Humans news stories

When a series of deep pits were discovered near the world heritage site of Stonehenge last year, archaeologists excitedly described it as the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain – only for some colleagues to dismiss the pits as mere natural features.

A spacecraft has launched on a mission to test technology that could one day tip a dangerous asteroid off course.

Many people think that mathematics is a human invention. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesn’t ‘exist’ outside the minds of the people who use it.

More than 1,200 Mesolithic tools have been unearthed from along an Aberdeenshire river.

Reciprocity with Indigenous stewards of plant medicine is one way to start…..Among the shamans of the Peruvian Andes, they have a word, “ayni,” translated as “sacred reciprocity.” Ayni is not about scorekeeping, but about keeping track. Ayni says we should partner…

Based on the identification of plant remains, Tel Aviv University and Tel-Hai College researchers provide the first detailed reconstruction of the climate in the Land of Israel at the end of the last ice age (20,000-10,000 years before present).

Meteor impact sites might seem like easy things to recognize, with giant craters in Earth’s surface showing where these far-flung objects finally came to a violent stop. But it’s not always that way.

Physically speaking, our Universe seems uncannily perfect. It stands to reason that if it wasn’t, life as we know it – and planets, atoms, everything else really – wouldn’t exist.

Ancient Indigenous fishing practices can be used to inform sustainable management and conservation today, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University.

Modern humans made several failed attempts to settle in Europe before eventually taking over the continent. This is the stark conclusion of scientists who have been studying the course of Homo sapiens’s exodus from Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

The ability to control our dreams is a skill that more of us are seeking to acquire for sheer pleasure. But if taken seriously, scientists believe it could unlock new secrets of the mind

Archaeologists in Peru have uncovered the remains of 25 people in the ancient city of Chan Chan.

Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy appears to increase both cognitive and neural flexibility in patients with major depressive disorder, according to new research published inTranslational Psychiatry. But the findings suggest that psychedelic-induced increases in neural flexibility do not always result in cognitive improvements.

Psychedelics have come a long way since their hallucinogenic hippy heyday. Research shows that they could alleviate PTSD, depression and addiction. So will we all soon be treated with magic mushrooms and MDMA?

Imagine having chronic pain so severe you can’t risk expending the energy it would take to get a glass of water – or what it’s like to hold your baby as they have their 100th potentially fatal seizure of the week….You know this medicine exists but you’re prevented from accessing it because – behind the scenes – the avenues to do so have not been set up.

Teeth and skull fragments found in the maze-like recesses of a South African cave fuel debate on how Homo naledi lived—and whether it disposed of its dead.

Image from Animalparty (Wiki Commons)