Detail of a medieval painting: a helmeted man and flies on a gold ground
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Diachenko and Groneborn link ornament diversity on ancient pottery to population size
Alexandr Diachenko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Detlef Gronenborn of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology in Mainz have built a mathematical model that links the diversity of pottery ornament to population size, the organisation of pottery production and the exchange of information. They compared the pottery
A Macaque Tooth About 310,000 Years Old Found at Schöningen, the Northernmost Evidence in Europe
Some news on migration. At Schöningen in Lower Saxony, a milk tooth of a macaque some 310,000 years old has been found. The tooth was recovered as long ago as 2004, but has been studied only now. Scientists from Leiden University and the Senckenberg Centre at the University of
Mutations in rice and maize needed for domestication arose long before farming
When ancient farmers domesticated plants, they relied on variation that already existed in wild species. Useful mutations were rare in the wild ancestors of cultivated plants, but people spent millennia selecting plants with the desired traits, and the frequency of those mutations rose. The chief trait of domesticated rice is
Martin McDonagh directs Wild Horse Nine, about CIA agents on Easter Island
I read that Martin McDonagh, the author of "In Bruges", "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" and "The Banshees of Inisherin", has made a new film, Wild Horse Nine. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell play the CIA agents Chris and Lee. In 1973 they have