

[...] “It’s true that many hybrids are poorly adapted, but if you look at their genomes, you’ll find that there’s evidence of successful hybridization in many species,” Mallet says... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.popsci.com/science/human-chimpanzee-hybrid/

EXCERPTS: The controversial work began in French Guinea, now the independent nation of Guinea, according to research from Alexander Etkind, a science historian currently teaching at Central European University. In 1926, Ilya Ivanov visited the country with his son to catch several live adult chimpanzees. He then inseminated female chimpanzees with human sperm.

At one point, Ivanov also wanted to inseminate local women with ape sperm without their consent, under the guise of medical examinations at the community hospital, but he was blocked by French colonial authorities.

None of Ivanov’s experiments succeeded, and he returned to the Soviet Union with 20 chimpanzees in tow, though only four survived the trip. From a primate “nursery” near the Black Sea, Ivanov set out to recruit five consenting women for insemination with ape sperm under authorization from Soviet officials. By the time he identified the volunteers, there was only one ape left—an orangutan—and the experiment never proceeded.

In 1930, Ivanov was arrested and exiled on political charges unrelated to his experiments, and his attempts at interspecific hybridization ceased.

For scientists like James Mallet, an evolutionary biologist and expert on interspecific hybridization at Harvard University, Ivanov’s attempts at creating a “humanzee” are profoundly unethical.

“It’s a horrible thing to do to a human when you know it’s liable to cause problems for the offspring,” Mallet tells Popular Science. “People should be free to have the children they want and not be forced into it by scientists. I mean, that seems obvious to me.”

Mallet says that a human-chimp hybrid is theoretically possible but highly unlikely, given the roughly 6 million years of evolutionary divergence between the species.

[...] But why is a human-chimp hybrid so unlikely? Species are often separated by reproductive barriers that prevent mating or fertilization. If they do mate, different species can create offspring that are infertile or unable to survive. A dog can’t have babies with a cat, for example, and an elephant can’t cross-breed with a mouse.

But those barriers aren’t always absolute. [...] lions have been crossed with tigers to create “ligers.” Famously, Neanderthals mated with Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years ago before they disappeared. Today, many living humans carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA.

[...] “It’s true that many hybrids are poorly adapted, but if you look at their genomes, you’ll find that there’s evidence of successful hybridization in many species,” Mallet says... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[Why Americans don't sound British anymore: It's almost the reverse?]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21053.html Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:42:05 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21053.html https://youtu.be/gasleU1P2J0

VIDEO INTRO: Here's a sentence almost every American has said at some point. "We used to sound British, and then we changed." Wrong. Almost backwards, actually.

If you traveled back to 1776 and stood in a Boston tavern or a Virginia courthouse or a London coffee house, here's what you notice. The Americans and the British sounded remarkably similar. Not identical. Regional accents already existed on both sides of the Atlantic, but were still close. Close enough that a founding father and a British lord would have recognized each other's speech as fundamentally the same kind of English.

Now, here's the part that breaks people's brains. If one side of that conversation was going to change dramatically over the next hundred years, it wasn't the Americans. It was the British.

The posh British accent you hear today, the one that sounds like the original, the authentic, the one America supposedly drifted away from, didn't exist yet in 1776. It was invented afterward by a specific class of people in a specific city for a very specific reason. Americans didn't lose the British accent. The British accent, as most people picture it today, hadn't been born yet.

Today we're tracing exactly when American and British English split apart. And the story is not one you were taught. It involves a dictionary writer with a chip on his shoulder, a sound that quietly vanished from English, an entire social class in London deciding to talk differently on purpose, and an accident of geography that means some American cities for a while sounded more British than America itself.

[...] In the early 1600s, when the first English colonists landed at Jamestown and later Plymouth, they weren't bringing over a foreign language that would slowly turn into something else. They were bringing over English. The same English being spoken in London, Bristol, and the English countryside at that exact moment. And critically, that English was rhotic, meaning speakers pronounced the R sound wherever it appeared in a word. Car, hard, mother -- every R got spoken fully the way most Americans still say it today.

This matters because non-rhotic English, the R-dropping style that says "ca" instead of "car", the style that most people associate with a posh British accent, did not exist yet. Shakespearen English was rhotic. The King James Bible was translated by rhotic speakers. If you'd asked an Elizabethan and a Londoner to say "father", it would have sounded closer to a modern American "father" than a modern British one.

So, the accents didn't start apart and converge. They started together. What happened next is that an ocean got involved. And oceans are one of the most powerful forces in linguistics. Not because water changes how people talk, but because distance slows down how fast accents can copy each other.

