Archaeologists Discover 200,000-Year-Old Hand & Footprints That Could Be the World’s Earliest Cave Art

in Art, Creativity, Life, Science | December 3rd, 2021

Wet cement trig­gers a pri­mal impulse, par­tic­u­lar­ly in chil­dren.

It’s so tempt­ing to inscribe a pris­tine patch of side­walk with a last­ing impres­sion of one’s exis­tence.

Is the coast clear? Yes? Quick, grab a stick and write your name!

No stick?

Sink a hand or foot in, like a movie star…

…or, even more thrilling­ly, a child hominin on the High Tibetan Plateau, 169,000 to 226,000 years ago!

Per­haps one day your sur­face-mar­ring ges­ture will be con­ceived of as a great gift to sci­ence, and pos­si­bly art. (Try this line of rea­son­ing with the angry home­own­er or shop­keep­er who’s intent on mea­sur­ing your hand against the one now per­ma­nent­ly set into their new cement walk­way.)

Tell them how in 2018, pro­fes­sion­al ich­nol­o­gists doing field­work in Que­sang Hot Spring, some 80 km north­west of Lhasa, were over the moon to find five hand­prints and five foot­prints dat­ing to the Mid­dle Pleis­tocene near the base of a rocky promon­to­ry.

Researchers led by David Zhang of Guangzhou Uni­ver­si­ty attribute the hand­prints to a 12-year-old, and the foot­prints to a 7‑year-old.

In a recent arti­cle in Sci­ence Bul­letin, Zhang and his team con­clude that the children’s hand­i­work is not only delib­er­ate (as opposed to “imprint­ed dur­ing nor­mal loco­mo­tion or by the use of hands to sta­bi­lize motion”) but also “an ear­ly act of pari­etal art.”

The Ura­ni­um dat­ing of the traver­tine which received the kids’ hands and feet while still soft is grounds for excite­ment, mov­ing the dial on the ear­li­est known occu­pa­tion (or vis­i­ta­tion) of the Tibetan Plateau much fur­ther back than pre­vi­ous­ly believed — from 90,000–120,000 years ago to 169,000–226,000 years ago.

That’s a lot of food for thought, evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly speak­ing. As Zhang told TIME mag­a­zine, “you’re simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deal­ing with a harsh envi­ron­ment, less oxy­gen, and at the same time, cre­at­ing this.”

Zhang is stead­fast that “this” is the world’s old­est pari­etal art — out­pac­ing a Nean­derthal artist’s red-pig­ment­ed hand sten­cil in Spain’s Cave of Mal­travieso by more than 100,000 years.

Oth­er sci­en­tists are not so sure.

Anthro­pol­o­gist Paul Taçon, direc­tor of Grif­fith University’s Place, Evo­lu­tion and Rock Art Her­itage Unit, thinks it’s too big of “a stretch” to describe the impres­sions as art, sug­gest­ing that they could be chalked up to a range of activ­i­ties.

Nick Bar­ton, Pro­fes­sor of Pale­olith­ic Arche­ol­o­gy at Oxford won­ders if the traces, inten­tion­al­ly placed though they may be, are less art than child’s play. (Team Wet Cement!)

Zhang coun­ters that such argu­ments are pred­i­cat­ed on mod­ern notions of what con­sti­tutes art, dri­ving his point home with an appro­pri­ate­ly stone-aged metaphor:

When you use stone tools to dig some­thing in the present day, we can­not say that that is tech­nol­o­gy. But if ancient peo­ple use that, that’s tech­nol­o­gy.

Cor­nell University’s Thomas Urban, who co-authored the Sci­ence Bul­letin arti­cle with Zhang and a host of oth­er researchers shares his col­leagues aver­sion’ to def­i­n­i­tions shaped by a mod­ern lens:

Dif­fer­ent camps have spe­cif­ic def­i­n­i­tions of art that pri­or­i­tize var­i­ous cri­te­ria, but I would like to tran­scend that and say there can be lim­i­ta­tions imposed by these strict cat­e­gories that might inhib­it us from think­ing more broad­ly about cre­ative behav­ior. I think we can make a sol­id case that this is not util­i­tar­i­an behav­ior. There’s some­thing play­ful, cre­ative, pos­si­bly sym­bol­ic about this. This gets at a very fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of what it actu­al­ly means to be human.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

Hear a Pre­his­toric Conch Shell Musi­cal Instru­ment Played for the First Time in 18,000 Years

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How the World’s First Anti-Vax Movement Started with the First Vaccine for Smallpox in 1796, and Spread Fears of People Getting Turned into Half-Cow Babies

in Current Affairs, Health, History, Science | November 17th, 2021

A car­toon from a Decem­ber 1894 anti-vac­ci­na­tion pub­li­ca­tion (Cour­tesy of The His­tor­i­cal Med­ical Library of The Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia)

