The New Yorker published a lengthy piece and thoughtful piece by Ariel Levy regarding the hallucenogenic brew ayahuasca. The article delves into the history and neurochemistry of this mixture of chacruna leaves (containing the psychedelics) and banisteriopsis caapi vine (which… Continue Reading
A well-preserved 2,000-year-old skeleton of a young man found on the famous Antikythera shipwreck could provide the first DNA evidence recovered from an ancient sunken boat, archaeologists reported. Divers discovered the skeletal remains of the man, possibly a crewmember of… Continue Reading
he authenticity of the Grolier Codex has been disputed for the last four decades. A group of researchers who revisited the rare Maya text now argue that there’s no way it could be a forgery. If the 800-year-old Grolier Codex… Continue Reading
Newsworks reports on Elaine Pagels being awarded a National Humanities Medal for her decades of research and analysis of ancient Gnostic texts. The article begins: “Divine beings, visions, revelations and apocalypses, angels and resurrection—the Bible is filled with such fantastical… Continue Reading
It must have been something in the air. During a short time window at the end of the last ice age, Stone Age humans in Europe and Asia independently began using a new plant: cannabis. The founders of Western… Continue Reading
Fossil bones and stone tools can tell us a lot about human evolution, but certain dynamic behaviours of our fossil ancestors — things like how they moved and how individuals interacted with one another — are incredibly difficult to deduce… Continue Reading
By the time European explorers reached the islands scattered across the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean, most of the voyaging done by the Polynesians was among local island groups. But the locals seemed to know of places well beyond… Continue Reading
New archaeological evidence suggests that Brazilian capuchins have been using stone tools to crack open cashew nuts for at least 700 years. Researchers say, to date, they have found the earliest archaeological examples of monkey tool use outside of Africa.… Continue Reading
The University of Wollongong in Australia has made the entire back catalogue of influential psychedelic magazine OZ available for perusal online – for free! Their site says: “OZ magazine was published in Sydney, Australia, between 1963 and 1969 under the… Continue Reading
Almost 150 years after the first identification of Neanderthal skeletal material, the cognitive and symbolic abilities of these populations remain a subject of intense debate. We present 99 new Neanderthal remains from the Troisième caverne of Goyet (Belgium) dated to… Continue Reading