Humans

The threat of climate change permeates this visually stunning, memorable film about a couple living through drought in the Bolivian highlands

Humans

23 November 2022

By Elle Hunt
Utama is visually stunning, with dramatic shots of the arid horizonConic
Utama
Alejandro Loayza Grisi
On limited release in cinemas
LIFE in the highlands of Bolivia, more than 3500 metres above sea level, has always been at the mercy of the elements.
Virginio and Sisa have lived on the Andean plateau of western Bolivia all their lives, in a modest mud house without electricity or running water, tending to livestock and growing crops in one of the most exposed environments on Earth.
It is a precarious existence, but with many decades … More

You won’t need to make a flour roux for your macaroni cheese if you cook your pasta in milk rather than water, says Sam Wong

Humans

23 November 2022

By Sam Wong
Shutterstock/foodstck
CHEESE sauce is one of the first things I remember learning to cook as a child. You melt butter in a pan, whisk in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Then, gradually add the milk, whisking vigorously to avoid lumps. Simmer until it thickens, then mix in the cheese.
I must have made macaroni cheese this way dozens of times, but I might never do so again since learning of an ingenious shortcut.
Before I get to that, let’s consider why we need flour in a cheese sauce in the first place. The starch in flour plays two important roles here. One is to thicken … More

The hunt for the prehistoric mother tongue that gave rise to dozens of the languages we speak today reminds us of the scientific case for international identity

Humans

| Leader

23 November 2022

Shutterstock/ivosar
WHEN it comes to communicating and connecting with others, language is the most important tool we have. But it isn’t always a unifying force. A survey of people in 14 high-income countries, for example, found that language was considered by far the most critical factor in defining national identity, which suggests we tend to think people who don’t speak “our national language” may not belong.
The reconstruction of prehistoric languages offers an intriguing antidote to this way of thinking. As we explore in a feature this week, “The hunt for the lost ancestral language of Europe and southern Asia“, many of the world’s tongues share … More

We’ve long known there was an ancient language that gave rise to English, Bengali and dozens of other tongues – now we’re on the brink of working out where Proto-Indo-European was spoken

Humans

23 November 2022

By Andrea Valentino
Andy Smith
MOTHER. There can scarcely be a more emotive word in the English language. We can imagine children howling it as they wake from nightmares, and centenarians whispering it on their death beds. A 2004 survey proclaimed it the most beautiful word in English, and artists have evoked it in countless poems and plays. Yet even though it can conjure home and hearth in a scant two syllables, mother is perhaps most remarkable for its deluge of cousins. From Dutch (moeder) to Czech (matka) to Bengali (ma), dozens of languages have words that share a common root with mother, tying English to a cobweb of tongues that straddles almost every continent.
Human societies can’t exist without language, and no language family has shaped our world as much as Indo-European. It boasts well over 3 billion speakers, or an estimated 46 per cent of everyone on Earth. From the moment this language family was recognised, scholars have been searching for the answer to a weighty question. Who spoke the Indo-European mother tongue – dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE) – that splintered into the hundreds of daughters we hear today?
The quest has thrilled and frustrated experts for centuries, with the evidence sometimes pointing in opposing directions. Yet the field is far from deadlocked. With the power of DNA at their heels, geneticists are making new claims about PIE, a language that may predate civilisation. Meanwhile, linguistic studies now suggest we can trace the roots of Indo-European languages even further back than PIE, to the world that existed shortly after farming took hold in south-west Asia. Not that any of this is straightforward – or without controversy.
The … More

The chromosome may contain regions that promote their DNA’s spread by killing sperm that carry Y chromosomes. However, Y chromosomes may have evolved counter mechanisms over time

Humans

23 November 2022

By Michael Le Page
Some modern humans that had not long left Africa may have evolved an X chromosome that carried “selfish” DNASCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Around 50,000 years ago, a new X chromosome appears to have been introduced into modern humans that had not long left Africa.
There was probably exceptionally strong selection for parts of this chromosome because, today, most people of less-recent African ancestry have inherited those regions.
Kasper Munch Terkelsen at Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the research, thinks these regions may contain bits of so-called selfish DNA that promote their … More

Vladimir Sorokin’s dystopian fantasy is a wild read, mixing political satire with steampunk microstates and a must-have psychotropic drug based on tellurium

Humans

16 November 2022

By Boyd Tonkin
Medieval hierarchies with futuristic technology rule Earth in TelluriaPreechar Bowonkitwanchai/Shutterstock
Telluria
Vladimir Sorokin, Translated by Max Lawton (NYRB Classics)
WE ARE in Telluria, a tiny state that gives its name to a novel, recently released in translation. A holy war between Europe and Islamic powers has plunged the world into a neofeudal era of micro states. In one of these lives Golden Throat, a singer whose ballads denounce the immorality of the elite; for him, “the benefit of decomposing despotism” is “rich satirical material”. Unsurprisingly, Golden Throat comes to a sticky end. … More

The Hollywood A-lister endures a series of challenges in a bid to extend his life expectancy in this engaging documentary, from climbing 30 metres up a rope dangling over a canyon to fasting for four days

Humans

16 November 2022

By Gregory Wakeman
National Geographic for Disney+
Limitless With Chris Hemsworth
National Geographic
Airs on Disney+ on 16 November
ON THE face of it, Thor star Chris Hemsworth lives an idyllic life. The Hollywood A-lister is married to another successful actor, Fast & Furious‘s Elsa Pataky, with whom he has three children.
But he makes it clear at the start of his documentary Limitless With Chris Hemsworth that he experiences the same mental and health issues as everyone else. Over six episodes, Hemsworth sets out to show that, rather than being overwhelmed by your problems, scientific studies demonstrate that it is much healthier to confront them.
With … More

Writers and film makers are always using the multiverse as fuel for their plots, but Nathan Tavares gives it a new twist in A Fractured Infinity, a sci-fi novel about growing up, finds Sally Adee

Humans

16 November 2022

By Sally Adee
When we are young, we fight off the idea of a final version of ourselvesJonathan Knowles/Getty Images
A Fractured Infinity
Nathan Tavares (Titan Books)
IT SEEMS like the multiverse is everywhere right now, if you’ll pardon the pun. From its origins as a groundbreaking head-exploder of a scientific theory, it seems to have achieved the dubious honour of being the go-to lazy plot twist. But it can also elevate other potentially tired genres. This is the trick Nathan Tavares pulls off in A Fractured Infinity, using it to provide new facets for … More