Philippa Kaur

By Michael Marshall
Ancient hunters may have made spear points or arrowheads out of human bone
David Lyons/Alamy

Stone Age hunters in northern Europe made the sharp ends of their weapons from a surprising raw material: human bone. The choice may have had a symbolic purpose, such as imbuing the arrows with the skill of a dead expert hunter.
Before the arrival of farmers, Europe was inhabited by Stone Age hunter-gatherers. They roamed a landscape very different to today. The planet was deep in a glacial period, so lots of water was locked up in ice sheets at the poles – and sea levels … More

By Colin Barras
The type of beads used in Chumash necklaces may also have been currency
Alamy Stock Photo

PEOPLE living in what is now California may have been the first Americans to invent money, according to a new analysis of shell beads produced 2000 years ago by the Chumash, a Native American community.
There is general agreement that money existed in the Americas before Europeans arrived. The Chumash’s beads, fashioned from the shells of purple dwarf olive sea snails (Olivella biplicata), are seen as a classic example of this.
“Almost all the scholars who focus on the Chumash have agreed that the shell beads were money,” says Lynn … More

This year, scientists took action to support Black Lives Matter. Let 2021 be your year to advance race justice, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Humans | Comment 16 December 2020
By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Michelle D’Urbano

ON MY desk in my home office I have a few items that keep me focused and inspired. I have an autographed photo of myself with Star Trek: Discovery star Sonequa Martin-Green, the first Black woman to helm a Star Trek series. Next to that, I have a Barbie Uhura in the box, autographed by Nichelle Nichols, the Black woman who played the first Black Star Trek character, along with an autographed, black-and-white picture of Nichols in costume. I also have a woodcarving of a famous Toni Morrison quote, “The function of freedom is to free someone …
Article amended on 21 December 2020
We have clarified the number of statements posted by P4J. More

The pandemic may have stolen many of the headlines of 2020, but this year has been a bumper year for other science, too. Can you remember it? Find out in our covid-free quiz

Humans 16 December 2020
By Bethan Ackerley

The Thwaites glacier in Antarctica
NASA

1 We kicked off 2020 with the cheery news that the “doomsday” Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is losing about 35 billion tonnes of ice per year. It is currently about the same size as which island?
A Ireland
B Great Britain
C New Guinea
D Java
2 On a lighter note, in June, we published pictures of Uraba lugens, a caterpillar that wears its old heads as a hat. How many times can it moult its head?
A 4
B 7
C 9
D 13
3 In September, we reported that astronomers may have … More

Failing fringe electro band Cosmic String have got a strange new gig, writes winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Adrian Tchaikovsky in his new short story Difficult Times

Humans 16 December 2020
By Adrian Tchaikovsky

Lucy Jones

“There’s a gig,” says Clawhammer Dougie Jones, or at least his little homunculus trapped in its window on my laptop.
“What gig?” In the window next door, our vocalist Alana Domingo mirrors my utter disbelief. “There aren’t any gigs, Doug. The gig economy left the building.”
Doug blinks at us, that beatific way he has. Like he’s some guru of wisdom about to change your life with a handful of words; like the colossal hit of mescaline he took on that US tour 20 years ago never wore off.
“My people,” he tells us, an opening that has never, in the history of music, … More

Watching TV and staring at flickering flames produce similar physiological effects, offering intriguing clues to the enduring power of entertainment – and the origins of sociability

Humans 16 December 2020
By Colin Barras

Getty Images

LAST year, it was Frozen. This year, it might be Eight Below. A holiday during the long, cold Michigan winter is a chance for my family to spend some quality time together. And what better way to enjoy our evenings than by watching movies on TV?
Some might call this a waste of time. Anthropologist Christopher Lynn begs to differ. He believes there is a good reason why many of us like gathering around the idiot box. Far from being frivolous, it is a legacy of a behaviour that arose to help humans survive the unforgiving Stone Age world.
It is tempting to see human evolution through the prism of technological breakthroughs that brought tangible material benefits. When our ancestors learned to make projectile weapons, for instance, they could hunt more effectively and secure more reliable sources of meat. Softer aspects of life, such as the ways we socialise, might seem less important to the success of our species. But Lynn, who is based at the University of Alabama, says we socialise not because we like to, but because we need to.
That may seem obvious to anyone who has struggled with isolation during lockdown this year. But Lynn goes further still. He thinks that the pleasure we gain from relaxing around the TV with friends and family might help explain why humanity became so social in the first place. It all began, he says, when our ancestors learned to control fire.
We have known for decades that the use of fire transformed life for early humans. It allowed them to cook food, for … More

By Donna Lu

Nonglak Bunkoet/Legrand/Alamy

With the coronavirus pandemic causing a sharp rise in unemployment, one idea is rapidly growing in popularity: universal basic income (UBI), in which the government pays people a regular sum, no strings attached.
A Finnish study published in May (although carried out in 2017 and 2018) with 2000 unemployed people found that UBI boosted recipients’ financial well-being, mental health and cognitive functioning, and also modestly improved employment rates.
People who received €560 per month, rather than regular unemployment benefits, reported higher levels of confidence in being able to control their future. The researchers involved say that regular guaranteed … More

By Adam Vaughan
There is increasing awareness of racial inequality in science funding
Skynesher/Getty Images

Just 10 senior researchers who received public funding in the UK during 2018-19 were Black, the first breakdown of UK science funding by individual ethnic groups reveals. The number, just 0.5 per cent of the total, was described as “profoundly upsetting” by the government body in charge of funding.
Racial inequalities in funding by the UK’s seven research councils, which coordinate around £8 billion of government cash, have come under growing scrutiny in the past year. But the disparities between ethnic minorities have been masked by lumping individual ethnicities together under the banner of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME).
Researchers can apply for three categories of funding, in descending seniority: principal investigator (PI), co-investigator or fellow. Today, data published by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which coordinates the research councils, shows that just 10 Black researchers were awarded PI funding. Out of the total 2045 PI roles funded, 210 went to people from an ethnic minority.

Advertisement

Of the fellows who received funding, just 60 were from an ethnic minority, compared with 250 white fellows. The number of Black fellows is so low – between one and four – that UKRI didn’t release the number for fear of identifying individuals. That picture isn’t new, the organisation says: between 2014 and 2019 there has always been fewer than five Black fellows each year.
As the UKRI points out, both of these proportions are below the proportion of Black people in academia and the wider labour market, while the figures for co-investigator were more in line.
“It shows that funded Black applicants are vanishingly small,” says Izzy Jayasinghe at the University of Sheffield, UK, who is a member of The Inclusion Group for Equity in Research in STEMM (TIGERS). The figures show that Black applicants are underfunded by at least three times what would be expected given their wider labour market proportion, she says.
Michael Sulu at University College London, also a member of TIGERS, says: “It tells you everything you would assume, which is essentially that black staff must work with others to gain funding as a co-investigator and are unlikely to be leaders.”

By comparison, researchers of Asian ethnicity received a higher proportion of funding compared to the proportion of Asian people in academia and the wider jobs market. This appears to be the driving force behind the proportion of ethnic minority co-investigators growing between 2014 and 2015. From 2016-17 onwards, those researchers exceeded the ethnic minority proportion of academia and the labour market.

Ottoline Leyser at UKRI said in a statement: “These data spotlight the stark reality of the persistent systemic racial inequalities experienced in the research and innovation system. They are profoundly upsetting, but perhaps the most upsetting thing about them is that they are not surprising.”
More on these topics: More