For well over a cen­tu­ry peo­ple have queued up to get vac­ci­nat­ed against polio, small­pox, measles, mumps, rubel­la, the flu or oth­er epi­dem­ic dis­eases. And they have done so because they were man­dat­ed by schools, work­places, armed forces, and oth­er insti­tu­tions com­mit­ted to using sci­ence to fight dis­ease. As a result, dead­ly viral epi­demics began to dis­ap­pear in the devel­oped world. Indeed, the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple now protest­ing manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions were them­selves vac­ci­nat­ed (by man­date) against polio, small­pox, measles, mumps, rubel­la, etc., and hard­ly any of them have con­tract­ed those once-com­mon dis­eases. The his­tor­i­cal argu­ment for vac­cines may not be the most sci­en­tif­ic (the sci­ence is read­i­ly avail­able online). But his­to­ry can act as a reli­able guide for under­stand­ing pat­terns of human behav­ior.

In 1796, Scot­tish physi­cian Edward Jen­ner dis­cov­ered how an injec­tion of cow­pox-infect­ed human bio­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al could make humans immune to small­pox. For the next 100 years after this break­through, resis­tance to inoc­u­la­tion grew into “an enor­mous mass move­ment,” says Yale his­to­ri­an of med­i­cine Frank Snow­den. “There was a rejec­tion of vac­ci­na­tion on polit­i­cal grounds that it was wide­ly con­sid­ered as anoth­er form of tyran­ny.”

Fears that injec­tions of cow­pox would turn peo­ple into mutants with cow-like growths were sat­i­rized as ear­ly as 1802 by car­toon­ist James Gilray (below). While the anti-vac­ci­na­tion move­ment may seem rel­a­tive­ly new, the resis­tance, refusal, and denial­ism are as old as vac­ci­na­tions to infec­tious dis­ease in the West.

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“In the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, British peo­ple final­ly had access to the first vac­cine in his­to­ry, one that promised to pro­tect them from small­pox, among the dead­liest dis­eases in the era,” writes Jess McHugh at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Small­pox killed around 4,000 peo­ple a year in the UK and left hun­dreds more dis­fig­ured or blind­ed. Nonethe­less, “many Britons were skep­ti­cal of the vac­cine.… The side effects they dread­ed were far more ter­ri­fy­ing: blind­ness, deaf­ness, ulcers, a grue­some skin con­di­tion called ‘cow­pox mange’ — even sprout­ing hoofs and horns.” Giv­ing a per­son one dis­ease to fright­en off anoth­er one prob­a­bly seemed just as absurd a notion as turn­ing into a human/cow hybrid.

Jen­ner’s method, called var­i­o­la­tion, was out­lawed in 1840 as safer vac­ci­na­tions replaced it. By 1867, all British chil­dren up to age 14 were required by law to be vac­ci­nat­ed against small­pox. Wide­spread out­rage result­ed, even among promi­nent physi­cians and sci­en­tists, and con­tin­ued for decades. “Every day the vac­ci­na­tion laws remain in force,” wrote sci­en­tist Alfred Rus­sel Wal­lace in 1898, “par­ents are being pun­ished, infants are being killed.” In fact, it was small­pox claim­ing lives, “more than 400,000 lives per year through­out the 19th cen­tu­ry, accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion,” writes Eliz­a­beth Earl at The Atlantic. “Epi­dem­ic dis­ease was a fact of life at the time.” And so it is again. Covid has killed almost 800,000 peo­ple in the U.S. alone over the past two years.

 

Then as now, med­ical quack­ery played its part in vac­cine refusal — in this case a much larg­er part. “Nev­er was the lie of ‘the good old days’ more clear than in med­i­cine,” Greig Wat­son writes at BBC News. “The 1841 UK cen­sus sug­gest­ed a third of doc­tors were unqual­i­fied.” Com­mon caus­es of ill­ness in an 1848 med­ical text­book includ­ed “wet feet,” “pas­sion­ate fear or rage,” and “dis­eased par­ents.” Among the many fiery lec­tures, car­i­ca­tures, and pam­phlets issued by oppo­nents of vac­ci­na­tion, one 1805 tract by William Row­ley, a mem­ber of the Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, alleged that the injec­tion of cow­pox could mar an entire blood­line. “Who would mar­ry into any fam­i­ly, at the risk of their off­spring hav­ing filthy beast­ly dis­eases?” it asked hys­ter­i­cal­ly.

Then, as now, reli­gion was a moti­vat­ing fac­tor. “One can see it in bib­li­cal terms as human beings cre­at­ed in the image of God,” says Snow­den. “The vac­ci­na­tion move­ment inject­ing into human bod­ies this mate­r­i­al from an infe­ri­or ani­mal was seen as irre­li­gious, blas­phe­mous and med­ical­ly wrong.” Grant­ed, those who vol­un­teered to get vac­ci­nat­ed had to place their faith in the insti­tu­tions of sci­ence and gov­ern­ment. After med­ical scan­dals of the recent past like the Tuskegee exper­i­ments or Thalido­mide, that can be a big ask. In the 19th cen­tu­ry, says med­ical his­to­ri­an Kristin Hussey, “peo­ple were ask­ing ques­tions about rights, espe­cial­ly work­ing-class rights. There was a sense the upper class were try­ing to take advan­tage, a feel­ing of dis­trust.”

