Trampling culture, destroying history

Deliberate destruction and looting threaten antiquities. Is this the rule or the exception through history? Why destroy culture? More »

Ebola’s end: History’s lessons

As Ebola ravages West Africa, we seek answers in past epidemics. How did cholera, plague, smallpox end? Lacking drugs or a vaccine, how More »

Spears helped our ancestors eat and defend themselves. Spearmaking required ingenuity, experiments and communication. Symmetrical stone More »

How do bones, isotopes, historic records, DNA and grave goods tell us about the dead, royal and otherwise?? More »

Scientists have tracked a light beam that’s half-a-million light years long to a monster black hole and found that the hole and its More »

How do patents work? What is “new, non-obvious and useful”? What will happen after the biggest change in patent law in 60 years? More »

How do homing pigeons find their way on their amazing migrations? Scientists thought iron-bearing nerve cells in the beak can detect More »

Returning to the site of a classic “first forest” site, New York scientists have found extra complexity: three fossilized trees-like More »

Experiment: Earth “drags” spacetime, as Einstein predicted. What else did Einstein get right? (Hint: Lots and lots!) More »

The Americans who made Clovis-style spear-points were not the first Americans — despite heavy archeological skepticism. More »

Researchers finally accept that animals can have emotions. Is love one of those emotions? More »

Which came first: The empire or the administration? Conventional wisdom says the demands of empire led to the rise of bureaucracy. But More »

A new study finds a surprising number of fish, birds and mammals in the oceans 100 and 1,000 years ago. Can this information help More »

4B years ago, the “late heavy bombardment” burned out all life — or not… High-temp bacteria could have survived in deep rocks. More »

A stone tool discovered in Polynesia came from Hawaii — 2500 miles away. Whoa! More »