At the start of another school year, I’ve been thinking about the differences between 2021 and 2022. Last year, many schools had mask mandates, testing programs and quarantine rules (SN:…
Category: Humans
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
The oldest known surgical amputation occurred 31,000 years ago
A child who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo around 31,000 years ago underwent the oldest known surgical operation, an amputation of the lower left leg, researchers say. One…
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did
On sunny summer days, powerboats pulling water-skiers zip across Georgia’s Lake Oconee, a reservoir located about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Atlanta. For those without a need for speed, fishing…
What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots
Revamped COVID-19 vaccines are poised to do battle with the super-contagious omicron variant. On September 1, U.S. health officials greenlit the first major update of the mRNA-based shots, reformulated to…
Who has the highest risk of long COVID? It’s complicated
For millions of people, COVID-19 doesn’t end with a negative test. Weeks or months after traces of the virus disappear from noses and throats, symptoms can persist or come back.…
The curious case of the 471-day coronavirus infection
As omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to drive the coronavirus’ spread in the United States, I’ve been thinking about what could come next. Omicron and its offshoots have been topping the…
‘The Five-Million-Year Odyssey’ reveals how migration shaped humankind
The Five-Million-Year OdysseyPeter BellwoodPrinceton Univ., $29.95 Archaeologist Peter Bellwood’s academic odyssey wended from England to teaching posts halfway around the world, first in New Zealand and then in Australia. For…
7-million-year-old limb fossils may be from the earliest known hominid
In 2001, researchers unearthed a partial fossil leg bone and two forearm bones in the central African nation of Chad. Those fossils come from the earliest known hominid, which lived…