The deep dis­trust of insti­tu­tions now seems intractable and ful­ly endem­ic in our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, and much of it may be ful­ly war­rant­ed. But no virus has evolved — since the time of the Jen­ner’s first small­pox inoc­u­la­tion — to care about our pol­i­tics, reli­gious beliefs, or feel­ings about author­i­ty or indi­vid­ual rights. With­out wide­spread vac­ci­na­tion, virus­es are more than hap­py to exploit our lack of immu­ni­ty, and they do so with­out pity or com­punc­tion.

via Wash­ing­ton Post

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Dying in the Name of Vac­cine Free­dom

How Vac­cines Improved Our World In One Graph­ic

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

Elvis Pres­ley Gets the Polio Vac­cine on The Ed Sul­li­van Show, Per­suad­ing Mil­lions to Get Vac­ci­nat­ed (1956)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Fascinating 3D Animation Shows the Depths of the Ocean

in Animation, Nature, Science | November 9th, 2021

Deep sea explo­ration and the sci­ence of oceanog­ra­phy began 150 years ago when British sur­vey ship HMS Chal­lenger set off from Portsmouth with 181 miles of rope. The Roy­al Soci­ety tasked the expe­di­tion, among oth­er things, with “investigat[ing] the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of the deep sea… in regard to depth, tem­per­a­ture cir­cu­la­tion, spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty and pen­e­tra­tion of light.” It was the first such voy­age of its kind.

To accom­plish its objec­tives, Chal­lenger swapped all but two of its guns for spe­cial­ized equip­ment, includ­ing — as assis­tant ship’s stew­ard Joseph Matkin described in a let­ter home — “thou­sands of small air tight bot­tles and lit­tle box­es about the size of Valen­tine box­es packed in Iron Tanks for keep­ing spec­i­mens in, insects, but­ter­flies, moss­es, plants, etc… a pho­to­graph­ic room on the main deck, also a dis­sect­ing room for carv­ing up Bears, Whales, etc.”

Find­ings from the four-year voy­age totaled almost thir­ty-thou­sand pages when pub­lished in a report. But the Chal­lenger’s most famous lega­cy may be its dis­cov­ery of the Mar­i­ana Trench. The ship record­ed a sound­ing of 4,475 fath­oms (26,850 ft.) in a south­ern part of the trench sub­se­quent­ly called Chal­lenger Deep, and now known as the deep­est part of the ocean and the “low­est point on Earth.” The most recent sound­ings using advanced sonar have mea­sured its depth at some­where between 35,768 to 36,037 feet, or almost 7 miles (11 kilo­me­ters).

Chal­lenger Deep is so deep that if Ever­est were sub­merged into its depths, the moun­tain’s peak would still be rough­ly a mile and a half under­wa­ter. In 1960, a manned crew of two descend­ed into the trench. Dozens of remote oper­at­ed vehi­cles (ROVs) have explored its depths since, but it would­n’t be until 2012 that anoth­er human made the 2.5 hour descent, when Avatar and The Abyss direc­tor James Cameron financed his own expe­di­tion. Then in 2019, explor­er Vic­tor Vescoso made the jour­ney, set­ting the Guin­ness world record for deep­est manned sub­ma­rine dive when he reached the East­ern Pool, a depres­sion with­in Chal­lenger Deep. Just last year, he best­ed the record with his mis­sion spe­cial­ist John Rost, explor­ing the East­ern Pool for over four hours.

Last year’s descent brings the total num­ber of peo­ple to vis­it Chal­lenger Deep to five. How can the rest of us wrap our heads around a point so deep beneath us it can swal­low up Mount Ever­est? The beau­ti­ful­ly detailed, 3D ani­ma­tion at the top of the post does a great job of con­vey­ing the rel­a­tive depths of oceans, seas, and major lakes, show­ing under­sea tun­nels and ship­wrecks along the way, with man­made objects like the Eif­fel Tow­er (which marks, with­in a few meters, the deep­est scu­ba dive) and Burj Khal­i­fa placed at inter­vals for scale.

