During the winter surge of COVID-19, it felt like the coronavirus was everywhere. Colder weather pushed people inside where the virus can linger in the air, and the surge-dominating omicron…
Category: Humans
Gene therapies for sickle cell disease come with hope and challenges
Today, it’s clear that our genes not only cause many diseases, but also hold potential cures. But that wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t until 1949 that scientists first found…
Neandertals were the first hominids to turn forest into grassland 125,000 years ago
Neandertals took Stone Age landscaping to a previously unrecognized level. Around 125,000 years ago, these close human relatives transformed a largely forested area bordering two central European lakes into a…
Chewing sugar-free gum reduced preterm births in a large study
Chewing a sugar-free gum daily reduced preterm births in a large study in Malawi. The oral intervention was inspired by past research linking poor oral health and preterm birth. The…
2021 research reinforced that mating across groups drove human evolution
Evidence that cross-continental Stone Age networking events powered human evolution ramped up in 2021. A long-standing argument that Homo sapiens originated in East Africa before moving elsewhere and replacing Eurasian…
Omicron crushed delta in the U.S. These numbers show just how fast it happened
If it felt like omicron exploded with mind-boggling speed, a new look at the numbers backs that up. The highly contagious coronavirus variant achieved dominance in the United States in…
DNA from mysterious Asian mummies reveals their surprising ancestry
Mystery mummies from Central Asia have a surprising ancestry. These people, who displayed facial characteristics suggesting a European heritage, belonged to a local population with ancient Asian roots, a new…
Ancient giant orangutans evolved smaller bodies surprisingly slowly
Giant orangutans that once dwelled in mainland Southeast Asian forests belonged to a single species that gradually shrank in size over nearly 2 million years, a study suggests. Today, orangutans…
Ancient footprints suggest a mysterious hominid lived alongside Lucy’s kind
An individual from an enigmatic hominid species strode across a field of wet, volcanic ash in what is now East Africa around 3.66 million years ago, leaving behind a handful…
‘The Dawn of Everything’ rewrites 40,000 years of human history
The Dawn of EverythingDavid Graeber and David WengrowFarrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 Concerns abound about what’s gone wrong in modern societies. Many scholars explain growing gaps between the haves and…