Here's something most people don't know. Colonial America wasn't settled by one wave of English people speaking one uniform English. It was settled by waves from different parts of England arriving in different colonies at different times, and each wave brought its own regional speech patterns with it...

Britain changed. Not America ... https://youtu.be/gasleU1P2J0

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gasleU1P2J0]]> https://youtu.be/gasleU1P2J0

VIDEO INTRO: Here's a sentence almost every American has said at some point. "We used to sound British, and then we changed." Wrong. Almost backwards, actually.

If you traveled back to 1776 and stood in a Boston tavern or a Virginia courthouse or a London coffee house, here's what you notice. The Americans and the British sounded remarkably similar. Not identical. Regional accents already existed on both sides of the Atlantic, but were still close. Close enough that a founding father and a British lord would have recognized each other's speech as fundamentally the same kind of English.

Now, here's the part that breaks people's brains. If one side of that conversation was going to change dramatically over the next hundred years, it wasn't the Americans. It was the British.

The posh British accent you hear today, the one that sounds like the original, the authentic, the one America supposedly drifted away from, didn't exist yet in 1776. It was invented afterward by a specific class of people in a specific city for a very specific reason. Americans didn't lose the British accent. The British accent, as most people picture it today, hadn't been born yet.

Today we're tracing exactly when American and British English split apart. And the story is not one you were taught. It involves a dictionary writer with a chip on his shoulder, a sound that quietly vanished from English, an entire social class in London deciding to talk differently on purpose, and an accident of geography that means some American cities for a while sounded more British than America itself.

[...] In the early 1600s, when the first English colonists landed at Jamestown and later Plymouth, they weren't bringing over a foreign language that would slowly turn into something else. They were bringing over English. The same English being spoken in London, Bristol, and the English countryside at that exact moment. And critically, that English was rhotic, meaning speakers pronounced the R sound wherever it appeared in a word. Car, hard, mother -- every R got spoken fully the way most Americans still say it today.

This matters because non-rhotic English, the R-dropping style that says "ca" instead of "car", the style that most people associate with a posh British accent, did not exist yet. Shakespearen English was rhotic. The King James Bible was translated by rhotic speakers. If you'd asked an Elizabethan and a Londoner to say "father", it would have sounded closer to a modern American "father" than a modern British one.

So, the accents didn't start apart and converge. They started together. What happened next is that an ocean got involved. And oceans are one of the most powerful forces in linguistics. Not because water changes how people talk, but because distance slows down how fast accents can copy each other.

Here's something most people don't know. Colonial America wasn't settled by one wave of English people speaking one uniform English. It was settled by waves from different parts of England arriving in different colonies at different times, and each wave brought its own regional speech patterns with it...

Britain changed. Not America ... https://youtu.be/gasleU1P2J0

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gasleU1P2J0]]> <![CDATA[Vintage right wing propaganda]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21034.html Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:47:31 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21034.html
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1335830388267308]]>
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1335830388267308]]> <![CDATA[Archaeologists find hundreds of ancient glyphs in the Amazon]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21015.html Mon, 03 Aug 2026 13:53:24 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21015.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/world...=url-share

EXCERPTS: Flying over the southwestern Amazon, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of ancient, monumental designs carved in the earth that hint at complex societies in the rainforest a millennium before Spanish and Portuguese colonists arrived.

The research, published this week in the journal Nature, shows circles, squares and other geometric figures, some with connecting roads, beneath the forest canopy, with nearly 400 previously unknown earthworks in all. Many are formations that archaeologists call geoglyphs and date from between 600 B.C. to 850 A.D. All of them add to evidence contradicting the depiction of the Amazon as a largely untouched expanse before the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century.

[...] The geoglyphs, shaped by embankments, mounds and trenches, vary in size. Most span seven acres, including many with ditches 30 feet wide and 15 feet deep. The biggest figure sprawls across more than 120 acres. [...] Dr. Pärssinen said the archaeologists had not found any evidence of permanent residence at the mounds from the Aquiry era, which ended around 900 A.D. Nor did they believe any were meant to be defensive structures.

But the structures, stretching across a zone of 1,700 square miles, build on evidence that the Amazon basin was widely and densely populated in the centuries before Columbus. Chroniclers like Gaspar de Carvajal, a missionary who traveled the Amazon in the 1540s with the conquistador Francisco de Orellana, described a land “thickly populated” in some places, with many large settlements, including one that “stretched for five leagues without there intervening any space from house to house.”

Those accounts were largely dismissed in the centuries that followed, given the crushing toll that disease and colonization took on Indigenous people. Scientists who followed also struggled to see how large or complex societies could develop without European-style agriculture, contributing to a false idea that the Amazon was a pristine forest, rather than one where the population was almost wiped out.

