Category Archives: Evolution

The new revolution in prehistory: DNA from dirt

IT was an otherwise ordinary day in 2015 when Viviane Slon had her eureka moment. As she worked at her computer, the results revealed the sample she was examining contained human DNA. There was nothing so unusual about that in itself: at the time, the ancient DNA (aDNA) revolution was in full swing, and surprising new insights about our ancestors were being gradually unveiled. But Slon’s sample wasn’t from human remains – it was just dirt from a cave floor. That immediately told her she was onto something big…

This article first appeared online in New Scientist on 31 December 2024. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

“Hubris” review: did we really trump the Neanderthals?

IN an institute in Germany, scientists are growing “Neanderthalised” human brain cells in a dish. These cells form synapses and spark as they would have done in a living Neanderthal as she (they are female cells) foraged or breastfed or gazed out of a cave mouth at dusk. That is the spine-tingling opening gambit of a book co-authored by one of the directors of the institute, Johannes Krause, and the information that sets it apart from a host of popular science books that attempt to predict humanity’s future based on our evolutionary past…

This article first appeared online in The Guardian on 27 December 2024. To continue reading, click here.

All change in the Bronze Age

MYKHAILIVKA, a village on the right bank of the River Dnieper in Ukraine, lies dangerously close to the front line of Russia’s war on its western neighbour. Seventy years ago, however, it was the site of an excavation by Ukrainian archaeologists. There, they discovered one of the earliest known settlements of the Yamnaya culture…

Facial reconstruction of a western Yamnaya. Reconstruction: Emese Gábor, Magyarságkutató Intézet. Photograph: Hajdúsági Museum, Hajdúböszörmény.

This article first appeared online in The Economist on 5 May 2024 (and in the magazine on 11 May 2024). To continue reading, click here (paywall).

Birds do it, bees do it

WHEN it comes to architectural accomplishments, humans like to think they stand at the top of the pyramid. That is to underestimate the astonishing achievements of social insects: termites raise skyscraping nests and honeybees fashion mesmerisingly geometric combs. The true master builders of the insect world, however, are the hundreds of species of stingless bee, native to the tropics and subtropics, which weave combs of unparalleled variety and intricacy inside hollow tree trunks or other cavities…

Photograph: Viviana Di Pietro, KU Leuven

This article first appeared online in The Economist on 10 April 2024. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

Frans de Waal obituary

A male chimpanzee with his eye on alpha status will set aside his usual indifference to infants and go around tickling them, the better to curry favour with their mothers. The vote-winning tactic, variations of which will be on display in town halls everywhere in this super-election year, is one of the many examples of social strategy that the Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal documented in his half-century of observing non-human primates…

Frans de Waal, by Catherine Marin

This article first appeared in The Guardian on 25 March 2024. To continue reading, click here.