International Big History Association

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Dr. Irving Finkel with a 3,770-year-old tablet containing instructions from the god Enki to Sumerian King Atram-Hasis (Noah figure in earlier versions of the flood story) to build a 220 ft diameter round ark coracle.

“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner once wrote. “It’s not even past.” Nobody knows this better than astronomers. Everything that has ever happened in the history of the universe has left a mark on the sky; with the right technology, much of it is now decipherable.

For the past quarter-century, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has been recording the roiling aftermath of two mighty supernova explosions that occurred hundreds of years ago, far out in space. This spring, the astronomers who operate Chandra combined its X-ray images into videos that document the evolution of two astrophysical landmarks: the Crab nebula, in the constellation Ta**us, and Cassiopeia A, a gas bubble and hub of radio noise in the constellation Cassiopeia.

The videos show twisting, drifting ribbons of the remains of the star being churned by shock waves and illuminated by radiation from the dense, spinning cores left behind.

They were made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the observatory, which was launched into space in 1999 and has been a workhorse of cosmology and astrophysics ever since.

Watch These Supernovas in (Time-Lapse) Motion For the 25th anniversary of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA produced ghostly time-lapse videos of two centuries-old stellar explosions.

Early Humans Left Africa Much Earlier Than Previously Thought

Scientists have found evidence of several waves of migration by looking at the genetic signatures of human interbreeding with Neanderthals.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our species arose in Africa. Research on the DNA of living people has indicated that early Homo sapiens stayed on the continent for a long while, with a small group leavingjust 50,000 years ago to populate the rest of the world.

But those findings have raised a puzzling question: Why did our species take so long to move beyond Africa?

Several new studies, including one published on Thursday, argue that the timeline was wrong. According to new data, several waves of modern humans began leaving the continent about 250,000 years ago.

“It wasn’t a single out-of-Africa migration,” said Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. “There have been lots of migrations out of Africa at different time periods.”

Early Humans Left Africa Much Earlier Than Previously Thought Scientists have found evidence of several waves of migration by looking at the genetic signatures of human interbreeding with Neanderthals.

The latest made-ya-look image from the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived, and it looks like … a penguin. A giant penguin in space.

NASA officials on Friday marked two full years of scientific results from the telescope with the release of the image, which actually shows a pair of intertwined galaxies, known as Arp 142, and nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg. The first is a spiral galaxy; the second is an elliptical galaxy.

“The galaxies’ ‘dance’ gravitationally pulled on the Penguin’s thinner areas of gas and dust, causing them to crash in waves and form stars,” NASA said in a news release. “Look for those areas in two places: what looks like a fish in its ‘beak’ and the ‘feathers’ in its ‘tail.’”

Webb space telescope keeps delivering cosmic surprises The latest image shows a pair of intertwined galaxies, known as Arp 142, and nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg.

What makes up most of the cosmos?

What's Our Universe Made Of? With Cosmologist Katie Mack Katie Mack is a theoretical cosmologist and a well known science communicator. Her 2020 book is called The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) … whi...

Some 280 million years ago, a large predator glided through the chilly waters of a supercontinent in the Southern Hemisphere. The eight-foot-long hunter had tiny limbs, an eel-like body and a flat head full of jutting fangs. And according to existing ideas about vertebrate evolution, it shouldn’t have existed.

“It was displaced in time, displaced regionally and also far too big,” said Claudia Marsicano, a paleontologist at the University of Buenos Aires and an author of a paper describing the animal in the journal Nature on Wednesday. “There were a lot of things that made it unique.”

The giant salamander-like creature, which Dr. Marsicano and her colleagues named Gaiasia jennyae, could only have been a relic of a family thought to have been extinct for millions of years. Their finding might suggest that additional research on the emergence of tetrapods — vertebrates with four limbs and feet instead of fins — is in order.

Spencer Lucas, a paleontologist at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science who was not involved in the study, said that the discovery “is not enough to force a rethink of most of what we think about late Paleozoic tetrapod evolution. But it is a nudge in that direction.”

This Bigheaded Fossil Turned Up in a Place No One Expected to Find It An ancient aquatic predator resembling a giant salamander turned up in an African fossil deposit, suggesting unwritten chapters of how animals moved onto land.

51,000-year-old cave painting may be earliest scene depicted through art
The artwork, an example of early storytelling, shows three humanoid figures and a pig. Sulawesi residents of that era were “besotted” with painting pigs.

Among the hundreds of caves hidden in the limestone karsts of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, a work of art faded into a rock wall could be of global importance. A depiction of three humanoid figures and a pig, the painting is the oldest known scene created by humans, dated to at least 51,200 years ago, scientists say.