“Archaeologists find all of these things that are not supposed to be found in Amazonia, and it’s not because Amazonia is different in terms of the soil but how you use the forest,” Dr. Roosevelt said.

Recent work in other parts of the Amazon has found the traces of roads, canals, plazas and residential platforms, including in eastern Ecuador. Dr. Pärssinen’s team estimated that there may be thousands more earthworks in the region, and noted that the rainforest remains so dense in some places that even lasers could not pierce the foliage... (MORE - missing details)

https://youtu.be/AsIvMt2xbNo

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/AsIvMt2xbNo]]> https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/world...=url-share

EXCERPTS: Flying over the southwestern Amazon, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of ancient, monumental designs carved in the earth that hint at complex societies in the rainforest a millennium before Spanish and Portuguese colonists arrived.

The research, published this week in the journal Nature, shows circles, squares and other geometric figures, some with connecting roads, beneath the forest canopy, with nearly 400 previously unknown earthworks in all. Many are formations that archaeologists call geoglyphs and date from between 600 B.C. to 850 A.D. All of them add to evidence contradicting the depiction of the Amazon as a largely untouched expanse before the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century.

[...] The geoglyphs, shaped by embankments, mounds and trenches, vary in size. Most span seven acres, including many with ditches 30 feet wide and 15 feet deep. The biggest figure sprawls across more than 120 acres. [...] Dr. Pärssinen said the archaeologists had not found any evidence of permanent residence at the mounds from the Aquiry era, which ended around 900 A.D. Nor did they believe any were meant to be defensive structures.

But the structures, stretching across a zone of 1,700 square miles, build on evidence that the Amazon basin was widely and densely populated in the centuries before Columbus. Chroniclers like Gaspar de Carvajal, a missionary who traveled the Amazon in the 1540s with the conquistador Francisco de Orellana, described a land “thickly populated” in some places, with many large settlements, including one that “stretched for five leagues without there intervening any space from house to house.”

Those accounts were largely dismissed in the centuries that followed, given the crushing toll that disease and colonization took on Indigenous people. Scientists who followed also struggled to see how large or complex societies could develop without European-style agriculture, contributing to a false idea that the Amazon was a pristine forest, rather than one where the population was almost wiped out.

“Archaeologists find all of these things that are not supposed to be found in Amazonia, and it’s not because Amazonia is different in terms of the soil but how you use the forest,” Dr. Roosevelt said.

Recent work in other parts of the Amazon has found the traces of roads, canals, plazas and residential platforms, including in eastern Ecuador. Dr. Pärssinen’s team estimated that there may be thousands more earthworks in the region, and noted that the rainforest remains so dense in some places that even lasers could not pierce the foliage... (MORE - missing details)

https://youtu.be/AsIvMt2xbNo

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/AsIvMt2xbNo]]> <![CDATA[Ancient DNA reveals Ice Age human hunters preferred female mammoths]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20984.html Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:21:30 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20984.html https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1137453

INTRO: Analysing ancient DNA of over 500 mammoth bones, an international team of researchers found that Ice Age humans selectively targeted female woolly mammoths. The results of the study, published in Current Biology, show that in contrast to the sex ratio among naturally occurring woolly mammoth remains, large bone accumulations associated with ancient human activity are dominated by females.

“Whether these massive mammoth bone accumulations were formed naturally or by human hunting has been debated for decades”, says David Díez del Molino, Researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and co-senior author of the study. “By comparing the genetic sex ratios of hundreds of mammoths from natural settings with those found in these archaeological contexts, we can now infer that human activity was the primary driver behind these bone accumulations.”

The team analysed genome data from 521 woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America, including 448 individuals sequenced for the first time. Genetic sex inference revealed a striking contrast depending on where the remains were found. Mammoth remains recovered from dispersed, natural settings were mostly male (34 per cent female: 66 per cent male), consistent with the idea that solitary males were more likely to die in natural traps (for example sinkholes or landslides), thereby increasing the chance of long-term bone preservation. In contrast, mammoths from accumulation sites were predominantly female (70 per cent female: 30 per cent male). These results raised questions about how Ice Age hunter-gatherers interacted with mammoths.

“We know that Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers sometimes hunted mammoths directly, as evidenced by projectile points embedded in mammoth bones, and they may also have scavenged material from carcasses”, says Jarosław Wilczyński, archaeologist at the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

“While it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex. If mammoths behaved like modern elephants, females living in matriarchal herds may have had group defences that would have made encounters with herds equally or even more risky. Another possibility is that female-led herds moved across the landscape in more predictable ways than solitary males, meaning Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers may simply have encountered them more frequently, whether for hunting or scavenging”, says Hannah M. Moots, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and lead author of the study... (MORE - no ads)]]> https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1137453

INTRO: Analysing ancient DNA of over 500 mammoth bones, an international team of researchers found that Ice Age humans selectively targeted female woolly mammoths. The results of the study, published in Current Biology, show that in contrast to the sex ratio among naturally occurring woolly mammoth remains, large bone accumulations associated with ancient human activity are dominated by females.

