Our ancestors’ ability to recognize water sources was crucial to their survival. As a result, the attraction to lustrous materials is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and is evident among prehistoric artifacts, ancient civilizations, and modern consumer culture. ...

Prehistory is a modern idea. The word was “coined” only in the 1830s. Before the 19th century, we didn’t know much about dinosaurs or cavemen, and fossils remained a scientific curiosity. When French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon published his notorious Histoire...

With online access, you can easily tap into the powerful world of artificial intelligence (AI). By using Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini, or Microsoft’s Copilot, people can use AI to supplement or replace traditional web searches. OpenAI’s ChatGPT—the generative AI that’s become all the rage—can create...

Producing art and text using computers is not new. It has been happening since the 1970s. What is new is that computers are acting independently—without programmers providing any input; the computer program generates the work, even if programmers have set the parameters. ...

The pervasive view of art-making as a hobby rather than a legitimate career has helped perpetuate the well-known dilemma of the “starving artist.” Statistics confirm the truth of this cliché: Professional creatives in the U.S. are more likely to fall within the lowest income...

Twenty-three million years ago, our distant ancestors gained trichromatic color vision through means of a random genetic mutation. Trichromatic color vision and trichromacy refer to the ability to perceive color through three receptors in the eye, known as cones, which are sensitive to different wavelengths...

The stories we do and don’t tell about ourselves and these times in which we’re living shape the direction of our lives and our cultures. Stories have the power to alter how we interact and relate. Those who study cultural anthropology and the origins of...

The science of rhythm across species is a new and growing research field, as yet without agreement on the question of whether the phenomenon of rhythm exists for every species. There is, however, fascinating and suggestive experimental and observational evidence: Parrots can bob their heads...

Paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean has developed a comprehensive explanation based on a synthesis of research and archaeological evidence for what propelled H. sapiens to leave Africa about 70,000 years ago and colonize every part of the world, replacing other existing...

Why should we explore caves and excavate fossils? Why should we seek more information about our origins? And what can the first women and men tell us about the human condition? Reading Georges Bataille (1897-1962) answers these questions profoundly. The French writer considerably influenced authors...