It was evidence that humans were capable of storytelling in the distant past, said Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University’s Australian Research Center for Human Evolution and an author of the study, which was published in Nature on Thursday.

“Storytelling is a hugely important part of human evolution, and possibly even it helps to explain our success as a species,” he said in a briefing about the research. “But finding evidence for it in art, especially in very early cave art, is exceptionally rare.”

“We don’t know exactly what’s going on in this scene,” he added of the cave painting. “But it’s clearly communicating some sort of story that involves the interaction between these three humanlike figures and the pig.”

51,000-year-old cave painting may be earliest scene depicted through art The artwork, an example of early storytelling, shows three humanoid figures and a pig. Sulawesi residents of that era were “besotted” with painting pigs, an expert said.

You have to like a periodic table quip.

https://jbh.journals.villanova.edu/index.php/JBH/issue/view/222

The picture of a galaxy as it was 290 million years after the big bang, 13.5 billion years ago. Beyond amazing.

James Webb space telescope photographs most distant known galaxy Unexpected brightness of JADES-GS-z14-0 means telescope could capture images of galaxies even further away

This post shows the best theory at the present time about the formation of the Moon. Credit: NASA.

A history of how the atom was imagined.

Well, this is one view.

Please keep order.

This is Albert Einstein's office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Most of the furniture is exactly how he left it.

The inaugural lunar mission of Pakistan, ICUBE-Qamar, has been successfully launched into space today. Developed through a collaboration between the Institute of Space Technology (IST), China's Shanghai University SJTU, and Pakistan's national space agency SUPARCO, ICUBE-Qamar embarked on its journey aboard China's Chang'E6 spacecraft from Hainan, China.

The launch, which was broadcasted live on the IST website, signifies a momentous achievement for Pakistan's space exploration initiatives.

The ICUBE-Qamar orbiter, equipped with two optical cameras for lunar surface imaging, has completed rigorous qualification and testing phases and has now been integrated into the Chang'E6 mission, the latest installment in China's lunar exploration program.

Chang'E6's primary objective is to land on the far side of the Moon, collect samples, and return them to Earth for research purposes.
Notably, this mission also carries Pakistan's CubeSat satellite, iCube-Q, developed by IST. CubeSats, known for their compact size and standardized design, play crucial roles in scientific research, technology development, and educational endeavors related to space exploration.

These miniature satellites, often weighing only a few kilograms, are deployed for diverse missions, including Earth observations, remote sensing, atmospheric research, communications, astronomy, and technology demonstration.

Pakistan's participation in this lunar mission underscores its growing prominence in the global space arena and its dedication to advancing scientific exploration beyond Earth's confines.

Well, hello, Voyager 1! The venerable spacecraft is once again making sense After a nasty computer glitch five months ago, Voyager 1 is once again able to communicate with Earth in a way that mission operators can understand.

After a half a century since it was launched!

Voyager 1 is sending data back to Earth for the first time in 5 months | CNN Engineers finally received a status update from the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after identifying the cause of the aging probe’s five-month communication issue.

The Butterfly Nebula
Image credit :Talon Abraxas

The Pillars of Creation located in the Eagle Nebula located in the direction of the Milky Way Core and about 6000 Light Years from Earth. While the near infrared image showing all the stars is gorgeous.

The mid infrared image showing the details of the clouds of gas and dust that I find hauntingly beautiful (and appropriate for the season).

📷: James Webb Space Telescope

No ‘Hippie Ape’: Bonobos Are Often Aggressive, Study Finds
Despite their peaceful reputation, bonobos act aggressively more often than their chimpanzee cousins, a new study found.

By Carl Zimmer

Updated April 16, 2024
In the early 1900s, primatologists noticed a group of apes in central Africa with a distinctly slender build; they called them “pygmy chimpanzees.” But as the years passed, it became clear that those animals, now known as bonobos, were profoundly different from chimpanzees.

Chimpanzee societies are dominated by males that kill other males, raid the territory of neighboring troops and defend their own ground with border patrols. Male chimpanzees also attack females to coerce them into mating, and sometimes even kill infants. Among bonobos, in contrast, females are dominant. Males do not go on patrols, form alliances or kill other bonobos. And bonobos usually resolve their disputes with s*x — lots of it.

Bonobos became famous for showing that nature didn’t always have to be red in tooth and claw. “Bonobos are an icon for peace and love, the world’s ‘hippie chimps,’” Sally Coxe, a conservationist, said in 2006.

But these sweeping claims were not based on much data. Because bonobos live in remote, swampy rainforests, it has been much more difficult to observe them in the wild than chimpanzees. More recent research has shown that bonobos live a more aggressive life than their reputation would suggest.

