Friday’s Elk: February 25, 2018

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen
The Importance of Clocks

In many branches of science, a good clock can make all the difference. The better we can determine how old things are and when events happened, the better we can put the pieces of history back together. It’s important to know that the universe started 13.73 billion years old, for example, and that the Earth is 4.56 billion years old.

There is no one clock to rule them all, though. Each science requires a clock of its own, and some of them require a whole wall of timepieces. For the universe, we have to use old light to tell time. For the Earth, certain radioactive elements like strontium have ticked away accurately since the planet’s formation. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk: February 25, 2018” →

Neanderthals, the World’s First Misunderstood Artists

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, February 22, 2018

Link

It’s long been an insult to be called a Neanderthal. But the more these elusive, vanished people have been studied, the more respect they’ve gained among scientists.

On Thursday, a team of researchers offered compelling evidence that Neanderthals bore one of the chief hallmarks of mental sophistication: they could paint cave art. That talent suggests that Neanderthals could think in symbols and may have achieved other milestones not preserved in the fossil record.

“When you have symbols, then you have language,” said João Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona and co-author of the new study.

Continue reading “Neanderthals, the World’s First Misunderstood Artists” →

Friday’s Elk, February 16, 2018

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen
Greetings to New Readers

To those of you just signing up for Friday’s Elk, welcome! I generally send this newsletter out each Friday, as the name suggests, but sometimes life gets in the way. You can peruse back issues of the newsletter for free in this archive. There you’ll find links to stories I’ve written, videos of talks I’ve given, podcasts and radio shows I’ve spoken on, details on upcoming events, and updates about my next book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, coming out in May. On March 15, my publisher and I will randomly pick five Friday’s Elk subscribers to receive free early copies of the book. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, February 16, 2018” →

‘Cheddar Man,’ Britain’s Oldest Skeleton, Had Dark Skin, DNA Shows

Posted on by Lori Jia

The New York Times, February 7, 2018

Link

LONDON — He had dark skin, brown curly hair and blue eyes, DNA tests suggest, upending a common assumption that Britain’s indigenous populations were all pale skinned with fair features.

He is “Cheddar Man,” Britain’s oldest complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903 in Gough’s Cave near the village of Cheddar in Somerset, in southwest England. He lived about 10,000 years ago in the Mesolithic period, the middle part of the Stone Age.

Scientists have now reconstructed his features, demonstrating that he was part of a population of ancient Western Europeans that, scientists have shown in recent years, had dark skin.

Continue reading “‘Cheddar Man,’ Britain’s Oldest Skeleton, Had Dark Skin, DNA Shows” →