As more and more large-scale human genome sequencing projects get completed, scientists have been able to trace with increasing confidence both the geographical movements and underlying genetic variation of human populations. Most of these projects have favored the study of European populations, and thus, have been lacking in representing the true ethnic diversity across the...
Human behaviour is influenced by many things, most of which remain unconscious to us. One of these is a phenomenon known among perception psychologists as “pseudo-neglect”. This refers to the observation that healthy people prefer their left visual field to their right and therefore devide a line regularly left of centre. A study published on...
Christopher Columbus’ accounts of the Caribbean include harrowing descriptions of fierce raiders who abducted women and cannibalized men – stories long dismissed as myths. But a new study suggests Columbus may have been telling the truth. Using the equivalent of facial recognition technology, researchers analyzed the skulls of early Caribbean inhabitants, uncovering relationships between people groups and...
When Akash Ambani, son of Mukesh Ambani, one of the richest men in the world, decided to host a pre-wedding event in February 2019, he chose St Moritz in Switzerland. While St Moritz is a popular ski destination for the international jetset, it was not a prominent holiday destination for Indian elites. But through my...
Holidaying in a disaster zone might seem crazy, but “volunteer tourism” can actually help communities recover from natural disasters, a new study finds. And it can offer a unique and rewarding experience for volunteers, if done carefully. “When disaster hits a tourist destination – whether fire, flood, cyclone or earthquake – tourists naturally stay away,...
Nations across the world are following a United Nations blueprint to build a more sustainable future – but a new study shows that blueprint leads less to a castle in the sky, and more to a house that needs constant remodeling. Sustainability scientists have developed systematic and comprehensive assessment methods and performed the first assessment...
Hunting wild animals has been practised by humans for millions of years; however, the extraction of wildlife for subsistence and commercialisation has become a major biodiversity threat in recent decades. Meanwhile, over-exploitation is reported to be the second most important driver of change and biodiversity loss globally. To assess the state of affairs, an international group of...
“The inhabitants of the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains on the Kwazulu-Natal/eSwatini border were cooking starchy plants 170 thousand years ago,” says Professor Lyn Wadley, a scientist from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Wits ESI). “This discovery is much older than earlier reports for cooking similar...
Both species, humans and chimpanzees, can be extremely territorial, and territorial disputes between groups can turn violent, with individuals killing each other. In humans, such between-group competition can escalate to war and devastating loss of human life. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology studied wild Western chimpanzees to find out whether territorial...
Cities in the “global south” – densely populated urban areas that are part of low-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America – should phase out pit latrines, septic tanks and other on-site methods of human waste management. Instead, cities should invest in sewage systems, according to a report from the World Resources Institute/Ross Center...