In a study based on thousands of hours of observations in the wild published on Friday, for example, researchers found that male bonobos commit acts of aggression nearly three times as often as male chimpanzees do.

“There is no ‘hippie ape,’” said Maud Mouginot, a biological anthropologist at Boston University who led the analysis.

As our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees can offer us clues about the roots of human behavior. We and the two species share a common ancestor that lived about 7 million years ago. About 5 million years later, bonobos split off from chimpanzees.

In 2012, a trio of Harvard researchers proposed that bonobos evolved much like dogs did. Less aggressive wolves were not as likely to be killed by humans, which over time led to the emergence of dogs. In a similar fashion, the researchers argued, female bonobos preferred to mate with less aggressive males, giving birth to less aggressive offspring.

The researchers called their idea the self-domestication hypothesis. In later years, they speculated that humans may have undergone a self-domestication of their own.

Dr. Mouginot found the hypothesis intriguing, and decided to test it by tracking individual male chimpanzees and bonobos over several years.

In 2018, she traveled to Tanzania to observe chimpanzees. She would follow an individual male all day long, noting when it committed aggression — a push, a bite, a chase — against another male.

The next year she went to the Democratic Republic of Congo to watch bonobos; she used binoculars to follow them as they raced around in the forest canopy. “Most of the time, I’m seeing their butts,” she said.

Dr. Mouginot soon became perplexed, as she saw that male bonobos acted aggressively on a regular basis. Unlike male chimpanzees, who started their days in a mellow mood, the male bonobos seemed to wake up ready for a fight.

“I thought, where is the peaceful bonobo?” Dr. Mouginot said.

She and her colleagues trained field assistants, who made more observations throughout the pandemic. The new analysis, based on 9,300 hours of observations on 12 male bonobos and 14 male chimpanzees, found that bonobos committed aggressive acts 2.8 times as frequently as the chimpanzees did.

“Those numbers are really big — I thought I messed something up,” Dr. Mouginot said. But she hadn’t.

Dr. Mouginot found that the frequent bonobo aggressions almost always involved a single male attacking another male. Chimpanzees, in contrast, often ganged up to attack a victim.

Brian Hare, an anthropologist at Duke University and one of the authors of the self-domestication hypothesis, said that the study set a new standard for comparing aggression in bonobos and chimpanzees.

“It’s absolutely worth its weight in gold,” he said.

Dr. Mouginot speculated that male chimpanzees engage in one-on-one aggression less often because it poses bigger dangers: A victim of aggression may not want to go on a border patrol with the perpetrator, for example. Or he may bring back some of his own allies to wreak vengeance.

It may be easier for male bonobos to get away with aggression, Dr. Mouginot said, because in their female-dominated society they don’t face the risks that come with male alliances. “I think that’s why we see more aggression in bonobos — because it’s less risky to act aggressively against other males,” Dr. Mouginot said.

In fact, male bonobos may benefit from attacking other males. Dr. Mouginot and her colleagues found that the apes that carried out the most aggressive acts were also the ones who mated most often.

Dr. Hare acknowledged that the study’s results mean that parts of the self-domestication hypothesis “clearly need refinement.” It may be important to consider the effect that different kinds of aggression have on a species, rather than lumping them altogether, he said.

Still, he argued that the differences between the two species remained significant. “Chimpanzees murder, and bonobos don’t,” he said.

No ‘Hippie Ape’: Bonobos Are Often Aggressive, Study Finds Despite their peaceful reputation, bonobos act aggressively more often than their chimpanzee cousins, a new study found.

Another great big history site. https://www.facebook.com/BigHistoryLeeds

Big History Leeds The Big History of evolution, from the origins of the Big Bang to our ultimate demise, not only as a

That animals think and feel seems obvious; exactly how remains interesting.

Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition

IBHA member Ken baskin.

The Mything Link: Why Sacred Storytelling Is a Key Human Survival Strategy I Ken Baskin We've had the pleasure of talking to independent scholar, Ken Baskin on his latest article for the ISCSC Comparative C...

Can’t argue with that.

Imagination is at least 35,000 to 40,000 years old. This artist had never seen a lion man. She or he put together parts of nature in a way that did not exist beyond thought and art. Maybe similar creativity had been evident almost 14 billion years ago the first time when a proton connected with an electron to form a relationship that had not existed before: an atom. What can we learn from such old examples?

Oldest confirmed statue ever discovered: Löwenmensch figurine (aka. Lion-man of Hohlenstein-Stadel). Discovered in a cave in Germany; Upper Paleolithic during the Pleistocene, about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Blog: https://thetravelbible.com/museum-of-artifacts/