Who doesn’t like themselves a good frightening Ancient Egyptian death mystery? These four statues here, found in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, depict Sekhmet, the cat goddess of sickness. Because she controlled disease, worshippers prayed to her for health. Tension between Ancient Egyptian health and disease-causing agents was recently resurrected by several articles […]
The “Pharoah’s Curse” Fungus Read More »
Theophrastus was an Ancient Greek dude, whose imporance I hope to persuade you of. Living between 371-287 BCE, he was one of Aristotle’s besties, and even ran the Lyceum as Aristotle’s successor.The reason people know him today is because Theophrastus wrote some books about plants that were among the most important on that subject for
Theophrastus and Plant Intelligence Read More »
Costa Rica is the most ecologically minded country in the world, preserving 1/3 of its land for wilderness. The size of the US state of West Virginia, Costa Rica’s environment is incredibly diverse — it has rainforests, cloud forests, tropical beaches, dry uplands, and many, many volcanoes. Going on nature tours and hiking, I was
Costa Rica Wildlife Read More »
Here is an example of a heavy wheeled plow, and if you’re thinking “so what?,” that might be because the ubiquity of our modern technology has made us jaded to more ordinary-looking inventions. But this plow was responsible for allowing major agricultural change in the Middle Ages, as a recent study focusing on farmland in
Agricultural Technology in Medieval Denmark Read More »
A trip to the Bisti Badlands (aka “De-Na-Zin Wilderness”) is a trip to an alien world, where it’s easier to imagine the eons of time past. Badlands are landscapes in which vast amounts of clay soils and sedimentary rock have eroded, leaving scant vegetation, and often leave behind unusual rock formations from the denser minerals
Here’s a story about human evolution, and about how different human species have given us genes that allowed us to thrive in particular conditions.The study of ancient DNA has allowed scientists to figure out that two different human species that co-existed with Homo Sapiens interbread with us and passed along some of their genetic material.
Europeans practiced cannibalism well into the 19th century, and one of the favored ways to consume their own kind happened with beheadings. Here you see close-ups of a 1649 painting by artist John Weesop called “An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of King Charles I”. Notice in the second image the rush of people collecting
Cannibalism in Medieval to 19th-Century Europe Read More »
Early this morning (as in, from 2:30-4:30 a.m.) my part of the world was treated to a near-total lunar eclipse. The shadow of the earth crept across the full moon’s surface, eventually turning it a reddish color (due to the refraction of light through the Earth’s shadow). As anyone who has seen a lunar eclipse
These rocks from the northern shore of Lake Superior are from the dullest period in our planet’s history, apparently. Most of us humans of the early twenty-first millennium do not do well with being bored. Imagine, then, one billion years of it. From 1.8 to 800 million years ago, Earth’s life forms remained relatively
The Boring Billion Read More »
Yesterday I did a post about the “boring billion”: a period of Earth’s history when very little changed. Today I offer the exact opposite, which is the most exciting two minutes in all of existence. And those in fact were the first two minutes of everything, at the start of the Big Bang. We
No, this isn’t what you think it is, readers: I know it *looks* like a penis, but really it’s not. Rather, what you see is a 16th-century woodcut illustration of the dissected genitals of a woman. Er, if that’s not obvious to you, don’t worry. Commissioned for Andreus Vesalius’s famous _De humani corporis fabrica_
De humani corporis fabrica Read More »
This is Jonas Salk, inventor of the first polio vaccine, ending the childhood disease that had killed or crippled so many Americans — especially children — in the mid-20th century. But Salk was important for other reasons. His approach to designing the vaccine was innovative, using a denatured version of the virus rather than
Many of us have had need to wrap presents in the last few weeks, but maybe only some of us waited until early this morning on December 25 to start wrapping their children’s gifts. (Yours truly, ahem). The discipline of intentionally folding paper into different shapes is known as origami because this practiced flourished
Here are four different species of finches from the Galapagos Islands. Although they look similar, their differences include their beaks — each one takes advantage of a different type of seed. Natural selection shaped the trajectory of these birds’ appearance, and one of the scientists who first figured out how this worked passed away yesterday
Edward Osborne Wilson Read More »
The root system you see here isn’t just part of the plant: it’s joined by fungi, making it a mycorrhiza — a symbiosis of plant and fungi. Most plants rely on mycorrhizae — the fungi elements give the roots better access to precious nutrients like phosphorous and water, and the plant bits give the fungus
Mycorrhiza: Symbiosis of Plant and Fungi Read More »
TIL that 30 million years ago a species of mound-building termites evolved with next-level techniques that we humans could learn from in order to deal with our environmental challenges. These are the Macrotermes, and what makes them particularly special is the very ancient relationship they co-created with the fungus Termitomyces. Neither survives without the
Termites and Mushrooms: A Quid Pro Quo Read More »
I love how scientific technologies are helping us understand the earliest millennia of human history ever better. This drawing, for instance, features an artistic re-creation of skull fragments dated in 2017 that have helped to overturn our understanding of human evolution. Basic questions, such as “how long have Homo Sapiens been around?” And “where
Appearances of Homo Sapiens Read More »
You are looking at an artist’s rendition of a device known as “the staff of al-Tusi” which sounds like a magical weapon straight out of Tolkien but in fact was a genius scientific tool made by one of the most important mathematicians in history. Sharaf al-Din al-Muzaffar al-Tusi (c. 1135-1213) lived in various cities
The Linear Astrolabe of al-Tusi Read More »
It’s pleasant, from where I write this post in my ice-bitten and wintery grey state of Pennsylvania, to look at this lovely plant. Here is _Indigofera tinctoria_ the most important plant to make the dye colored indigo — a color that meant beauty to some, but misery to many others. Indigo is one of
Malaria is, like COVID, a largely preventable death: so long as the patient gets the right treatment at the right time. Many still do not have access to good medical care. For instance, in 2019, 409,000 people in Africa — mostly babies and toddlers — died of this disease. But malaria is not a
The History of Malaria Read More »