“Whether these massive mammoth bone accumulations were formed naturally or by human hunting has been debated for decades”, says David Díez del Molino, Researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and co-senior author of the study. “By comparing the genetic sex ratios of hundreds of mammoths from natural settings with those found in these archaeological contexts, we can now infer that human activity was the primary driver behind these bone accumulations.”

The team analysed genome data from 521 woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America, including 448 individuals sequenced for the first time. Genetic sex inference revealed a striking contrast depending on where the remains were found. Mammoth remains recovered from dispersed, natural settings were mostly male (34 per cent female: 66 per cent male), consistent with the idea that solitary males were more likely to die in natural traps (for example sinkholes or landslides), thereby increasing the chance of long-term bone preservation. In contrast, mammoths from accumulation sites were predominantly female (70 per cent female: 30 per cent male). These results raised questions about how Ice Age hunter-gatherers interacted with mammoths.

“We know that Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers sometimes hunted mammoths directly, as evidenced by projectile points embedded in mammoth bones, and they may also have scavenged material from carcasses”, says Jarosław Wilczyński, archaeologist at the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

“While it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex. If mammoths behaved like modern elephants, females living in matriarchal herds may have had group defences that would have made encounters with herds equally or even more risky. Another possibility is that female-led herds moved across the landscape in more predictable ways than solitary males, meaning Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers may simply have encountered them more frequently, whether for hunting or scavenging”, says Hannah M. Moots, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics and lead author of the study... (MORE - no ads)]]> <![CDATA[Unravelling the climate behind the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20952.html Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:12:08 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20952.html https://www.su.se/english/news/articles/...ilizations

INTRO: The most severe droughts in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean arose when multiple natural climate cycles coincided, according to a new study from Stockholm University published in Science Advances. The findings shed new light on the climate conditions surrounding the Late Bronze Age collapse and may help improve understanding of future drought risks in a warming world.

“Rather than being caused by a single climatic event, we found that the most extreme droughts emerged when natural climate cycles operating over different timescales coincided. This helps explain why the drought associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse were so severe”, says Katherine Power, PhD student, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, and first author of the study.
Severe droughts and widespread societal collapse

Around 3,200 years ago, many of the great civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Mycenaeans, Minoans and Hittite Empire, experienced widespread societal collapse. Although severe droughts have long been linked to this period, the climatic processes behind these events remain uncertain. To investigate this, Katherine Power and Qiong Zhang, professor in paleoclimate modelling, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University and co-author of the study, used a state-of-the-art climate model to reconstruct the evolution of the Mediterranean climate over the past 8,000 years.

“Our results show that the region underwent a gradual drying trend over thousands of years, driven by slow changes in Earth’s orbit. Superimposed on this long-term trend we also found shorter-term fluctuations in the Atlantic Ocean and atmosphere”, says Katherine Power... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.su.se/english/news/articles/...ilizations

INTRO: The most severe droughts in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean arose when multiple natural climate cycles coincided, according to a new study from Stockholm University published in Science Advances. The findings shed new light on the climate conditions surrounding the Late Bronze Age collapse and may help improve understanding of future drought risks in a warming world.

“Rather than being caused by a single climatic event, we found that the most extreme droughts emerged when natural climate cycles operating over different timescales coincided. This helps explain why the drought associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse were so severe”, says Katherine Power, PhD student, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, and first author of the study.
Severe droughts and widespread societal collapse

Around 3,200 years ago, many of the great civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Mycenaeans, Minoans and Hittite Empire, experienced widespread societal collapse. Although severe droughts have long been linked to this period, the climatic processes behind these events remain uncertain. To investigate this, Katherine Power and Qiong Zhang, professor in paleoclimate modelling, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University and co-author of the study, used a state-of-the-art climate model to reconstruct the evolution of the Mediterranean climate over the past 8,000 years.

“Our results show that the region underwent a gradual drying trend over thousands of years, driven by slow changes in Earth’s orbit. Superimposed on this long-term trend we also found shorter-term fluctuations in the Atlantic Ocean and atmosphere”, says Katherine Power... (MORE - details)]]> <![CDATA[On this date, 57 years ago...]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20910.html Tue, 21 Jul 2026 04:32:55 +0000 Yazata]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20910.html

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