The Qing Dynasty in China, after over 250 years, crumbled in 1912. Led by the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), an international research team has pinpointed key reasons behind the collapse, revealing parallels to modern instability and offering vital lessons for the future. China is considered today to be the world’s largest economy (in terms of...
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/thenational/5PBUPRZRPZDRPFC3TDODF2I6FE.jpg "Using Gemstones’ Unique Characteristics to Uncover Ancient Trade Routes")
Since ancient times, gemstones have been mined and traded across the globe, sometimes traveling continents from their origin. Gems are geologically defined as minerals celebrated for beauty, strength, and rarity. Their unique elemental composition and atomic orientation act as a fingerprint, enabling researchers to uncover the stones’ past, and with it, historical trade routes. In AIP...
Jakarta … San Francisco … Shanghai … Phoenix … Houston. These major cities and others around the globe have many similarities, but they share one particular commonality that is concerning for residents. They are among the global cities most affected by climate change. While each of these cities has proven resilient for centuries, urban planners,...
The Ukrainian civilians woke long before dawn in the bitter cold, lined up for the single toilet and were loaded at gunpoint into the livestock trailer. They spent the next 12 hours or more digging trenches on the front lines for Russian soldiers. Many were forced to wear overlarge Russian military uniforms that could make...
Prisoners in Bolivia are trading in jaguar skins and other wild animal body parts to produce wallets, hats, and belts for sale in local markets. The fangs and bones of jaguars are being illegally exported for use as traditional Asian medicine. The trade, which further threatens the future of this species, has been uncovered by...
At what point does a craft spirit no longer qualify as craft? For centuries on the archipelago nation Cabo Verde off Africa’s west coast, farmers have produced a sugar cane-based craft spirit known as “grogue.” The liquor – an effervescent spirit with light grassy notes – has a rich cultural legacy and has historically been...
Luis Ramirez leapt onto the roof of his bright blue water truck to fill the plastic tank that by day’s end would empty into an assortment of buckets, barrels and cisterns in 100 homes. It was barely 11 a.m. and Ramirez had many more stops to make on the hilly, grey fringes of Tijuana, a...
Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have identified the oldest decisive evidence of humans’ close evolutionary relatives butchering and likely eating one another. In a new study published today, June 26, in Scientific Reports, National Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner and her co-authors describe nine cut marks on a 1.45 million-year-old left shin bone from a relative...
An innovative virtual reality project created by National Geographic Explorers in collaboration with local communities was recognized with the “Best in Category: Visualize” during the XR Prize Challenge: Fight Climate Change earlier this month. The project, “Qikiqtaruk: Arctic at Risk” was selected for the award from across 150 submissions at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa...
The distant ancestors of modern horses had hooved toes instead of a single hoof, which vanished over time, according to researchers. The animals, such as the Eocene Hyracotherium, had feet like those of a modern tapir: four toes in front and three behind, each individually hooved with an underlying foot pad. In contrast, modern equids such as...
