š The Curiosity Files #70
Curiously exploring the mysteries of our past, present, and future
āCuriosity is its own reason. Arenāt you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure behind reality?ā Albert Einstein
Welcome to The Curiosity Files!
Each week, Iāll journey through the most fascinating discoveries across ancient history, human origins, space, consciousness, cutting-edge science and the unexplained.
š„ Top Stories
Bow and arrow technology spread rapidly across North Americaā¦
Neanderthals used birch tar for tools and medicineā¦
Human language likely emerged over 100,000 years agoā¦
Denisovans finally revealed through fossils as Homo longiā¦
67,800-year-old handprint becomes oldest known human artā¦
Ancient engravings suggest early humans understood geometryā¦
Private company proposes capturing and towing near-Earth asteroidā¦
Asteroid Ryugu contains key ingredients for lifeās genetic codeā¦
Human vision reveals limits of conscious perceptionā¦
Mushrooms may have been Earthās earliest dominant lifeformsā¦
Jellyfish discovered with entirely different biological clock systemā¦
Animals may detect earthquakes before they strikeā¦
Block universe theory suggests all moments exist simultaneouslyā¦
Quantum light reveals hidden structures across 48 dimensionsā¦
and much, much moreā¦.
š Donāt miss a single story! Become a Paid Subscriber for full access or start with a free 7-day trial!
šæ Ancient Mysteries, Archaeology & Lost Civilizations
The hunt for the oldest āhumanā genetics
How far can we get human genetic information? Whatās the oldest ancient DNA? Itās tricky because DNA degrades over time. However, fortunately proteins can bind to minerals in our teeth and provide a wealth of information. This is the science of paleo-proteomics.
Study pinpoints exactly when the bow-and-arrow era began in North America and how it spread so quickly across the West
Analyzing remains demonstrated that bows and arrows emerged across both northern and southern regions at nearly the same moment.
New Evidence Shows Neanderthals Exploited This Versatile Natural Material for Multiple Functions
An international research team led by scientists from the University of Cologne, Germany, and the University of Oxford, U.K., has found compelling evidence that now-extinct Neanderthals living in the Levant extracted and used birch tar for numerous purposes, including as a wound-healing agent.
Scientists think they have learned exactly when and how humans created the first language
A new analysis of genetic studies proposes that the cognitive capacity for language was already present at least 135,000 years ago, with language likely becoming a social tool around 100,000 years ago.
Denisovans: The enigmatic ancient humans who finally have a face
Denisovans were a type of ancient human that for a long time were known only from their DNA and teeth. But recent fossil findings and analysis is now revealing what these people looked like and that they were likely a species called Homo longi.
Modern human origins: Do we know what weāre looking for?
Why should we assume that the first time a few peoples scattered across Eurasia or Africa decided to wear ornaments or paint cave walls conveniently coincided with the first time human beings possessed the cognitive capacity for symbolic behavior? A deeply spiritual worldview could have emerged millennia earlier, but saw its expression in other domains of material culture or phenomena, including those that archaeologists routinely dismiss as utterly mundane and utilitarian.
This 67,800-year-old handprint is the oldest art ever found
A mysterious, claw-like handprint in Indonesia just rewrote the timeline of human artāand migration.
Ancient Fragments Could Be The Worldās Oldest Known Geometry
Ancient humans were surprisingly creative, structured, and geometrical in their thinking some 60,000 years ago, according to some intricately engraved ostrich eggshells found across southern Africa.
š Cosmic & Space Mysteries
A private space company has a radical new plan to bag an asteroid
It may sound fanciful, but a Los Angeles-based company says it has conceived of a plan to fly out to a smallish, near-Earth asteroid, throw a large bag around it, and bring the body back to a āsafeā gathering point near our planet.
Lifeās Genetic Code Requires Five Key Ingredients. The Asteroid Ryugu Has All of Them, a New Study Suggests
The findings further hint that space rocks may have brought the building blocks of RNA and DNA to Earth long ago
NASAās Perseverance Mars rover discovers even older lost rivers at Jezero Crater
By plying its ground-penetrating radar in the depths of Marsās Jezero Crater, this rover has found even older deltas buried beneath those seen on the surface from space
š§ The Mind, Consciousness & the Origins of Life
Human vision: what we actually see ā and donāt see ā tells us a lot about consciousness
A great deal of visual processing in the brain goes on well below our conscious awareness.
Human-specific Alterations in Brain Cellular Proportions
Our brains are engines of imaginationāan āidea organā that has transformed both our species and the planet. Genevieve Konopka, Chair of the Department of Neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, asks how genes drive the development of the cell types that build the human brain and give rise to cognition, and how cognitive behavior emerges from evolutionarily adapted genomic programs.
Neuroscientists just upended our understanding of Pavlovian learning
A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience suggests that the brain learns to associate a specific signal with a reward based on the amount of time that passes between rewards, rather than the sheer number of repetitions. This challenges a century-old assumption about conditioning, providing evidence that total learning over a given period depends entirely on timing. These findings could shift our understanding of both animal and human learning.
š¦ Evolutionary Oddities & Life on Earth
Evidence That Mushrooms Were The First and Most Important Life on Earth
Tribe in Kenya Evolved Genetic Mutation That Lets Them Survive with Almost No Water
A desert community lives on a diet of blood and meat that would make most people sick.
The Jellies That Evolved a Different Way To Keep Time
Off the coast of Japan, biologists netted a pea-size jellyfish with an unusual circadian clock ā a chance finding that suggests there are likely more overlooked biological timekeeping mechanisms to be discovered.
šø The Unexplained & The Unusual
Can animals sense earthquakes?
In recent years, however, systematic research has begun to explore whether animals genuinely respond to environmental changes preceding major earthquakes. Although earthquakes are hard to predict even for humans, several studies suggest intriguing patterns in animal behaviour before seismic events.
Mysterious āthree-sided pyramidā similar to those in Egypt spotted on Mars in NASA footage
The formation was initially spotted by researcher Keith Laney in footage captured by NASAās Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) in 2001. He was scanning the imagery for unusual structures when he came across what he believes could be an artificial formation.
š Beyond the Known
The block universe: a theory where every moment already exists
Theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili explores why our sense of time may be incredibly misleading, including the idea that past, present, and future might all exist at once.
String Theory Explains Life After Death, The Multiverse & Why You Cannot Die
Michio Kaku ā legendary cofounder of string field theory and author of Quantum Supremacy ā breaks down the quantum revolution thatās about to change everything.
The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere
The central limit theorem started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers. Now scientists rely on it every day.
Scientists just found a hidden 48-dimensional world in quantum light
A routine quantum optics technique just revealed an extraordinary secret: entangled light can carry incredibly complex topological structures. Researchers found these hidden patterns reach up to 48 dimensions, offering a vast new āalphabetā for encoding quantum information. Unlike previous assumptions, this topology can emerge from a single property of lightāorbital angular momentum.
Which story intrigued you the most? Let me know in the comments below and provide links to any curiosities you have found!
Until next time, stay curious!
Impressive gathering of amazing avenues of intellectual exploration.
Thank you!
This was a great collection and I canāt pick a favorite this time! Thanks