The human mind is unlike any other. It’s the key that unlocked language, culture, abstract reasoning, long-term planning, and large-scale political coordination — all the cognitive features that set us so far apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It need not diminish other creatures’ intelligence to describe ourselves, in the words of British psychologist Cecilia Heyes, as “animals that specialize in thinking and knowing.”Yet, in another sense, we aren’t so separate from the res ...read more
An ancient Roman tomb discovered during home renovations in southern Spain contains cremated bones and ashes that have been soaking for two millennia in white wine.“This is the oldest wine discovered to date,” says José Ruiz Arrebola, a chemist at the University of Cordoba in Spain.This wine, along with the associated findings, is revealing more about ancient Roman funerary rituals in Spain.Where was the Oldest Wine in the World Discovered?The wine was discovered in 2019 in Carmona, Spain, ...read more
Many wonder how birds migrate vast distances. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences investigates that and also looks into the “where,” “when,” and “why” of avian travel. They found that birds flock to drastically different environmental conditions that meet different needs over the course of a year.Crane TrackingResearchers affixed GPS tracking devices to the legs of 104 cranes in Africa, Asia, and Europe. They learned that some cranes traveled nearly 4,000 m ...read more
Some jokes are like a fine wine and age well with time; others get rather lost in translation as the centuries pass. One joke, etched in the ancient cuneiform writing of the Sumerian people, stands as the oldest recorded bar joke and dates back roughly 4,000 years. It reads: “A dog walks in a bar and says, ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.” Surely, this joke was hilarious in its time, but today, this nonsensical one-liner has sparked much debate and theories about why exactly it ...read more
Dementia is one of the most devastating illnesses you’re likely to get. How likely? According to the World Health Organization, 55 million people worldwide currently have some form of dementia. In the United States, perhaps as many as one in ten have dementia, while another 22 percent suffer from mild cognitive impairment. Risk increases as you age. Among those over 90 years old, the rate is 35 percent.Unfortunately, there’s no cure for dementia, and despite some encouraging news in the last ...read more
Sometime in 2024, I started getting ads in my Instagram feed from a supplement company called Thesis. The ads generally featured good-looking, fashionable people telling neat, 30-second stories about how the supplements had solved their chronic procrastination, indecision, or distractibility. Many of the evangelists were identified as high-achievers in their respective fields — a Ph.D. neuroscientist, a CEO, or a surgeon.I’d be lying if I said that the ads weren’t compelling. As a digital ...read more
Tyrannosaurus rex and Megalodon didn’t live at the same time, and even more, one lived on land and the other in the ocean. But nonetheless, they both ruled their ecosystems at the very top of the food chain. But who was the fiercest of them all?To answer this question, it’s best to break down each mega-hunter. Which one was the biggest, fastest, strongest, and which one survived and thrived the longest before it went extinct?The Worlds of T. rex and MegalodonFirst, let’s look at the worlds ...read more
Park rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park recently posted a photo on social media of a Flaming Hot Cheetos bag dropped carelessly by a visitor. The visitor might have thought the lost snack was merely a piece of garbage someone else could have picked up. But the post explained how the food source disrupted the cave’s fragile ecology and sparked mold growth.Humans don’t always recognize how delicate caves are and that they must be approached carefully—or left alone completely. Along wi ...read more
Prehistoric peoples may have created the world’s oldest lunisolar calendar thousands of years ago to mark a calamitous comet strike, according to a new study. That conclusion is based on a new interpretation of carvings on stone pillars at the 12,000-year-old site of Göbekli Tepe in Türkiye.Martin Sweatman, a professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, analyzed a series of V-shaped symbols on a pillar at the site. Sweatman believes each of these shapes represents a single day, with ...read more