By the time the ani­ma­tion — cre­at­ed by Meta­Ball­Stu­dios’ Alvaro Gra­cia Mon­toya– sub­merges us ful­ly (with boom­ing, echo­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment) in the Mar­i­ana Trench, we may feel that we have had a lit­tle taste of the awe that lies at the deep­est ocean depths.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

What the Earth Would Look Like If We Drained the Water from the Oceans

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

Film­mak­er James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future on The David Letterman Show (1980)

in Sci Fi, Science, Television | November 2nd, 2021

In 1980, Newsweek pub­lished a can­tan­ker­ous and sad­ly on-the-nose diag­no­sis of the Unit­ed States’ “cult of igno­rance” — writ­ten by one Isaac Asi­mov, “pro­fes­sor of bio­chem­istry at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine” and “author of 212 books, most of them on var­i­ous sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects for the gen­er­al pub­lic.” Giv­en this intim­i­dat­ing biog­ra­phy, and the fact that Asi­mov believed that “hard­ly any­one can read” in the U.S., we might expect the sci­ence fic­tion leg­end want­ed noth­ing to do with tele­vi­sion. We would be wrong.

Asi­mov seemed to love TV. In 1987, for exam­ple, the four-time Hugo win­ner wrote a humor­ous­ly crit­i­cal take­down of ALF for TV Guide. And he was a con­sum­mate TV enter­tain­er, mak­ing his first major TV appear­ance on John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1968, appear­ing four times on The Mike Dou­glas Show in the next few years, and giv­ing his final tele­vi­sion inter­views to Dick Cavett in a two-part series in 1989. The same year he wrote about America’s cult of igno­rance, he appeared on The David Let­ter­man show to crack wise with the biggest wiseass on TV. Asi­mov held his own and then some.

“Asi­mov, six­ty in this video, proves him­self a nat­ur­al come­di­an,” writes the Melville House blog; “Let­ter­man, thir­ty-three, can bare­ly keep up.” Sure­ly Asimov’s ban­ter had noth­ing to do with The David Let­ter­man Show’s can­cel­la­tion three days lat­er. (Let­ter­man was back on the air for eleven sea­sons two years lat­er.) Their inter­view ranges wide­ly from pop cul­ture (Asi­mov con­fess­es his appre­ci­a­tion for both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back) to “the future of med­i­cine, space explo­ration, hope for mankind, and much more,” Vic Sage writes at Pop Cul­ture Retro­ra­ma.

Asimov’s dry deliv­ery — honed dur­ing his Eng­lish-and-Yid­dish-speak­ing Brook­lyn child­hood — is delight­ful. But the writer, teacher, and sci­en­tist hasn’t only come on TV to crack jokes, pro­mote a book, and flaunt his mut­ton­chops. He wants to edu­cate his fel­low Amer­i­cans about the state of the future. (His Newsweek bio was out­dat­ed. As Let­ter­man says, his appear­ance marked the pub­li­ca­tion of his 221st book.) Like Hari Sel­don, the hero of his 1951 nov­el Foun­da­tion, Asi­mov felt con­fi­dent in his abil­i­ty to pre­dict the course of human progress (or regress, as the case may be).

He also felt con­fi­dent answer­ing ques­tions about what to do with out­er space, and where to “put more men,” as Let­ter­man says. His rec­om­men­da­tion to build “fac­to­ries” may strike us as a banal fore­run­ner of Jeff Bezos’ even more banal plans for office parks in space. Asi­mov boasts of the vision he had of “pock­et com­put­ers” in 1950 — hard­ly a real­i­ty in 1980. Dave com­plains about how com­pli­cat­ed com­put­ers are, and Asi­mov accu­rate­ly pre­dicts that as tech­nol­o­gy catch­es up, they will get sim­pler to use. “But these are lit­tle things,” he says. “I nev­er tried to pre­dict. I just tried to write sto­ries to pay my way through col­lege.” He must have paid it sev­er­al times over, and he seemed to get more right than he got wrong. See more of Asi­mov’s pre­dic­tions in the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future of Civilization–and Rec­om­mends Ways to Ensure That It Sur­vives (1978)

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today

Isaac Asi­mov Laments the “Cult of Igno­rance” in the Unit­ed States (1980)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Brilliant Demonstration of Magnets & the Promise of Levitating Trains (1975)

in Science, Technology | October 7th, 2021

For a brief time in the 1980s, it seemed like trains pow­ered by maglev — mag­net­ic lev­i­ta­tion — might just solve trans­porta­tion prob­lems every­where, maybe even replac­ing air trav­el, there­by elim­i­nat­ing one of the most vex­ing sources of car­bon emis­sions. Maglev trains don’t use fuel; they don’t require very much pow­er by com­par­i­son with oth­er sources of high speed trav­el; they don’t pro­duce emis­sions; they’re qui­et, require less main­te­nance than oth­er trains, and can trav­el at speeds of 300 mph and more. In fact, the fastest maglev train to date, unveiled this past sum­mer in Qing­dao, Chi­na, can reach speeds of up to 373 miles per hour (600 kph).

