Humans

By Garry Shaw
Tattoos have helped reveal details of a 19th-century man who had his skin preserved
Smith, M.J., Starkie, A., Slater, R. et al.
The unique flayed skin of an anonymous man has revealed unexpected details about his life. Analysis of the tattoos on his body reveals he was French, a seafarer, loved a woman named Flourine and may have died in prison.
The gruesome artefact is currently held in a private collection in London. It consists of most of the skin of the man’s torso and limbs, which was nailed to a wooden board. Somebody then added horse hair stuffing between … More

By Michael Marshall
A selection of grave goods from La Almoloya, an ancient site in Spain
J.A. Soldevilla/Arqueoecologia Social Mediterrània Research Group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
A Bronze Age society in what is now Spain may have been ruled by women, at least some of the time. Archaeologists have found the bones of a woman buried with a silver diadem – or crown – and other riches under the remains of a building that seems to have been used for political meetings.
The woman lived in a society that has been dubbed El Argar – the name of the first archaeological site preserving evidence of the culture, which was excavated in the 1880s by engineer-turned-archaeologist Luis Siret and his brother Henri.

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The Argaric culture, which dominated what is now south-east Spain between around 2200 and 1550 BC, became famous following the Sirets’s discovery. But the Spanish civil war (1936 – 1939) and ensuing military dictatorship saw research grind to a halt for many decades, says Roberto Risch at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.
Risch and his colleagues have been excavating an Argaric site called La Almoloya for several years. The ancient building they found there seems to have had some kind of governmental purpose, perhaps serving as a palace or a form of parliament.
“It’s a building with a hall where 50 to 55 people could be sitting listening to each other, or to someone explaining something,” says Risch. There is no evidence of food and no clear-cut religious artefacts, so it doesn’t look like a home or a temple.

Buried in a very large, ovoid jar under the floor of the hall, the team found the bodies of a woman and a man. Both had a multitude of funerary goods, suggesting they were eminent in Argaric society, says co-author Cristina Rihuete Herrada, also at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. DNA analysis shows they weren’t related, but they may have been married: both were immediate relatives of a baby girl buried under a nearby building, who may have been their daughter.
Most of the funerary items, including the most spectacular ones, were found on the woman. She was wearing a silver diadem on her head, two silver earplug piercings and two silver bracelets. As a result, the team believes she was the ruler.

It has long been suspected that women had leadership roles in Argaric culture, says Rihuete Herrada. Four silver diadems have previously been found buried with Argaric women, although it wasn’t clear whether the women were rulers rather than important religious figures. But this is the first time a woman buried with such riches has been found in a building more clearly used for governing.

The man was buried with a dagger and had injuries consistent with a life of horse riding, as well as a long-healed skull injury. This suggests he may have been a warrior.
Journal reference: Antiquity, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.8 More

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Gut Feelings: The microbiome and our health by Alessio Fasano and Susie Flaherty reveals how understanding this alien inner world will make it possible to target medicines to an individual’s needs at the molecular level.
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An Impossible Project, streaming on digital platforms from 15 March, celebrates the return of analogue formats, from Polaroid to vinyl. The film highlights the work of Viennese biologist Florian “Doc” Kaps to reverse the tide of technological “progress”.

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Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn leaps from London to Cap d’Antibes in southern France to a rewilded corner of Sussex, UK, in a thrilling and mischievous tale of ecology, psychoanalysis, genetics and neuroscience.
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Floating in space watching your ship speed away rivals moments in Gravity or Interstellar – and it’s one of the things that makes Outer Wilds among the best games ever made, says Jacob Aron

Humans 10 March 2021
By Jacob Aron
A view of Timber Hearth, the home planet where Outer Wilds begins
Mobius Digital
Outer Wilds
Mobius Digital

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PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
THE first few months of any year are a slow time for video game launches, but whether it is due to the pandemic or the recent release of next-generation consoles, new games are thin on the ground at the moment. That is why I spent this month checking out 2019’s Outer Wilds – and I am glad I did, because it is one of the best games ever made.
A bold claim, but hear me out. Outer Wilds is set in a miniature solar system filled with planets bearing evocative names such as Giant’s Deep and Brittle Hollow. As the newest member of Outer Wilds Ventures, an organisation that is as much a bunch of trail hikers as it is NASA, you set off to explore these worlds – and in 22 minutes, the sun explodes in a supernova, wiping out you and everything else in the solar system.
Moments later, the game resets and you begin another 22-minute session. This time limit, combined with the small solar system, gives you space exploration without the boring bits. After launching your trusty spacecraft, you can be walking on the surface of another planet within minutes. At the same time, everything operates under more-or-less realistic orbital mechanics, making space flight a challenge of matching orbits and velocities – you can’t just point at your destination and go.
I spent my first few runs getting to grips with the controls, which allow you to thrust in either direction along all three spatial axes, and more than once found myself falling into the sun, triggering an early reset. Yet little by little, I mastered my ship and was soon merrily exploring.
“There are no new abilities to unlock as you play – the only thing you gain is knowledge”

