Category: Journalism
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Wonder women
THE young man, no older than 25, had gone to the afterlife with an opulent assortment of grave goods, including an entire elephant tusk. Archaeologists who excavated his 5000-year-old remains in 2008 from a site near Seville, Spain, dubbed him the “Ivory Man” and suggested that he might have been the most important person on…
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Science on the catwalk
IRIS van Herpen leads photographer Ilvy Njiokiktjien and me into a cluttered storeroom and I shut the door. “Ooh!” we gasp, as we gaze at a board that van Herpen holds up in the darkness. Outside the room, the board looked much like a child’s glue painting, with silicone piping arranged on it in a…
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Should babies vote?
TWO years ago, Alisa Perales sued California and the US government because they wouldn’t let her vote. The academically gifted Perales, who was eight years old at the time, argued that the rule excluding under-18s from democracy, which is enshrined in the US constitution, amounted to age discrimination… This article first appeared in The Guardian on…
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How migrants shape language
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ABOUT 5,000 years ago, a group of herders living in the grasslands north of the Black Sea headed west, taking their animals with them. They got as far as the Carpathian Basin — the western extremity of the vast Eurasian steppe centered on modern Hungary — but their descendants pushed farther, and within 1,000 years…
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Could English ever die?
GIVEN that a staggering 1,500 languages could vanish by the end of this century, by some estimates – close to a quarter of the world’s total – some may find it obscene to even ask this question. English is certainly not on the endangered list. As the one truly global language, it is more often…
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Forensic science’s identity crisis
WHEN does context become bias? It’s a question that engenders anxiety in many scientific disciplines, and with good reason. Information about a patient’s family history may nudge a doctor towards the right diagnosis, or tip them towards a wrong one. Awareness of a suspect’s criminal past may help an investigator read a crime scene correctly,…
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Multilingual world
AS the chancellor searches for ways to stimulate growth, here’s a reminder to her – on the International Day of Multilingualism – that she’s sitting on a huge pot of gold. In 2014, the all-party parliamentary group on modern languages estimated that the UK’s untapped linguistic potential was worth£48bn. It’s £8bn more than Reeves added…
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Mythology-ology
ONCE upon a time, a strong, attractive hero lost one or both of his parents. He then overcame a series of obstacles and faced off against a monster that had terrorised his community. The hero vanquished the monster and was celebrated… This article first appeared in New Scientist on 11 March 2025. To continue reading, click here…
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Covid – five years in
ONCE, we all respectfully listened to what epidemiologists said. We queued up for vaccines, observed distancing lines and confidently asked unmasked passengers on public transport to cover their faces. A tyrannical virus ruled over us, and we did everything in our power to limit its ravages… This article first appeared in The Guardian on 9…
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Celtic mystery
SAINT Patrick, whose feast day is celebrated on 17 March, left behind two short works in Latin, but he probably spoke a Celtic language. By the time he was saving Irish souls in the fifth century AD, linguists are pretty sure that Celtic was spoken throughout Britain and Ireland. When Celtic first arrived in those…