So, why isn’t the plan­et criss-crossed by maglev trains? asks Dave Hall at The Guardian, cit­ing the fact that the first maglev train was launched in the UK in 1984, after which Ger­many, Japan, and Chi­na fol­lowed suit. It seems to come down, as such things do, to “polit­i­cal will.” With­out sig­nif­i­cant com­mit­ment from gov­ern­ments to reshape the trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture of their coun­tries, maglev trains remain a dream, the mono­rails of the future that nev­er mate­ri­al­ize. Even in Chi­na, where gov­ern­ment man­date can insti­tute mass changes at will, the devel­op­ment of maglev trains has not meant their deploy­ment. The new train could, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, fer­ry trav­el­ers between Shang­hai to Bei­jing in 2.5 hours… if it had the track.

Per­haps some­day the world will catch up with maglev trains, an idea over a cen­tu­ry old. (The first patents for maglev tech­nol­o­gy were filed by a French-born Amer­i­can engi­neer named Emile Bachelet in the 1910s.) Until then, the rest of us can edu­cate our­selves on the tech­nol­o­gy of trains that use mag­net­ic lev­i­ta­tion with the 1975 video les­son above from British engi­neer and pro­fes­sor Eric Laith­waite (Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don), who “decon­structs the fas­ci­nat­ing physics at work behind his plans for a maglev trains, which he first mod­elled in the 1940s and per­fect­ed in the 1970s,” notes Aeon. “Well-regard­ed in his time as both a lec­tur­er and an engi­neer, Laith­waite presents a series of demon­stra­tions that build, step by step, until he final­ly unveils a small maglev train mod­el.”

Laithwaite’s small-scale demon­stra­tion would even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nate in the first com­mer­cial maglev train almost a decade lat­er at Birm­ing­ham Air­port. Here, he begins where sci­ence begins, with an admis­sion of igno­rance. “Per­ma­nent mag­nets are dif­fi­cult things to under­stand,” he says. “In fact, if we’re absolute­ly hon­est with our­selves, we don’t under­stand them.” The good pro­fes­sor then briskly moves on to demon­strate what he does know — enough to build a lev­i­tat­ing train. Learn much more about the his­to­ry and tech­nol­o­gy of maglev trains at How Stuff Works, and keep your eyes on the North­east Maglev project, a devel­op­ing Super­con­duct­ing Maglev train that promis­es trav­el between New York and Wash­ing­ton, DC in one hour flat.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Fly­ing Train: A 1902 Film Cap­tures a Futur­is­tic Ride on a Sus­pend­ed Rail­way in Ger­many

In 1900, a Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Had to Cre­ate an Enor­mous 1,400-Pound Cam­era to Take a Pic­ture of an Entire Train

Free Online Physics Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Footage of the Last Known Tasmanian Tiger Restored in Color (1933)

in Nature, Science | October 5th, 2021

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice announced that near­ly two dozen wildlife species would be removed from the endan­gered species list, as CNN report­ed, includ­ing the ivory-billed wood­peck­er, “the Bachman’s war­bler, two species of fresh­wa­ter fish­es, eight species of South­east­ern fresh­wa­ter mus­sels and 11 species from Hawaii and the Pacif­ic Islands.” This is not good news. The ani­mals have been delist­ed because they’ve been added to a list of extinct crea­tures, one that grows longer each year.

Most of us have seen few, if any, of these ani­mals and can­not grasp the scope of their loss. What does it mean to say there are no more Bachman’s war­blers left on Earth? Species wiped out by cli­mate change, over­farm­ing, over­fish­ing, or the encroach­ment of humans and inva­sive species can feel far away from us, their loss a dis­tant tragedy; or extinc­tion can seem inevitable, like that of the Dodo or Sicil­ian wolf, crea­tures that seem too fan­tas­tic for the world we now inhab­it. So too, the dog-like mar­su­pi­al Tas­man­ian tiger — or thy­lacine — an ani­mal that lived as recent­ly as 1936 when the last rep­re­sen­ta­tive of its species, named Ben­jamin, died in cap­tiv­i­ty in Aus­tralia.

The thy­lacine looks like an evo­lu­tion­ary odd­i­ty, too weird to sur­vive. But this judg­ment is a mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of Dar­win­ism as egre­gious as the idea that only the “fittest,” i.e. those who can take good beat­ing, sur­vive. The day Ben­jamin died, Sep­tem­ber 7, has been com­mem­o­rat­ed in Aus­tralia as Nation­al Threat­ened Species Day, which rais­es aware­ness about the hun­dreds of plant and ani­mal species close to extinc­tion. The day also cel­e­brates the hun­dreds of species found nowhere else in the world, ani­mals that could come to seem to us in the near future as strange and exot­ic as the thy­lacine — a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of con­ver­gent evo­lu­tion: a mar­su­pi­al canid that evolved com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent­ly of wolves, dogs, and oth­er canine species with which it had no con­tact what­so­ev­er until the British arrived.

