Millions of them live in New York, and billions more in cities and on farms across the globe. And wherever they scurry, they wreak havoc.

They devour food supplies and contaminate what they don’t eat with feces and urine. They spread a range of harmful viruses and bacteria. In delicate ecosystems around the world, they threaten other species with extinction.

“They’ll gnaw through walls. They’ll gnaw through wires. They’ll destroy cars,” said Jason Munshi-South, a biologist at Fordham University. “They’ve managed to spread wherever there are humans.”

Continue reading “How the Brown Rat Conquered New York City (and Every Other One, Too)” →

Beneath a rocky slope in central Jordan lie the remains of a 10,000-year-old village called Ain Ghazal, whose inhabitants lived in stone houses with timber roof beams, the walls and floors gleaming with white plaster.

Hundreds of people living there worshiped in circular shrines and made haunting, wide-eyed sculptures that stood three feet high. They buried their cherished dead under the floors of their houses, decapitating the bodies in order to decorate the skulls.

But as fascinating as this culture was, something else about Ain Ghazal intrigues archaeologists more: It was one of the first farming villages to have emerged after the dawn of agriculture.

Continue reading “How the First Farmers Changed History” →