What appears to be evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history is etched onto finger-length, clay cylinders excavated from a tomb in Syria by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers. The writing, which is dated to around 2400 BCE, precedes other known alphabetic scripts by roughly 500 years, upending what archaeologists know...
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Northerners, Scots and Irish Excel at Detecting Fake Accents to Guard Against Outsiders, Cambridge Study Suggests
People from Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin and the north-east of England are better at detecting someone imitating their accent than people from London and Essex, new research from the University of Cambridge has found. People from Belfast proved most able to detect someone faking their accent, while people from London, Essex and Bristol were least accurate....
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DNA Evidence Rewrites Histories for People Buried in Volcanic Eruption in Ancient Pompeii
In 79 CE, the active volcanic system in southern Italy known as Somma-Vesuvius erupted, burying the small Roman town of Pompeii and everyone in it. The “Pompeii eruption” covered everything in a layer of ash that preserved many of the bodies. Now, ancient DNA collected from the famed body casts alters the history that’s been...
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Have We Found All the Major Maya Cities? Not Even Close, New Research Suggests
Using laser-guided imaging to peer through dense jungle forests, Tulane University researchers have uncovered vast unexplored Maya settlements in Mexico and a better understanding of the ancient civilization’s extent and complexity. The new research, published in the journal Antiquity, was led by Tulane University anthropology doctoral student Luke Auld-Thomas and his advisor, Professor Marcello A. Canuto. The team used...
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How Australia Is Represented in Wikipedia and Why It Matters
The first study of how Wikipedia represents Australian places has highlighted how aspects of the online encyclopedia and choices made by the volunteer editors who work on it can lead to absences, omissions and sanitised views in articles about Australia. As part of a 3-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project, the University of Technology...
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Villagers Are Wary of Plans to Dam a River to Ensure Panama Canal’s Water Supply
A long, wooden boat puttered down the Indio River’s chocolate waters carrying Ana María Antonio and a colleague from the Panama Canal Authority on a mission to hear directly from villagers who could be affected by plans to dam the river. The canal forms the backbone of Panama’s economy, and the proposed dam would secure...
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Americans Use the Book of Revelation to Talk About Immigration – and Always Have
During a campaign speech in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 19, 2024, Donald Trump promised to save the country from immigrants: “I will rescue every town across America that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in a jail or kick them out of our country.” Depicting immigrants as...
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Harnessing Science to Tackle Global Crises
In a paper published in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, an international team of researchers looked at how science could play a more active role in managing crises. The paper builds on the outcomes of the international conference “What Role for Science in Crisis Times? Outlook in the Health, Environment, and Agriculture Interconnected Areas”, held in Montpellier in...
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Will Tropical Biodiversity Run Dry Under Climate Change? Two Visions for the Future
Changing precipitation patterns in the Neotropics, one of Earth’s most biodiverse regions, could threaten two-thirds of the area’s bird species by the year 2100 if climate change goes unchecked, according to new research led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and George Mason University. This would represent a dramatic loss, as the region is home to 30% of...
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In the Heartland of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, the Old Ways Have Changed and Violence Rages
Cellphone chats have become death sentences in the continuing, bloody factional war inside Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel. Cartel gunmen stop youths on the street or in their cars and demand their phones. If they find a contact who’s a member of a rival faction, a chat with a wrong word or a photo with the wrong...