Found only on the island of Tas­ma­nia by the time of Euro­pean set­tle­ment, thy­lacine pop­u­la­tions were destroyed by dis­ease, dogs, and, pri­mar­i­ly, human hunters. Before the final mem­ber of the species died, they were kept in zoos and cap­tured on silent film by nat­u­ral­ists like David Fleay, who shot the black-and-white footage just above of Ben­jamin at Beau­maris Zoo in Hobart, Tas­ma­nia. In the video at the top, we can see the same footage in vivid col­or — and full dig­i­tal restora­tion — thanks to Samuel François-Steininger and his Paris-based com­pa­ny Com­pos­ite Films.

Sent an HDR (High Dynam­ic Range) scan of the film by the Nation­al Film and Sound Archive of Aus­tralia (NFSA), François-Steininger had to make a lot of inter­pre­tive choic­es. Next to “orig­i­nal skins pre­served in muse­ums,” the NFSA notes, his team “had to rely on sketch­es and paint­ings because of the lack of orig­i­nal col­or pic­tures or footage that could be used for research.” While there are 9 short film clips of the ani­mals from the Lon­don and Hobart zoos, these are all, of course, in black and white. “Writ­ten descrip­tions of the thy­lacine’s coat gave them a gen­er­al idea of the tints and shades present in the fur, infor­ma­tion they sup­ple­ment­ed with sci­en­tif­ic draw­ings and recent 3D col­or ren­der­ings of the ani­mal.” The results are incred­i­bly nat­ur­al-look­ing and star­tling­ly imme­di­ate.

Are the thy­lacine, Bach­man’s war­bler, and oth­er extinct species vic­tims of the Anthro­pocene? Will our chil­dren’s chil­dren chil­dren watch films of polar bears and koalas and won­der how our plan­et could have con­tained such won­ders? Geo­log­i­cal epochs deal with “mile-thick pack­ages of rock stacked up over tens of mil­lions of years,” Peter Bran­nen writes at The Atlantic, and thus it over­states the case to call the last four cen­turies of cli­mate change and mass extinc­tion an “Anthro­pocene.” The word names “a thought exper­i­ment” rather than a span of deep time in Earth’s his­to­ry. But from the per­spec­tive of crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered species — maybe to include, even­tu­al­ly, humans them­selves — the trans­for­ma­tions of the present seem square­ly focused on our reck­less behav­ior and its effects on habi­tats we nev­er see.

We are far less impor­tant to geo­log­i­cal time than we think, Bran­nen argues, but it does, indeed, seem up to us at the moment whether there is a future on Earth filled with plant, ani­mal, and yes, human, life:

We haven’t earned an Anthro­pocene epoch yet. If some­day in the dis­tant future we have, it will be an astound­ing tes­ta­ment to a species that, after a col­icky, globe-threat­en­ing infan­cy, learned that it was not sep­a­rate from Earth his­to­ry, but a con­tigu­ous part of the sys­tems that have kept this mirac­u­lous mar­ble world hab­it­able for bil­lions of years.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Are You Ready for the Return of Lost Species?: Stew­art Brand on the Dawn of De-Extinc­tion

The Pra­do Muse­um Dig­i­tal­ly Alters Four Mas­ter­pieces to Strik­ing­ly Illus­trate the Impact of Cli­mate Change

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Italian Physicist Laura Bassi Became the First Woman to Have an Academic Career in the 18th Century

in Gender, History, Physics, Science | September 16th, 2021

The prac­tice and priv­i­lege of aca­d­e­m­ic sci­ence has been slow in trick­ling down from its ori­gins as a pur­suit of leisured gen­tle­man. While many a leisured lady may have tak­en an inter­est in sci­ence, math, or phi­los­o­phy, most women were denied par­tic­i­pa­tion in aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions and schol­ar­ly soci­eties dur­ing the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion of the 1700s. Only a hand­ful of women — sev­en known in total — were grant­ed doc­tor­al degrees before the year 1800. It wasn’t until 1678 that a female schol­ar was giv­en the dis­tinc­tion, some four cen­turies or so after the doc­tor­ate came into being. While sev­er­al intel­lec­tu­als and even cler­ics of the time held pro­gres­sive atti­tudes about gen­der and edu­ca­tion, they were a decid­ed minor­i­ty.

Curi­ous­ly, four of the first sev­en women to earn doc­tor­al degrees were from Italy, begin­ning with Ele­na Cornaro Pis­copia at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pad­ua. Next came Lau­ra Bassi, who earned her degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna in 1732. There she dis­tin­guished her­self in physics, math­e­mat­ics, and nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy and became the first salaried woman to teach at a uni­ver­si­ty (she was at one time the university’s high­est paid employ­ee). Bassi was the chief pop­u­lar­iz­er of New­ton­ian physics in Italy in the 18th cen­tu­ry and enjoyed sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from the Arch­bish­op of Bologna, Pros­pero Lam­ber­ti­ni, who — when he became Pope Bene­dict XIV — elect­ed her as the 24th mem­ber of an elite sci­en­tif­ic soci­ety called the Benedet­ti­ni.