I am deliberately avoiding saying much about what I found because Outer Wilds is about the joy of discovering things for yourself: it really is everything you could want from a space-exploration game. To give you a flavour, during my playthrough, I fell into a black hole, docked with a mysterious space station and landed on a comet, before falling off again.
But not all in a single go. Your ship’s computer records your discoveries, linking them together like a corkboard with strings. This doesn’t reset, allowing you to uncover the game’s many mysteries over a number of runs. There are no new abilities to unlock as you play – the only thing you gain is knowledge, so you could theoretically complete Outer Wilds in your first 22 minutes.
The result is that the game is full of “aha!” moments that are both incredibly satisfying and make you feel very clever, but it is also mechanically brilliant. Launching your spacecraft at the start of a run is always a tiny thrill as you rumble into orbit. Your spacesuit has limited oxygen and fuel, making it essential to manage your resources. If you run out of fuel, you can use oxygen as propellant in a last-ditch effort to get to safety.
This comes together to generate moments that easily rival Gravity or Interstellar. At one point, I was floating around a planet, separated from my ship, which was orbiting another planet.
I could see the ship was heading away from me, and doubted I would be able to catch up with my remaining fuel. Instead, I pulled open my map of the solar system so I could estimate when the two planets would have their closest approach. Timing things just right, I jetted off for what I thought would be a daring rendezvous. For a moment, it seemed like I was on course… until I smashed into a moon, cracked my helmet and died. Thankfully, the next run was just a moment away.

Jacob also recommends…
Games
The Witness
Thekla
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, iOS
The Witness is full of mysteries. Set on an island split into regions, each locale puts its own spin on grid-based logic puzzles. It is gorgeous, but extremely mentally taxing.
No Man’s Sky
Hello Games
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
No Man’s Sky offers billions of procedurally generated worlds. This can make them feel samey, but the latest update lets you collect alien pets.

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By Sam Wong
Valeri Vatel/Alamy
PIZZA is the ultimate fast food, and the speed of cooking is vital to achieving perfection: brown and crispy on the bottom, but still tender and chewy on the inside, with a light, airy crust. This is easy to attain in a traditional pizza oven, which can reach temperatures of around 500°C and cook a pizza in under 2 minutes. At home, it is more challenging, but there are some tricks to making satisfying pizzas.
Paradoxically, it helps to think of pizza as slow food and start the process a few days early – difficult, I know, … More

Social media is awash with people claiming that regular cold dips have transformed their health and well-being. We investigate whether it is actually good for you

Health 10 March 2021
By Alison George
Plunging the body into cold water stimulates the release of a cocktail of invigorating chemicals
Jacob Staedler/EyeEm/Getty Images
“IT’S like pressing Control-Alt-Delete on a computer,” says Cath Pendleton. “When I’m in the water, I’m so focused on my body, my brain switches off. It’s just me and the swim.”
Pendleton, an ice swimmer based in Merthyr Tydfil, UK, is hardier than most. In 2020, five years after discovering she didn’t mind swimming in very cold water, she became the first person to swim a mile inside the Antarctic circle. Part of her training involved sitting in a freezer in her shed.
She is far from alone in her enthusiasm for cold water, however. Thanks to media reports of the mental health benefits of a chilly dip and pool closures due to covid-19, soaring numbers are now taking to rivers, lakes and the sea – once the preserves of a handful of seriously tough year-round swimmers. An estimated 7.5 million people swim outdoors in the UK alone, with an increasing number swimming through the winter. Global figures are hard to come by, but the International Winter Swimming Association has seen a boom in registered winter swimmers around the world, even in China, Russia and Finland, where water temperatures can drop below 0°C.
But is there anything more to it than the joy of being in nature, combined with the perverse euphoria of defying the cold? According to the latest research, the answer is maybe. Recent studies have begun to turn up evidence that cold-water immersion may alleviate stress and depression and help tackle autoimmune disorders. It might even tap into a … More

By Michael Marshall
This may be the oldest stone tool yet found outside Africa
Dominique Cauche
ANCESTRAL humans may have left Africa half a million years earlier than generally thought, according to archaeologists who claim to have found a primitive stone tool from 2.6 million years ago in northern India.
If early humans really were there then, it would mean they migrated out of Africa remarkably early. The oldest evidence of the Homo lineage is from 2.8 million years ago at Ledi-Geraru in Ethiopia. This means these hominins would have had to expand their range rapidly to reach India.
The claim is … More

New Scientist Future of Science Survey in association with

New Scientist, in association with IPSEN, wants to find out. Take part in our survey and help us learn how to inspire more young minds into careers in science and healthcare.

Health 8 March 2021The innovation of tomorrow will be driven by the new generation of young minds.  But what do young people really think about science?  What do they like about science, what do they dislike, and what would put them off a career in science or healthcare?
Help us find out.
We want you to answer if you are aged 16-21. If you have children aged 7 to 15 please would you fill out the survey with them. We will be publishing the results in a forthcoming issue of New Scientist.
The questionnaire takes up to 10 minutes to complete. The information you give will only be used in aggregate and your views will be completely confidential in accordance with the UK Market Research Society’s Code of Conduct.
You can complete the survey here.
ALL-UK-001204 February 2021
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