Scientists working in Blombos Cave in South Africa’s southern Cape region have made a discovery that changes our understanding of when our human ancestors started expressing themselves through drawings. They’ve found a 73 000-year-old cross-hatched drawing on a silcrete (stone) flake. It was made with an ochre crayon. The Conversation Africa asked Professor Christopher […]
The Ashkenazic Jews mysterious origins unravelled by scientists, with ancient DNA
Eran Elhaik, Lecturer in population, medical and evolutionary genomics, University of Sheffield – 5 September 2018 Where do the Jewish people come from? This is a question that anthopologists, historians and theologists have studied for millennia. According to mythology, the Judaeans descended from three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are buried in the Cave […]
The migration and differentiation of humans
It is thought that all people living today share a common genetic ancestor. The original Homo sapiens environment in eastern sub-Saharan Africa consisted of tropical and equatorial forests, savannahs, and riverine settings that suited their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Over thousands of years, evolution had optimized their physical characteristics for sustained occupation of their surroundings. Their range […]
Friend or foe? Watch the way a person moves
Kylie Steel, Lecturer in Motor Learning and Skill Acquisition,Western Sydney University Recognise that uncomfortable funny feeling when someone you don’t know is approaching you? Something about them makes you feel uneasy or that they could cause you harm. Scientific evidence indicates this is more than just learned behaviour: it’s a survival strategy, and something we […]
Where do names of the months originate?
Caillan Davenport, Senior Lecturer in Roman History, Macquarie University Our lives run on Roman time. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and public holidays are regulated by Pope Gregory XIII’s Gregorian Calendar, which is itself a modification of Julius Caesar’s calendar introduced in 45 B.C. The names of our months are therefore derived from the Roman gods, leaders, […]
Why we can’t spin silken yarn as strong as a spider can do
If we could tap in to the secrets of this material it could herald a revolution in manufacturing. A swathe of high performance materials could potentially be produced, such as ultra-tough ropes and cables, light-weight safety uniforms, super-strong and light cases, binding sutures and other medicinal materials. Sean Blamires, Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology, UNSW […]
SS Mendi bell recovered after 100 years
by Chris Szabo, defenceWeb The ship’s bell of the ill-fated SS Mendi has been recovered after decades of uncertainty about its whereabouts. The bell was left anonymously for a well-known local television personality in the southern English coastal town of Swanage. BBC reporter Steve Humphrey, one of the longest-serving journalists for BBC TV South, told defenceWeb […]
Rare skin disease links South Africa to an 18th Century French seaman
Keratolytic Winter Erythema (KWE) doesn’t affect the whole body but results in redness followed by peeling of thick pieces of skin on the palms and soles. Michèle Ramsay, Director of the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Professor in the Division of Human Genetics , University of the Witwatersrand and Thandiswa Ngcungcu, PhD candidate in […]
Evidence that dinosaurs were in decline 40 million years before the asteroid hit
We found clear evidence for a long-term decline from 40m years before the end of the Cretaceous period. We looked at all dinosaurs, and then each of the main subgroups. The only exceptions were the duck-billed dinosaurs (hadrosaurs) and the horned ceratopsians, both of which showed renewed bursts of evolving into new distinct species later […]
We have a right to die with dignity. The medical profession has a duty to assist
Anton van Niekerk, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director: Centre for Applied Ethics, Stellenbosch University Euthanasia represents one of the oldest issues in medical ethics. It is forbidden in the original Hippocratic Oath, and has consistently been opposed by most religious traditions since antiquity – other than, incidentally, abortion, which has only been formally banned […]