“Bassi was wide­ly admired as an excel­lent exper­i­menter and one of the best teach­ers of New­ton­ian physics of her gen­er­a­tion,” says Paula Find­len, Stan­ford pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry. “She inspired some of the most impor­tant male sci­en­tists of the next gen­er­a­tion while also serv­ing as a pub­lic exam­ple of a woman shap­ing the nature of knowl­edge in an era in which few women could imag­ine play­ing such a role.” She also played the role avail­able to most women of the time as a moth­er of eight and wife of Giuseppe Ver­at­ti, also a sci­en­tist.

Bassi was not allowed to teach class­es of men at the uni­ver­si­ty — only spe­cial lec­tures open to the pub­lic. But in 1740, she was grant­ed per­mis­sion to lec­ture at her home, and her fame spread, as Find­len writes at Physics World:

 Bassi was wide­ly known through­out Europe, and as far away as Amer­i­ca, as the woman who under­stood New­ton. The insti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion that she received, how­ev­er, made her the emblem­at­ic female sci­en­tist of her gen­er­a­tion. A uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate, salaried pro­fes­sor and aca­d­e­mi­cian (a mem­ber of a pres­ti­gious acad­e­my), Bassi may well have been the first woman to have embarked upon a full-fledged sci­en­tif­ic career.

Poems were writ­ten about Bassi’s suc­cess­es in demon­strat­ing New­ton­ian optics; “news of her accom­plish­ments trav­eled far and wide,” reach­ing the ear of Ben­jamin Franklin, whose work with elec­tric­i­ty Bassi fol­lowed keen­ly. In Bologna, sur­prise at Bassi’s achieve­ments was tem­pered by a cul­ture known for “cel­e­brat­ing female suc­cess.” Indeed, the city was “jok­ing­ly known as a ‘par­adise for women,’” writes Find­len. Bassi’s father was deter­mined that she have an edu­ca­tion equal to any of her class, and her fam­i­ly inher­it­ed mon­ey that had been equal­ly divid­ed between daugh­ters and sons for gen­er­a­tions; her sons “found them­selves heirs to the prop­er­ty that came to the fam­i­ly through Laura’s mater­nal line,” notes the Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty col­lec­tion of Bassi’s per­son­al papers.

Bassi’s aca­d­e­m­ic work is held at the Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in Bologna. Of the papers that sur­vive, “thir­teen are on physics, eleven are on hydraulics, two are on math­e­mat­ics, one is on mechan­ics, one is on tech­nol­o­gy, and one is on chem­istry,” writes a Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrew’s biog­ra­phy. In 1776, a year usu­al­ly remem­bered for the for­ma­tion of a gov­ern­ment of leisured men across the Atlantic, Bassi was appoint­ed to the Chair of Exper­i­men­tal Physics at Bologna, an appoint­ment that not only meant her hus­band became her assis­tant, but also that she became the “first woman appoint­ed to a chair of physics at any uni­ver­si­ty in the world.”

Bologna was proud of its dis­tin­guished daugh­ter, but per­haps still thought of her as an odd­i­ty and a token. As Dr. Eleono­ra Ada­mi notes in a charm­ing biog­ra­phy at sci-fi illus­trat­ed sto­ries, the city once struck a medal in her hon­or, “com­mem­o­rat­ing her first lec­ture series with the phrase ‘Soli cui fas vidisse Min­er­vam,’” which trans­lates rough­ly to “the only one allowed to see Min­er­va.” But her exam­ple inspired oth­er women, like Cristi­na Roc­cati, who earned a doc­tor­ate from Bologna in 1750, and Dorothea Erxleben, who became the first woman to earn a Doc­tor­ate in Med­i­cine four years lat­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Halle. Such sin­gu­lar suc­cess­es did not change the patri­ar­chal cul­ture of acad­e­mia, but they start­ed the trick­le that would in time become sev­er­al branch­ing streams of women suc­ceed­ing in the sci­ences.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Per­son to Win Twice, and the Only Per­son in His­to­ry to Win in Two Dif­fer­ent Sci­ences

Joce­lyn Bell Bur­nell Changed Astron­o­my For­ev­er; Her Ph.D. Advi­sor Won the Nobel Prize for It

Women Sci­en­tists Launch a Data­base Fea­tur­ing the Work of 9,000 Women Work­ing in the Sci­ences

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

The Lit­tle-Known Female Sci­en­tists Who Mapped 400,000 Stars Over a Cen­tu­ry Ago: An Intro­duc­tion to the “Har­vard Com­put­ers”

Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Sci­ence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Mushroom Time-Lapses Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pioneering Time-Lapse Cinematography Behind the Netflix Documentary Fantastic Fungi

in Biology, Film, K-12, Nature, Photography, Science | September 3rd, 2021

Mush­rooms are hav­ing a moment, thanks in part to pio­neer­ing time-lapse cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Louie Schwartzberg’s doc­u­men­tary Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi.

