In a cave in Siberia, scientists have found a 40,000-year old pinky bone that could belong to an entirely new species of hominid. Or it may be yet another example of how hard it is to figure where one species stops and another begins–even when one of those species is our own. Big news, perhaps, or ambiguous news.
Writing about the brain can sometimes bring me amazingly close to my readers–so close that I feel like I’m inside their minds. Case in point: my new column for Discover, on the subject of the mind’s eye.
In tomorrow’s New York Times I have an essay about the art of seeing Nature’s unseen–from the bestiaries of the Middle Ages to today’s images of feathered dinosaurs and upright apes. Check it out, and also check out the accompanying slide show about Conrad Gessner, a Renaissance naturalist who assembled the greatest zoological encyclopedia of his day–which included unicorns.
Originally published March 22, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Discover, March 22, 2010
One day in 2005, a retired building surveyor in Edinburgh visited his doctor with a strange complaint: His mind’s eye had suddenly gone blind.
The surveyor, referred to as MX by his doctors, was 65 at the time. He had always felt that he possessed an exceptional talent for picturing things in his mind. The skill had come in handy in his job, allowing MX to recall the fine details of the buildings he surveyed. Just before drifting off to sleep, he enjoyed running through recent events as if he were watching a movie. He could picture his family, his friends, and even characters in the books he read.
The New York Times, March 22, 2010
Somewhere in England, about 600 years ago, an artist sat down and tried to paint an elephant. There was just one problem: he had never seen one.
The artist was illustrating a book known today as the “Bestiary of Anne Walshe,” a guide to animals. To paint an elephant, he could not jet to Kenya to scrutinize one in person. He could not visit the London zoo. He could not watch a David Attenborough DVD or click through a Web gallery of nature photographs. The only clues the artist could have found were in the mix of facts and myths preserved in old books.
Continue reading “Artists Mine Scientific Clues to Paint Intricate Portraits of the Past”