There was no Axial “Age”

IT’S an idea that has been influential for more than 200 years: around the middle of the first millennium BC, humanity passed through a psychological watershed and became modern. This ‘Axial Age’ transformed an archaic world of divine rulers, slavery and human sacrifice into a more enlightened era that valued social justice, family values and the rule of law. The appeal of the general concept is such that some have claimed humanity is now experiencing a second Axial Age driven by rapid population growth and technological change. Yet according to the largest ever cross-cultural survey of historical and archaeological data, the first of these ages never happened — or at least unfolded differently from the originally proposed narrative…

This article was first published in Nature on 9 December 2019. To continue reading, click here.

History as a giant data set

IN its first issue of 2010, the scientific journal Nature looked forward to a dazzling decade of progress. By 2020, experimental devices connected to the internet would deduce our search queries by directly monitoring our brain signals. Crops would exist that doubled their biomass in three hours. Humanity would be well on the way to ending its dependency on fossil fuels…

This article first appeared in The Guardian on 12 November 2019. To continue reading, click here.

Who owns life?

NEXT week, delegates will gather in Rome to discuss a question that could have profound implications for global biodiversity, food security and public health. Stripped of technical language, it boils down to this: who owns life? …

This article was first published in New Scientist on 6 November 2019. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

 

 

Tongue twisters

IN 1882, linguists were electrified by the publication of a lost language—one supposedly spoken by the extinct Taensa people of Louisiana—because it bore hardly any relation to the languages of other Native American peoples of that region. The Taensa grammar was so unusual they were convinced it could teach them something momentous either about the region’s history, or the way that languages evolve, or both…

This article was first published in Slate on 30 October 2019. To continue reading, click here.

PAUSE for thought

THE UK might have been too busy refusing visas to the children of foreign academics to have noticed that academic freedom is under threat again – but France has been paying attention. Last week its minister for higher education, research and innovation announced that she was putting more money into supporting scholars fleeing repressive regimes…

This article was first published on 18 October 2019. To continue reading, buy the issue…

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