Now stream­ing on Net­flix, the film has giv­en rise to a bumper crop of funghi fantat­ics, who sprang up like, well, mush­rooms, to join the exist­ing ranks of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, culi­nary fans, week­end for­agers, ama­teur grow­ers, and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers.

Schwartzberg, who ear­li­er visu­al­ized pol­li­na­tion from the flower’s point of view in the Meryl Streep-nar­rat­ed Wings of Life, is a true believ­er in the pow­er of mush­rooms, cit­ing funghi’s role in soil cre­ation and health, and their poten­tial for rem­e­dy­ing a num­ber of press­ing glob­al prob­lems, as well as a host of human ail­ments.

Fan­tas­tic Funghi focus­es on sev­en pil­lars of ben­e­fits brought to the table by the fun­gal king­dom and its Inter­net-like under­ground net­work of myceli­um:

  1. Bio­di­ver­si­ty

A num­ber of projects are explor­ing the ways in which the myceli­um world can pull us back from the bring of  deser­ti­za­tion, water short­age, food short­age, bee colony col­lapse, tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants, nuclear dis­as­ters, oil spills, plas­tic pol­lu­tion, and glob­al warm­ing.

  1. Inno­va­tion

Mush­room-relat­ed indus­tries are eager to press funghi into ser­vice as envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able faux leather, build­ing mate­ri­als, pack­ag­ing, and meat alter­na­tives.

  1. Food

From fine din­ing to for­ag­ing off-the-grid, mush­rooms are prized for their culi­nary and nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits.

  1. Phys­i­cal Health and Well­ness

Will the hum­ble mush­room prove mighty enough to do an end run around pow­er­ful drug com­pa­nies as a source of inte­gra­tive med­i­cine to help com­bat dia­betes, liv­er dis­ease, inflam­ma­tion, insom­nia and cog­ni­tive decline?

  1. Men­tal Health

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins, UCLA, and NYU are run­ning clin­i­cal tri­als on the ben­e­fits of psy­che­del­ic psilo­cy­bin mush­rooms as a tool for treat­ing addic­tion, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, PTSD and sui­ci­dal ideation.

  1. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty

Of course, there’s also a rich tra­di­tion of reli­gions and indi­vid­ual seek­ers deploy­ing mind alter­ing psy­choac­tive mush­rooms as a form of sacra­ment or a tool for plumb­ing the mys­ter­ies of life.

  1. The Arts

Direc­tor Schwartzberg under­stand­ably views mush­rooms as muse, a fit­ting sub­ject for pho­tog­ra­phy, music, film, poet­ry, art and oth­er cre­ative endeav­ors.

 

With regard to this final pil­lar, many view­ers may be sur­prised to learn how much of the 15 years Schwartzberg ded­i­cat­ed to cap­tur­ing the exquis­ite cycle of fun­gal regen­er­a­tion and decom­po­si­tion took place indoors.

As he explains in the Wired video above, his pre­ci­sion equip­ment excels at cap­tur­ing devel­op­ment that’s invis­i­ble to the human eye, but is no match for such nat­ur­al world dis­rup­tions as insects and wind.

Instead, he and his team built con­trolled grow­ing envi­ron­ments, where high­ly sen­si­tive time lapse cam­eras, dol­lies, timed grow lights, and more cin­e­mat­ic light­ing instru­ments could be left in place.

Set dress­ings of moss and logs, cou­pled with a very short depth of field helped to bring the Great Out­doors onscreen, with occa­sion­al chro­makeyed panora­mas of the nat­ur­al world fill­ing in the gaps.

Even in such lab-like con­di­tions, cer­tain ele­ments were nec­es­sar­i­ly left to chance. Mush­rooms grow noto­ri­ous­ly quick­ly, and even with con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and cal­cu­la­tions, there was plen­ty of poten­tial for one of his stars to miss their mark, shoot­ing out of frame.

Just one of the ways that mush­rooms and humans oper­ate on rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent time­lines. The direc­tor bowed to the shrooms, return­ing to square one on the fre­quent occa­sions when a sequence got away from him.

Pro­vid­ing view­ers an immer­sive expe­ri­ence of the under­ground myceli­um net­work required high pow­ered micro­scopes, a sol­id cement floor, and a bit of movie mag­ic to finesse. What you see in the final cut is the work of CGI ani­ma­tors, who used Schwartzberg’s footage as their blue­print.

Net­flix sub­scribers can stream Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi for free.

From Octo­ber 15 — 17, film­mak­er Louie Schwartzberg is host­ing a free, vir­tu­al Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi Glob­al Sum­mit. Reg­is­ter here.

You can also browse his col­lec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty mush­room recipes and sub­mit your own, down­load Fan­tas­tic Fungi’s Stoned Ape poster, or have a ram­ble through a trove of relat­ed videos and arti­cles in the Mush Room.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cage Had a Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Dis­cov­er the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Brood X Cicadas are her mush­rooms. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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