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Deborah Barsky

Deborah Barsky is a writing fellow for the Human Bridges, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, and an associate professor at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She is the author of Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Released for Syndication:
03/11/2025
Until now, at least 14 different species have been assigned to the genus Homo since it emerged in Ethiopia some 2.8 million years ago revealing branching evolutionary stories of survival, intermixing, and extinctions. Archaeology is increasingly allowing us to glimpse into one of...
Released for Syndication:
11/27/2024
What led humans on the unique path of cultural development? And can we do anything useful with newly reconstructed histories of this process? ...
Released for Syndication:
09/06/2024
Scientific breakthroughs about human origins have captured the curiosity of audiences eager to learn more about the past. We are entering a new phase, thanks to the accumulation of evidence and new research technologies, in which experts and audiences are increasingly asking bigger questions about...
Released for Syndication:
06/28/2024
A glance at recorded history shows us that humans have “always” felt a need to explain phenomena perceived to exist beyond our comprehension. Today, we turn to science to seek answers to our questions about the universe. But in the past, preliterate people developed spirituality...
Released for Syndication:
05/28/2024
An ancient Greek myth tells the story of Prometheus, who, after molding humans out of clay and teaching them the fine arts of civilization, defied the Olympian Gods by stealing the secret of fire and offering it to humans. Prometheus paid dearly for this...
Released for Syndication:
04/11/2024
While the circumstances that led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans (AMH) remain a topic of debate, the species-centric idea that modern humans inevitably came to dominate the world because they were culturally and behaviorally superior to other hominins is still largely accepted. The...
Released for Syndication:
03/05/2024
When I began studying human prehistory in the mid-1990s, little did I know that I would witness a paradigm shift in our understanding of when the first humans settled in Western Eurasia firsthand. At the time, I was preparing my master’s thesis about the...
Released for Syndication:
02/07/2024
The famous American astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” But can we ever know the history of human origins well enough to understand why humans wage large-scale acts of appalling cruelty on other members of...
Released for Syndication:
11/30/2023
Important scientific advances are changing what we know about the technological, social, and cognitive traits of our ancient human ancestors. The invention of the first stone tools was a hugely significant milestone along the human evolutionary highway, one that would change our lifeways and, ultimately,...
Released for Syndication:
09/22/2023
We can all agree that most people want to know about their origins—spanning from their family and ancestral history and even, occasionally, deeper into the evolutionary story. ...