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Category: Culture

Paleolithic ingenuity: 13,000-year-old raised-relief map discovered in France

Paleolithic ingenuity: 13,000-year-old raised-relief map discovered in France

University of Adelaide: Researchers have discovered what may be the world’s oldest three-dimensional map, located within a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris Basin. The research is published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology. The Ségognole 3 rock shelter, known since the 1980s for its artistic engravings of two horses in a Late Paleolithic style on either side of a female pubic figuration, has now been revealed to contain a miniature representation of the surrounding landscape. Dr. Anthony Milnes from…

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Americans are now spending more time alone than ever

Americans are now spending more time alone than ever

Derek Thompson writes: Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965. Between that year and the end of the 20th century, in-person socializing slowly declined. From 2003 to 2023, it plunged by more than 20 percent, according to the American Time Use Survey, an annual study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among unmarried men and people younger than 25, the decline was more…

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Archaic humans might actually be the same species as modern humans, study suggests

Archaic humans might actually be the same species as modern humans, study suggests

Science Alert reports: Our species is defined by a long list of cultural and genetic traits that set us apart from our ancient counterparts. New research suggests at least some key distinctions date back earlier than previously estimated, hinting that modern and archaic humans – including our close, extinct relatives – have more in common than we ever thought. “Our results point to a scenario where Modern and Archaic should be regarded as populations of an otherwise common human species,…

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A debate about who controls Syria’s state and society

A debate about who controls Syria’s state and society

Ammar Abdulhamid writes: The question of alcohol regulation in Syria, recently raised by secular advocates, is far from a minor detail. It strikes at the core of the discussions about the future nature of the Syrian state. The statement by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), during a recent BBC interview that the country is dealing with more serious challenges at this stage was undermined by his own admission that legal experts drafting Syria’s future constitution were…

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How much does language shape thought?

How much does language shape thought?

Manvir Singh writes: Everyone can agree that language affects thought. If I told you that I have a pet badger and twenty-two canaries, you’d have new thoughts about my home life. The real question is whether a language itself has features that affect how its speakers think: Does conversing in Spanish for a month make objects seem more gendered? Does speaking English rather than Hindi make you less casteist, and maybe more capitalist? Today, questions like these tend to be…

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The art of outlasting: What we can learn from time-proof Japanese businesses

The art of outlasting: What we can learn from time-proof Japanese businesses

Eric Markowitz writes: Picture yourself on a train hurtling toward Nara Prefecture, hours away from the neon-lit frenzy of Tokyo. The urban sprawl gives way to quieter vistas, the journey itself a pilgrimage of sorts. By the time you arrive in Ikaruga, at Hōryū-ji — widely considered one of the world’s oldest wooden temples — the modern world feels like a distant memory. The temple, originally commissioned by Prince Shōtoku in the 7th century, stands as a living testament to…

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A grief with no name

A grief with no name

Jelena Markovic writes: I keep religious icons in my house, the Orthodox ones where Christ has dark, pensive eyes. When my friends come over, they sometimes ask why. It doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of my personality. ‘My parents are religious,’ I say. This makes no sense, because I put the icons up myself. My friend Daniel keeps icons up as well. ‘I’m not sure if I’m a believer, but if there was one true faith, it would…

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What makes human culture unique?

What makes human culture unique?

Arizona State University News: Why is human culture — the shared body of knowledge passed down across generations — so much more powerful than animal cultures? “What’s special about our species?” is a question scientists have wrestled with for centuries, and now a scientist at Arizona State University has a new hypothesis that could change the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. “Ten years ago, it was basically accepted that it was the ability of human culture…

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Navigation strategies studied in a lab may not replicate in real life

Navigation strategies studied in a lab may not replicate in real life

Sujata Gupta writes: On a trip to Siberia in 2019, cognitive scientist Pablo Fernandez Velasco attended a raffle drawing with the region’s Evenki reindeer herders. Prizes included a soccer ball, tea, a portable radio, a GPS unit and other knickknacks. A herder in Velasco’s group won the GPS. “I thought [that] was one of the fancier prizes,” says Velasco, of the University of York in England. “He was crestfallen.” The herder, who had been eyeing the radio, had no use…

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Necessity is the mother of invention

Necessity is the mother of invention

  Marshall, the county seat of Madison County NC, a sliver of a town that sits between steep slopes on the east and the French Broad River to the west, got swamped by the Helene flooding. Residents and neighbors in the surrounding area have shown resourcefulness and initiative in disaster recovery that will provide lessons for generations to come on the power of community and the capacity of ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary feats.  

Stephen Fry: Musk and Zuckerberg are ‘the worst polluters in human history’

Stephen Fry: Musk and Zuckerberg are ‘the worst polluters in human history’

BBC News reports: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk are “the worst polluters in human history”, Stephen Fry has said. The actor and comedian made the claim during a lecture at Kings College, London. “You and your children cannot breathe the air or swim in the waters of our culture without breathing in the toxic particulates and stinking effluvia that belch and pour unchecked from their companies into the currents of our world,” he said of the…

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What hunter-gatherer societies can teach us about group decision-making

What hunter-gatherer societies can teach us about group decision-making

Vivek V Venkataraman writes: The Dilemma of the Deserted Husband unfolded in the late 1950s amid a band of G/wi hunter-gatherers, a subgroup of Ju/’hoansi (often known as !Kung San), dwelling in the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. According to the South African-born anthropologist and Bushman Survey Officer George Silberbauer, a woman named N!onag//ei had left her husband, /wikhwema, for his best friend. Few were surprised. After all, /wikhwema was a temperamental and pompous man, and a bit of a…

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America’s top export may be anxiety

America’s top export may be anxiety

Derek Thompson writes: The argument that smartphones and social media are contributing to the rise in teen mental distress is strong. A number of observational and experimental studies show that teen anxiety started rising just as smartphones, social media, and front-facing cameras contributed to a wave of negative emotionality that seems to be sweeping the world. But I have one small reason to question the strongest version of the smartphone thesis. You can find a summary of it on page…

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America fell for guns recently — and for reasons you will not guess

America fell for guns recently — and for reasons you will not guess

Megan Kang writes: Of all the potential explanations we tested, we discovered that the post-Second World War economic boom and relaxed federal gun regulations most drove the surge in demand for guns. As unemployment rates decreased and incomes increased, firearms – once deemed a luxury or practical necessity – grew within reach for more and more Americans. Simultaneously, cultural attitudes surrounding gun ownership may have shifted, as multiple generations of Americans returning from the Second World War, the Korean War…

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In Australia, song has power

In Australia, song has power

Lydia Wilson writes: Deep in Australia’s Northern Territory, there is scant light pollution and the skies are full of stars. I asked my companion, David, to teach me the unfamiliar constellations, so different from those I see in my home in the Northern Hemisphere. An Indigenous Australian from the Central Desert Region of the continent, he was quick to comply. “Up there,” he pointed, “is the head of the emu, see?” I didn’t. He traced a swirl with his finger,…

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Crows are too smart to be domesticated

Crows are too smart to be domesticated

Ben Crair writes: At around 9 a.m. every weekday, a crow caws in the Jardin des Plantes, the oldest botanical garden in Paris. The sound is a warning to every other crow: Frédéric Jiguet, a tall ornithologist whose dark hair is graying around the ears, has shown up for work. As Jiguet walks to his office at the French National Museum of Natural History, which is on the garden’s grounds, dozens of the black vandals take to the trees and…

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